Writing in the Office: Six Tips for Utility Communicators
“How did you write that so fast?” a client asked after I rewrote something for him. Easy, I emailed back: no meetings! I inserted a smiley face emoticon to show how I felt about that. Hopefully I wasn’t rubbing it in. Well, not having meetings certainly was part of it, but there were no interruptions […]
Look Inward, Utility Communicators, to Prevent Your Next PR Crisis
Aaron Sorkin is an acquired taste. I get that. But whether you like your Hollywood honchos to be red-meat Republicans, like Clint Eastwood, or dyed in the (blue) wool Democrats like Sorkin, you can’t help but admire Sorkin’s rare talent. “A Few Good Men,” starring Jack Nicholson, Tom Cruise and Demi Moore, was his first […]
In the Court of Public Opinion, Utilities Lose by Playing Defense
Different people celebrate the 4th of July in different ways. Beyond the fireworks, baseball and ritual grilling of meat, I like to celebrate our nation’s independence by binge-watching my favorite TV show, “Law & Order,” the long-running police procedural drama. The original show ran for 20 years and had several spin-offs. Regrettably, the […]
Awkward Conversations Utility Communicators Need to Have with Customers
Many of us would prefer to avoid awkward conversations if we can. We turn evasive when our children ask us, “Where do babies come from?” At a party, someone asks about the presidential candidates and most people go into full-on fudge mode. Stalling, evading and dissembling are seen as preferable to having a conversation that […]
Utility Communicators: Making Lemonade out of Lemons
When I talk to media relations representatives at utilities, I often hear how difficult their jobs have become. Newspapers have closed. Dailies have become twice-weeklies. The news hole is shrinking. Veteran reporters who used to cover the utility have taken a package. If those veterans are replaced (and their positions are not always back-filled), it […]
At the Movies: How KUA Connects with Customers
Utility marketers and communicators I speak with remain intrigued by the idea of direct interaction with their clients, contacts not mediated by email, social media, the news media or the contact center’s voice-response unit (VRU). They understand the power of personally connecting with customers. But these utility representatives I speak with seem fixated on the […]
Our Job: Convey Elegant Thought in Simple Terms
When the Financial Times, one of the world’s oldest and most authoritative business dailies, and the “Dilbert” cartoon strip independently explore the same issue at about the same time, that’s worthy of note. And the issue is one near and dear to my heart, and hopefully yours: the need to communicate using clear English. Have […]
Energy Efficiency: Put People Before Buildings
We’re at that part of 2016 when many of our New Year’s resolutions lay behind us, broken and abandoned, despite our best intentions: We’ve resumed eating carbs, we’ve stopped going to the gym, and we’re still in that unhealthy relationship. Not to worry. If you adopted a personal New Year’s resolution to increase customer participation […]
Boosting Your Utility’s Employee Engagement, CSAT and Profitability
The utility industry has been roiled in recent years by mergers & acquisitions (M&A). Most publicly held electric and gas utilities are either in the process of integrating a merger, preparing a merger, or both. Over $166 billion of utility-industry M&A has taken place since 2012, according to PwC’s North American Power Deals (see below). […]
Six for 2016: A “To-Do” List for Utility Communicators & Marketers
The Washington Post has a great year-in-review/year-in-preview feature, called “The In & Out List.” Many media and consulting organizations write a year-end recap/prediction piece, but the Post’s list is required reading for me, even though I have not lived in the D.C. area for 25 years. At this stage in my life, I check The […]
