Data Analytics Strategies for Grid Modernization

Grid modernization is becoming a household term now that more utility customers are demanding more efficient technology. Smart thermostats, tankless water heaters, solar power, and other advances in technology are all part of grid modernization. “It’s a nice way to say bringing utilities into the 21st century,” explains the Conservation Law Foundation in a recent article.

Sounds great, right? Who doesn’t want to save energy, money, and protect the environment? But it isn’t as simple as introducing smart technology.

Utility companies that are committed to power grid modernization are also working within a lot of constraints, including:

Then there’s the rapidly growing customer demand for more control over how they manage their electricity costs. Because that customer demand is a major driving force behind grid modernization, the utilities industry is placing greater emphasis on customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores. “Although utilities are focusing more and more on their customers,” says the Utility Analytics Institute, “it’s still difficult to keep pace while balancing their core mission of providing safe, reliable, and affordable service, with needs from regulators and investors.”

The good news is that utility providers already have access to customer satisfaction and engagement data through recorded customer calls. That’s where leveraging speech analytics technology may prove to be one of the biggest assets to modernizing the power grid.

As consumers begin to demand a faster, more resilient and efficient power grid, so must the utility industry demand a more efficient method of gaining customer insight. Relying on outdated quality assurance practices, such as manually listening to calls, is no longer viable.

Speech analytics software makes it possible for call centers to automatically search, categorize, and score every agent conversation. As a result, utility companies gain a deeper understanding of what customers want, enabling energy providers to work toward higher CSAT scores.

As utilities and energy providers continue to modernize the power grid, extracting customer data proves to be an essential part of understanding consumer demand. A speech analytics solution offers one of the most efficient, reliable ways to gather and analyze this data.

Want to know more about how speech analytics can improve grid modernization efforts? Our latest whitepaper,”Powering Change: Creating a Data-Driven, Resilient Power Grid with Speech Analytics,” is scheduled for publication in August 2018! In the meantime, be sure to follow our blog and check out the CallFinder Library to learn more about the many applications of speech analytics technology.