If you’ve been running demand-side management (DSM) programs for a few years, you know where you need to focus—or do you? Historically, if you homed in on energy savings, cost- effectiveness, and regulatory compliance, that’d be enough to meet your regulatory obligations and pick some low-hanging efficiency fruit. But in today’s rapidly changing energy landscape, that’s no longer enough. Your customers—you’re not still calling them “meters” or “ratepayers,” are you?—have never had more choices or been more informed about energy than they are today. Their expectations are high, and they don’t have to come to you to get those expectations met.

2. Contents
Customer Experience: The DSM Secret Sauce? ................ 3
Getting Better Results by Being Intentional
About CX for DSM .............................................................. 4
Does CX Really Matter? ...................................................... 5
Customer Experience Versus Customer Satisfaction.......... 6
What Can Utilities and DSM Program
Managers Do About CX? .................................................... 7
If you’ve been running demand-side management (DSM) pro-
grams for a few years, you know where you need to focus—or do
you? Historically, if you homed in on energy savings, cost-
effectiveness, and regulatory compliance, that’d be enough to
meet your regulatory obligations and pick some low-hanging
efficiency fruit. But in today’s rapidly changing energy landscape,
that’s no longer enough. Your customers—you’re not still calling
them “meters” or “ratepayers,” are you?—have never had more
choices or been more informed about energy than they are today.
Their expectations are high, and they don’t have to come to you
to get those expectations met.
On top of that, the regulatory environment, concerns about cli-
mate change, and an increased availability of alternative energy
sources aren’t making life easier on utilities. Energy-efficiency tar-
gets are more aggressive and more difficult to achieve than ever.
And have you looked at your competition lately? Even if you’re in
a regulated market, newcomers like SolarCity, which wheels and
deals with large commercial and industrial customers as well as
homebuilders, are making it impossible for utilities to do business
as usual.
These changes could spell big trouble for utilities looking in the
rearview mirror at the good old days, it could also present big op-
portunities for those with an eye toward the future. If you’re ready
to stop focusing solely on regulatory mandates and take your
customers’ needs and expectations into account, you can turn
a challenging situation into a winning prospect for you and your
organization.
2 www.esource.com

3. www.esource.com3
Customer Experience: The DSM Secret Sauce?
Utilities that are making the most of these industry dynamics have found that designing, implementing, and managing DSM programs
from the customer experience (CX) perspective will increase engagement and program participation. As important, this approach will
turn those “ratepayers” into advocates who will go to bat for you in a variety of contexts, from social media conversations to commis-
sion hearings. This kind of customer engagement and advocacy can help a utility get ahead and stay ahead of the competition, and it
can be the secret sauce that fuels customer retention, growth, and profitability.
CX is still a relatively new topic for utilities, and some still
aren’t sure it’s even relevant for the industry. The fact is,
however, that whether or not you choose to manage the
experience, your customers will still have one. The only
questions are:
n Will the experience be positive or negative?
n Will the experience be engaging or disengaging?
n Will the experience be intentional or accidental?

4. Getting Better Results by Being Intentional About CX for DSM
E Source defines CX as the rational and emotional perceptions that customers
develop as they interact with your utility. Managing the customer experience involves
a number of tools and tactics—such as personas, segmentation, journey mapping,
and experience design—many of which should be directly applied to the design,
implementation, and management of DSM programs.
Unfortunately, managing the experience of DSM programs is further complicated
by factors that aren’t in the utility’s immediate control. Trade allies, for example, are
critical to the delivery of many DSM programs. Because these allies are autonomous
organizations with varying degrees of partnership with the utility, it’s critical that
progressively minded utilities collaborate closely with them to deliver a consistent
experience throughout the life cycle of the DSM program.
4 www.esource.com

5. www.esource.com5
But does CX really matter for utilities? After all, in the majority
of cases, customers have little or no choice about their energy
provider, right? Isn’t that what makes the utility industry so stable
and dependable?
Well, it was, but no longer. Distributed generation, storage, and
other innovations might not be the death knell for utilities, but
they will certainly change the landscape of the energy industry,
making it all the more imperative for utilities that want to remain
viable and profitable to pay attention to their customers.
Even without those massive disruptions, your customers al-
ways have a choice that hits close to home for DSM program
managers: whether they want to participate in your programs.
From this perspective, the DSM program business within a
utility has more in common with other choices your customers
make every day:
n Will your customers drive a car,
call a taxi, or summon Uber?
n Will they go to a movie theater,
grab a disc from Redbox, or
stream something from Netflix?
n Will they cook at home, go out to
eat, or have food delivered?
n Will they manually manage their
energy use, use the MySolarCity
app to monitor their energy, or
enroll in your utility’s home energy
management program?
Does CX Really Matter?
These decisions, which your customers make
every day, come down to satisfaction, ease,
convenience, and loyalty. In other words,
they’re all about experience.

6. Customer Experience Versus Customer Satisfaction
www.esource.com6
Customers who report participation in energy-efficiency
programs are more likely to give their utility better ratings
The percentage of respondents scoring their electric provider’s
overall performance as “very good” or “excellent” increases slightly
with each additional program in which they participate, according
to data from The Nielsen Company’s Energy Behavior Track 2014.
None in past
12 months
(n = 23,699)
On program in
past 12 months
(n = 4,031)
Program participation in past 12 months
Two programs in
past 12 months
(n = 1,350)
Three or more
programs
in past 12 months
(n = 1,251)
Percentageof
respondents
ratingelectricityprovider
100
80
60
40
20
0
Excellent / Very Good Good, Fair, Poor
1
Conducted annually in partnership with E Source, The Nielsen Company’s Energy Behavior Track is an
online survey of approximately 32,000 residential customers in the US on a variety of energy-related topics.
Odds are that your utility is already measuring and monitoring
customer satisfaction (CSAT). What’s more, your utility
commission probably reviews those metrics when considering
rate cases and complaints. This makes CSAT pretty important
for utilities. And, as it turns out, DSM program participation is
pretty important to CSAT.
Research by both J.D. Power and E Source has found a
correlation between DSM program participation and CSAT.
According to a 2014 survey conducted by The Nielsen
Company and E Source,1
69 percent of customers who
reported participation in three or more programs in the past 12
months rated their electric utility as either “excellent” or “very
good.” Of those customers who said they had not participated
in any programs in the prior year, only 56 percent provided the
same rating for their utilities. Though it’s unclear whether
customers participate because they’re satisfied or whether
they’re satisfied because they participate, one thing is very
clear: There’s a strong relationship between CSAT and
program participation, especially when those programs are
well designed, well marketed, and well implemented.
But CSAT isn’t all there is to CX. Customer satisfaction is
typically measured at several touchpoints in the customer’s
journey. For example, a utility might measure a customer’s
satisfaction with a contact center representative during the
move-in process, with the online account setup process, with
participation in a DSM program, with the bill payment process,
or with the resolution of an issue with the customer service
department. The results of these measurements are then
fed to the functional owners—operations, web management,
customer service, or marketing—who celebrate the good
feedback and address the bad.
Rather than looking at the customer experience from a func-
tional and transactional perspective, leading utilities are taking
a holistic view that truly seeks to understand and empathize
with customers. These utilities:
n Create personas to help them understand the motivations
and needs that might attract customers to a DSM program
n Use journey mapping to follow those personas through the
program enrollment, participation, and rebate experiences
n Include multiple internal stakeholders; third-party
implementation contractors; and other market participants,
like trade allies, in the journey map
n Incorporate real-time customer and employee feedback
into program design and administration

7. www.esource.com7
What Can Utilities and DSM Program Managers Do About CX?
If your utility has a dedicated CX team, start talking to them now
about how you can get to know your customers, better under-
stand their motivations and needs, and start designing experi-
ences that delight them and help you meet your goals. For maxi-
mum impact, you’ll want to connect your strategy with the utility’s
CX strategy.
As a DSM program manager who understands the relevance and
importance of CX, you have a unique opportunity to optimize pro-
gram participation and performance by letting your customers’
experiences guide your programs. By partnering with other utility
departments that are also involved with CX, you can create and
manage programs that get more participants and better results
while being better integrated into overall utility operations.
On the other hand, if your utility doesn’t have a dedicated CX
team, you’re not alone. It’s new territory for many utilities, and
many that are currently focusing on CX started with a grassroots
effort. It can be a steep learning curve—one that can sometimes
feel like pushing sand uphill—but the payoff for the utility and
your customers is worth it. To shorten the ramp-up time and avoid
some of the more costly mistakes, partnering with a firm that un-
derstands both CX and DSM is the smartest move.
To put our research, tools, and
consulting services to work to improve
the outcomes of your DSM programs,
call 1-800-ESOURCE or email
customer_service@esource.com.
With nearly three decades of expertise
in energy efficiency, E Source has an
unparalleled understanding of the shifting
utility landscape and we know that DSM
doesn’t happen without engaged utility
customers and stakeholders. Our focus on
utility CX and DSM gives our members and
their partners an advantage.

8. Contact us
For more information on how E Source can help you, email
customer_service@esource.com or call 1-800-ESOURCE
(1-800-376-8723).
Eryc Eyl, a senior analyst for Customer Experience & Marketing at E Source, focuses on
the power of customer experience, organizational effectiveness, change management,
employee engagement, and culture to optimize utility operations. His expertise in leveraging
the connections between employee experience and customer experience comes from nearly
two decades of experience in high tech, telecommunications, and consumer packaged
goods as well as from coaching and consulting with clients in a variety of industries. Eryc
is also a recognized expert on work-life balance. He holds an MA from the University of
Colorado, a BA from Vassar College, and a Certified Customer Experience Professional
designation from the Customer Experience Professionals Association.
ES-1700039-003