Improving residential customer service through better utility bills

Book · Sun Oct 01 04:00:00 EDT 1995

OSTI ID:100969

Kempton, W

Providing residential customers with useful information about how they use energy may become crucial to keeping those customers happy -- or to keeping them at all -- as the utility industry becomes more competitive. Bills can be vehicles for demonstrating value and for proving that utilities have their customers` interests at heart. Utilities already have on hand the resources to provide at least basic information services through bills with minor new investment. More analysis on energy bills (and additional information services such as annual reports) is a likely trend of the future, given the history of other industries that have competitively restructured -- notably telecommunications. Many customers benefit in terms of good public relations and customer relations, and improved competitive position. Over half of all investor-owned utilities have made improvements to their bills over the past two decades in order to make them more readable. Many utilities also have added some form of energy measurement beyond total kWh for the current month. A handful of utilities have added the analytical or comparison data to help residential customers better understand their bills. This is a healthy start. However, the information that utilities provide varies widely in quality and usability -- and many of these variations are not obvious. Examples in this report will show the strengths and weaknesses of several existing utility energy information efforts.

• Research Organization: Originating Research Org. not identified
• OSTI ID: 100969
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION
ELECTRIC POWER
ELECTRIC UTILITIES
ENERGY CONSERVATION
ENERGY CONSUMPTION
INFORMATION DISSEMINATION
INVOICES
RESIDENTIAL SECTOR
SERVICE SECTOR