New Research from TMG Consulting Reveals Increasing Complexities Among Customer Contact Preferences

AUSTIN, Texas - Oct. 26, 2016 - PRLog -- A new report from TMG Consulting, The Digital Utility Customer, reveals a complex picture of the utility customer whose needs are evolving beyond multi-channel communications to desiring specific channels for certain interactions.

The study, based on more than 1,800 responses, was conducted by TMG's research practice, RIMSolutions™ and is the culmination of four online surveys. In addition to asking utility customers

their general communication preferences for a window into how they are trending, TMG asked them to provide channel preferences related to more specific reasons to communicate, such as outages and billing.

Forty-eight percent of the consumers surveyed stated they prefer phone communication with their utilities, the most selected channel among several offered as options. However, deeper analysis of the data shows that preferences can vary significantly given the demographic of respondents. Also, most groups showed a desire to connect with their utility through multiple channels, a trend that has been growing steady over the past several years.

"A decade ago we started talking about the imperative to allow customers to connect with their utility through their desired channel and receive immediate response," says Mark Hall, TMG's director of research and strategy. "While this is still very true, our research shows that contact preferences are largely determined by what customers are trying to achieve and who they are.  In the hands of utilities, this information is extremely valuable. It can inform new channel additions and improvements as they relate the key goals of utilities."

The report is among several new publications TMG has released exclusively for its research membership service, the RIM Research Community™. The community made up of utilities and vendors focused on similar projects, those related to customer relationships and technologies and services that best support them. In addition to new research each month, membership includes multiple opportunities to collaborate.

Learn more by visiting www.tmgconsulting.com.

About TMG Consulting

TMG Consulting is utility industry firm that pairs business goals with technologies and solutions to best reach those goals.  Product and service provider agnostic, it uses advanced methodologies to compare solutions with business requirements. Through its extremely experienced team, TMG has positioned more than 250 utilities for success since 1992 through advisory, client-side delivery and research services.