How utilities can forge stronger connections with their business customers

It’s no secret: In today’s business-to-business (B2B) environment, there is more demand for—yet greater difficulty in—setting and achieving goals within the commercial and industrial (C&I) customer sector. This means there is an increased expectation that utilities develop a deeper relationship and higher customer satisfaction with their business customers.

In fact, in ICF’s recent survey of utility C&I program managers, more than 60% of utilities said that they want to be innovators and pioneers when it comes to new C&I program delivery methods. 100% reported a renewed focus on business customer relationships heading into 2022. That's not a surprise when you consider findings in the J.D. Power 2021 Electric Utility Business Customer Satisfaction Study. At the start of 2021, overall business customer satisfaction scores were on the decline before climbing during the second half of the year. In part, J.D. Power attributes that unprecedented rally to an increase by utilities in business customer outreach.

When it comes to marketing and outreach to C&I customers, there are more opportunities for utility companies to forge deeper relationships than ever before. By properly harnessing an ABM approach, utilities can make strategic and data-driven decisions that improve efficiencies, increase customer confidence, and achieve—and often exceed—goals.

ABM as a strategic framework

ABM adoption is increasingly recognized as a successful approach in the B2B space, accelerated in part by the digital-first push heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic.

We can note ABM’s surge in adoption and success through several impressive industry statistics:

• 87% of B2B marketers surveyed by ITSMA reported that ABM initiatives outperform other marketing investments in terms of ROI
• In 2021, 70% of marketers report using ABM, up 15% from 2020
• 60% of marketers plan on investing in technology for ABM to better align sales and marketing
• Companies that use ABM for at least one year see a 10% increase in revenue while 19% report more than 30% revenue growth
• 58% of B2B marketers experienced larger deal sizes with ABM

Achieving ABM success at that scale requires data-driven personalization, something that utilities still need to work to achieve—and it’s getting harder. For example, with Google's impending phase-out of third-party cookies on their Chrome browser—one of the most popular browsers in the world—it is crucial marketers focus on efforts centered around quality first-party data, such as from their own websites, to deliver personalized relevant content.

This is the key to any successful ABM strategy.

More than a campaign

ABM is not a campaign or replacement for general awareness; rather, it is a connected alignment between marketing and sales around mutually agreed upon high-value business targets. Crucial to its implementation is a connectedness among teams—including the service provider community—who seamlessly work together to prioritize attention and resources on the highest value businesses and understand the decision-making committee at those businesses to achieve program goals.

Guided by the ABM framework, teams work with data and tools to create ideal customer profiles of businesses followed by decision-maker personas. These valuable account insights are used to develop hyper-targeted content throughout the full lifecycle of the customer journey. That content library must be robust enough to provide value to each of the decision-makers at every stage of their process. Deploying this level of content during the micro-moments of decision-making is the key to overcoming missed projects and savings.

Investing in your business customer relationships

ABM is the innovation that will help utilities secure their stature as trusted partners with business customers—today and tomorrow. When ABM is properly executed, customer satisfaction scores will only continue to rise.