Recent market studies highlight urgency. In Europe and globally, customer satisfaction with the utilities sector continues to lag other service industries at a time when reliability, transparency, and affordability matter more than ever.
Meanwhile, historical analyses of utilities companies that lead in customer experience show a measurable business advantage.
51%
higher customer retention for CX leaders in utilities, with approximately 44% stronger annual revenue growth compared to less customer-focused peers
Source: eTouchPoint
This underlines the point that improving experience is not only about service quality, but about securing long-term competitiveness.
As expectations rise on both the customer and regulatory side, VoC is shifting from a listening exercise to a strategic capability that enables anticipation, guidance, and real operational change.
Changing Customer Expectations in Utilities
Customer expectations in the utilities sector are rising for several structural reasons:
- Higher cost sensitivity. Customers scrutinize bills more closely and expect clear explanations.
- Digital norms. Self-service, proactive notifications, and mobile-first interaction are baseline expectations.
- The energy transition. New products such as EV charging, green tariffs, and dynamic pricing require simple onboarding and clear communication.
- Reliability pressure. Outages, extreme weather events, and grid constraints make real-time communication essential.
83%
of utilities customers expect real-time updates during outages, and 60% would switch providers for better service
Source: ITSMe-ID, 2024-2025
These expectations redefine what customers consider good service. VoC becomes the mechanism to understand not only whether customers are satisfied, but what they need, what they fear, and what gives them confidence.
What Strong VoC Looks Like in the Utilities Context
1. Frictionless journeys
From onboarding to billing to outage management, utilities customers expect simple, transparent, mobile-first interactions. Complex bills, inconsistent communication, and unclear service processes remain major drivers of dissatisfaction. VoC reveals where these friction points occur and what their root causes are.
2. Operationalized insight
Collecting feedback is easy. Acting on it is not. Modern VoC platforms such as sandsiv+ unify survey data, smart meter insights, call center transcripts, digital behavior data, and operational logs into a single intelligence layer. This enables early detection of dissatisfaction, churn-risk prediction, faster incident resolution, and more aligned decisions across billing, operations, and customer service.
3. Predictive and proactive communication
Many European and global utilities companies now use AI-driven analytics to forecast demand, identify asset risks, and predict potential outages. These technical capabilities matter for VoC because they allow customer-facing teams to act before customers experience disruption. Predictive models can trigger early alerts, personalized notifications, and clear guidance during service issues. When these operational insights are connected to a modern VoC platform, utilities companies can combine factual predictions with real-time sentiment signals. The result is a more proactive communication strategy that reduces frustration, increases trust, and prevents avoidable complaints.
4. Trust and transparency
Utilities customers expect clarity regarding consumption, pricing, the energy mix, and service reliability. VoC helps identify where communication is unclear, too technical, or not credible. Continuous insight is critical for maintaining trust in times of volatility.
Emerging VoC Trends Shaping the Utilities Sector
Trend 1. From cost center to customer value engine
Historically, customer service at utilities companies was treated as a cost to be managed. Today, competition, regulatory expectations, and service differentiation place customer experience at the center of strategic value creation. VoC enables utilities companies to reduce churn, increase uptake of new products, improve digital efficiency, and strengthen their regulatory position.
Trend 2. Omnichannel experience as a baseline
Utilities customers expect to manage their entire relationship digitally. VoC helps prioritize which journeys matter most, which channels fail most often, and where customers encounter friction. Sentiment analysis frequently reveals that billing uncertainty, not price level, drives the deepest frustration. Knowing this allows utilities companies to target improvements where they matter most.
Trend 3. Deep integration of VoC with the energy transition
As utilities companies deploy smart meters, launch renewable tariffs, and shift customers to flexible demand models, trust and clarity are essential. VoC identifies misunderstandings, adoption barriers, and the segments most likely to embrace new programs. This insight reduces rollout friction and ensures that customer-facing innovation keeps pace with technical innovation.
Trend 4. Real-time, predictive VoC powered by AI
Traditional VoC programs relied heavily on surveys. Today, AI models analyze call transcripts, detect emotion in voice or chat interactions, surface friction patterns in unstructured feedback data, and combine these signals with operational and smart meter data. VoC becomes a predictive capability, not just a reactive one.
Operational and Strategic Impact: Turning Customer Voice into Innovation
Beyond individual interactions, VoC supports broader operational and strategic decisions for utilities companies. Feedback patterns can uncover recurring issues in billing processes, digital journeys, or field operations. Over time, these insights help utilities companies prioritize system improvements, refine new energy products, optimize communication flows, and enhance service design. In this sense, VoC is not only a response mechanism, but a continuous input into how utilities companies modernize, innovate, and adapt to changing expectations.
The Executive View: What Utilities Leaders Should Prioritize
1. Build a unified VoC data foundation
Disjointed systems make insight fragmented. A modern VoC platform integrates all feedback data, structured and unstructured, into one operational layer.
2. Treat VoC as a cross-functional discipline
VoC must serve billing teams, field operations, IT, digital product teams, and customer service. It is not a CX department initiative. It is an organizational capability.
3. Strengthen proactive communication
Real-time alerts, personalized updates, and early anomaly detection significantly improve customer trust. Pairing AI prediction with real-time sentiment intelligence creates a communication advantage.
4. Align VoC with regulatory and ESG expectations
Regulators increasingly assess how utilities companies treat customers. Demonstrating measurable improvement, supported by VoC evidence, strengthens credibility in rate cases and investment proposals.
5. Close the loop visibly
Customers expect to hear back. Communicating what has been improved based on their feedback increases trust and encourages further input.
Looking Ahead: The Next Evolution of VoC in the Utilities Sector
1. Emotion and context-aware experience
Native AI in VoC will enable utilities companies to detect emotional patterns in calls and chat interactions long before dissatisfaction becomes explicit.
2. Customer-impact simulations before major changes
Before launching new tariffs or digital journeys, utilities companies will simulate likely customer reactions based on past feedback and behavioral data. This helps avoid negative surprises.
3. Integrated ecosystem feedback
As customers interact with EV chargers, rooftop solar, flexibility platforms, and digital energy tools, VoC will need to expand beyond the individual Utilities provider: Integrated ecosystems, spanning services provided by partners and associated third-party technologies, will emerge.
4. Hyper-personalized energy guidance
Smart meter data, behavioral segmentation, and predictive analytics will enable utilities companies to offer personalized advice on consumption, costs, and green options.
5. VoC as a competitive and strategic differentiator
Utilities companies that excel in VoC will differentiate through trust, transparency, and operational excellence.
Conclusion
The utilities sector is at a crossroads. Rising expectations, structural pressures, and the energy transition are reshaping the customer relationship. VoC, when executed as a real-time, predictive, and cross-functional capability, becomes far more than a feedback program. It becomes a strategic compass.
Utilities companies that invest in modern VoC infrastructure, predictive analytics, and proactive communication will build trust, accelerate innovation, and strengthen long-term loyalty. Those that lag will face growing dissatisfaction and regulatory pressure.
In a sector where reliability and trust define success, VoC has become a foundation of future competitiveness.
