A new study from market research agency YouGov PLC suggests electric utilities have a bad reputation. Although the study surveyed U.K. consumers only, the results are rather shocking. 62% of respondents think utilities have a bad reputation, with only the banking industry (73% of respondents said banks have a bad reputation) seemingly having a worse reputation. Perhaps more surprising is that just 6% of respondents said utilities have high ethical and moral standards and 22% even believe utilities are an obstacle to the economic recovery. One of the big reasons behind consumers' poor perception of U.K. utilities are increased utility rates coupled with utilities' increased profits.
So while this data doesn't touch upon U.S. utilities or consumers, the numbers reveal a serious lack of trust between U.K. customers and their utilities in a similar context to the U.S. utility industry. While utilities provide an essential service to their customers, part of the problem is that they only get noticed when things go wrong (i.e., the power goes out or utility bills go up).
So the question becomes, do most consumers think U.S. utilities have a bad reputation and lack high moral standards? More importantly, how can utilities repair these relationships and regain consumers' trust? Is better PR and customer engagement needed, or do utilities simply need to become more reliable and transparent?
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