Why Is My Bill So
High?
By David Saxby
Depending on where your utility is located,
you may have already received your first call of the winter-heating season
from a customer inquiring about their bill. With cooler temperatures – and
the recent rate increase – customers may be wondering why their bill is
higher than it was the previous month.
The challenge your customer-service staff faces is that customers often
believe the utility made an error. Someone read the meter wrong or the meter
isn’t working correctly. Their bill couldn’t have increased that much from
one month to the next. The reality is that the average customer doesn’t
understand that a drop in temperature can significantly increase their
consumption of electricity.
So how can you reduce the number of frustrated customers your staff deals
with? Following are some ideas.
Be proactive before the phone starts ringing. It’s never too soon to
educate your customers about ways to cut electrical usage and the
relationship between consumption and cost. Educate them on which items in
their homes use the most electricity. Set up a display in your lobby with
water heaters, heat pumps, etc. If you offer hot water heaters and heat
pumps, set up a promotion for those services in the same area. Display the
cost savings of switching from gas to electric water heaters. List the
benefits of using your products. Create a display that shows other ways to
cut energy costs, such as insulation and dual-pane storm windows. Enlarge a
thermal image that shows how energy-inefficient houses waste money. Show the
money going out the window. Educate customers on the cost savings of
lowering their thermostat five degrees. Educate them on the increase in
energy usage and cost when temperatures drop into the 20s, the teens and to
zero.
Training. Dealing with frustrated customers is a challenging
situation for anyone, especially when customers are convinced the utility
made a mistake. Supervisors should do role-play sessions with their
customer-service staff to practice how to effectively work with customers
who are unhappy about high bills. Employees should have a list of questions
to ask customers that will get to the root cause of the high bill. They must
become a detective to determine if the customer changed their energy-usage
habits during the previous billing period. Did they have extra people at the
house? How old is the hot water heater? When was the heat pump last
serviced? Does the customer have a programmable thermostat?
Online tools. If you have an online energy-audit tool, every
customer-service employee should know to use it and be able to walk a
customer through such an audit. Your online energy audit should be simple to
use. Is it easy for customers to change the parameters and see the savings
if they lower their thermostat? Does it show the savings of switching from a
gas to an electric water heater or to a heat pump? Your Web site is another
great place to educate your customers on how to save energy and reduce their
bill. Create a list of the most frequently asked questions your customers
have about energy usage and post them on the site with answers. If you don’t
have an online energy audit, contact www.apogee.net to learn how easy it is
to offer that service. Customers also can learn more about energy usage at
www.energyright.com.
Send in the energy-savings person. Some customers don’t have access
to the Internet and your customer-service representative has done everything
possible to convince them that their bill is accurate. But the customer
isn’t buying it. It’s time to send a person to their home to asses their
energy-usage situation and recommend solutions to stretch their energy
dollars. This is a great opportunity to build rapport and educate customers
on how to save money.
Budget billing. From my experience in training utilities, this is one
of the simplest solutions to high bills but one of the least mentioned.
Train your staff on how to sell the benefits of budget billing. Create an
example of an average customer using budget billing and the benefits. Post
it on your Web site. Put it in bills as a stuffer to show customers how
budget billing can reduce bills during winter months.
Before the phone starts ringing, ask yourself this question: what are we
doing right now as a utility to educate our customers on how to reduce their
energy costs and become more savvy about energy efficiency?
-------------------------------------
David Saxby is president of Measure-X, a Phoenix,
Ariz.-based measurement, training and recognition company that specializes in
customer service and sales skill training for utility companies. He can be
reached at 888-644-5499 or via e-mail at
david@measure-x.com. Visit the Measure-X Web site at
www.measure-x.com.
