Does It Matter If Gas Utility Customers Like You?

Andre Agassi once said “image is everything” and the utility industry is beginning to relate to that credo as they face waves of operational, customer, regulatory and stakeholder challenges. Natural gas utilities are particularly feeling the heat from additional discussions on natural gas emissions, electrification, and rate cases. All these issues combine to form lasting impressions in natural gas utility customers’ minds.

Some gas utilities have been able to maintain or somewhat strengthen their brands during these challenges while others have lost brand value with their customers. In fact, even after responding extremely well to the pandemic and working with customers in need, the overall gas utility industry not only lost all the brand equity they created during the pandemic but have just hit an historic low on Reputation ratings.

Natural gas utilities that earn J.D. Power customer satisfaction awards have something in common – they have very high Brand Appeal. These best-in-class utilities target excellence on more than just one-brand dimension like Trust or Reputation. Instead, they focus on both of these aspects together as well as develop a brand position that makes them unique, value-added and indispensable in their customers’ lives.  They also execute on this strategy better than their industry peers.

What is Brand Appeal?

Brand appeal is a utility’s ability to engage and motivate its customers to use and promote the company, its service quality, and its offerings. Brand appeal includes company reputation, marketing execution, customer trust, and customer touchpoints. It considers all of these factors in unison so utilities can build lasting success in positioning their brands.

Why Does Brand Appeal Matter?

Brand appeal relates to higher J.D. Power customer satisfaction scoring: Gas utilities with a weak brand appeal score an average satisfaction score of just 518, while those with strong brand appeal score over 300 points higher (824). Strong brand appeal scores also relate to greater acceptance of rate increases and increased likelihood of customers to use a utility’s offerings and options.

In the battle for the mind of the consumer between electric and natural gas service companies, the Brand Appeal Index Study shows that natural gas utilities currently have a Brand Appeal Index (BAI) advantage over electric utilities, giving them the opportunity to position the natural gas utility in a way that makes them the energy provider of choice. But electric utilities are battling back and building their brand appeal through strong scores on marketing execution, indicating the current BAI advantage may not last long.

How Can J.D. Power Help?

A hinderance to understanding how to manage their brands is that the industry lacks a meaningful market study to measure and track brand strength. An effective brand metric to track, benchmark and manage targeted brand success is needed. Since this is such an important part of customer relationships, J.D. Power is publishing the results of its Utility Brand Appeal Index Study this year with 84 natural gas utilities ranked by name. The study helps build brand value propositions and strategic roadmaps for natural gas utilities to appeal to their customer segments and shows the quantifiable impacts of their communications, marketing, product and branding efforts.

With the addition of the Utility Brand Appeal Index Study, J.D. Power now provides a 360-degree evaluation of the utility-customer relationship. Join the upcoming Utility Brand Appeal webinar and learn more about how this study can help your gas utility measure brand appeal.

Get the insights you need to advance profitable customer relationships and higher customer satisfaction performance rankings today.