According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) the average residential customer used 899 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per month, while the average commerical customer used 6,019 kWh per month. These figures indicate that, on average, commercial customers consume nearly 7 times more electricity per month than residential customers, making small and medium business (SMB) customers an essential partner in achieving decarbonization goals and long-term grid resiliency.
In an era of rising energy costs and evolving customer expectations, utilities face the challenge of maintaining strong relationships with their business customers.
The good news is, just as Home Energy Reports (HERs) play a foundational role in residential customer engagement, so too do Business Energy Reports (BERs) foster greater participation and satisfaction among SMB customers.
Rocky Mountain Power (RMP) credits its BER program as instrumental in boosting its J.D. Power Business ranking by 45 points between 2020 and 2021. The consistency of BER communications and the personalized insights they provide has strengthened SMB customer relationships across the board.
Building Trust Through Regular Communication
“Business customers are feeling a little bit disenchanted with rate increases, and they want to know that they have an energy partner in the utility,” explains Barb Modey, Customer Satisfaction Market Research Manager at PacifiCorp (parent company for RMP). “They are always looking for insights into their usage. What the utility can do is present them with those insights, and that helps them understand what’s going on with their energy use, maybe showing them things they didn’t know before.”
This focus on partnership represents a shift from traditional utility-customer dynamics to a more collaborative relationship. For RMP, establishing a regular cadence of communication has been transformative.
“Before we had the Bidgely reports, our communications with business customers was a little more sporadic. We would do maybe short campaigns or newsletters, and then we’d lose our momentum,” Modey notes. “The beauty of these reports is that they go out on a monthly basis. So, it’s a regular cadence and ongoing.”
Data-Driven Insights That Empower Businesses
The foundation of RMP’s engagement strategy lies in sophisticated data analysis. Using Bidgely’s patented disaggregation technology, the utility creates detailed energy profiles for each business customer, breaking down usage by equipment category and time of day.
Monthly summaries provide commercial customers with a snapshot of their energy use that includes equipment-level spending. This granular view enables businesses to make informed decisions about their energy consumption.
“Knowledge is power,” Modey emphasizes. “And if you can leverage that knowledge, then you can make better choices.”
This precise analysis allows SMBs to identify efficiency and cost-saving opportunities, both behavioral and through equipment retrofits. It also offers a more useful means to compare current bills against historic ones, with the usage detail needed to pinpoint exactly why a bill has gone up or down.
Beyond Energy Efficiency: Demand Side Marketing
Rather than focusing solely on energy savings, RMP approached their BERs as a marketing and communication tool.
“We decided to not calculate savings from the programs,” Modey explains. “It was difficult to calculate savings because with business customers—there are fewer of them, for one. And then they’re so different. You might have hair salons or tire shops or restaurants, and how do you compare them in a savings model?”
This marketing-focused approach allowed the utility to be more flexible with messaging and expand its reach (no need for a control group!).
“We use the reports to get out other messages to customers, maybe about our wildfire mitigation plans, or to encourage them to update their contact information so we can reach them during emergencies,” says Modey. “And also to cross-promote other programs that might not be related, like we have EV charger incentives for business customers and renewable energy programs that they might be interested in.”
Rather than fund the BER program through a traditional demand side management budget, RMP used its demand side marketing budget – diverting a portion of the money that they traditionally spend on television and radio ads.
“We had to get buy-in from the corporate communications teams and the program managers because they were used to using the money in a certain way with the type of marketing they had been doing in the past,” explains Modey. “Redirecting some of those funds from their budgets into another channel was a shift. But after the initial set up, the reports become very affordable — you can’t do traditional direct mail for the cost of these email reports. And, then when we started to see customer satisfaction results improve, then they were totally on board.”
Creating Personalized SMB Customer Journeys
Beyond monthly energy use summaries, the SMB customer profiles enable RMP to identify personalized next-best insights and interactions for every business, and communicate recommendations via proactive alerts, such as bill breakdowns paired with product offerings like demand response for batteries, HVAC rebates, and more.
The resulting engagement program is consistent and relevant, establishing the utility as a partner that SMB customers can rely on.
“We’re offering them something other than a bill, but rather information about how to control their bills. With that information, they’re empowered to manage any rate increases and make smarter decisions about either the time of day that they’re using electricity or what equipment they’re using,” Modey says.
Measuring Success: Beyond Expectations
The results of the program have exceeded Rocky Mountain Power’s expectations. The utility has seen significant improvements in customer satisfaction scores across multiple dimensions, not just energy efficiency.
“The customers who recalled the reports gave us high marks across many categories within that survey. Everything from being more involved in the local community to helping the environment, which have nothing really to do with energy efficiency,” Modey states. “We saw a lift across most of the categories within the survey, not just energy efficiency.”
More remarkably, she says, “Even the customers who didn’t say they liked the Reports still gave us higher scores than those customers who did not recall receiving the reports.”
Advice for Other Utilities
For utilities considering a similar approach, Modey offers practical advice.
“I would advise other utilities to consider whether they really need savings from this type of program. It’s not that the program won’t deliver savings — because they might come through indirectly if you link to your incentive programs — but you don’t necessarily need to attribute it to these reports to make them valuable.”
She also emphasizes that impeccable data shouldn’t be a prerequisite for getting a BER program started.
“Even if your data is not perfect — and I don’t know any utility that has perfect data — we don’t have email addresses for all of our customers. We don’t even know if all of those email addresses are going to the right customer or the decision maker… If we waited until our data was perfect, we would never do anything with business customers. So, you have to start somewhere. Your data quality will improve as you go.”
The Future of Utility-Business Relationships
As J.D. Power has emphasized in their survey report, far too many business customers are not receiving proactive outreach from their utility. It’s incumbent upon utilities to change that reality and establish a stronger collaboration with their SMB customers.
“If we hadn’t done the reports, then I don’t think our customer satisfaction would be as high with our business customers. In fact, I know it wouldn’t be as high,” Modey concludes.
For RMP, the consistent engagement, personalized insights, and proactive communication have transformed their relationship with SMB customers. Since 2020, RMP’s SMB customers have been receiving monthly BERs. Ongoing survey measurement continues to reveal strong engagement with the Reports and a lift for customer satisfaction.
“Our goal is to use BERs to advance our SMB customers from awareness to participation. And with that evolution, the by-product is a more satisfied customer.“
Learn More
If you would like to learn more about RMP’s Business Energy Reports program and Bidgely’s SMB engagement capabilities, download the Bidgely SMB Solution Brief or visit bidgely.com/solutions/small-medium-business.
Hear more from PacifiCorp’s Barb Modey by watching the on-demand webinar: “Secrets of SMB Success: Rocky Mountain Power’s Award-Winning CX.”
