Utilities are something consumers often don’t think about or interact with until their service is interrupted. At that point, their need for help is urgent. In widespread outages, utilities are dealing with thousands of people who all have that same urgency.
Automated, proactive customer support can improve utility public relations and deliver reassurances and information customers need in a timely fashion. In some cases, automated solutions can even do a better job than a human support agent.
Finding ways to do things better has not been enough. They also had to be done cheaper and faster. For all these reasons, automation technology has been much hyped in recent years. Some might say overhyped as it has not completely delivered on its promises. At least, not yet.
Today, it is becoming a very different story.