Dive Brief:

• Tendril on Friday said it would acquire EnergySavvy, a developer of customer engagement solutions, in order to round out its energy management offerings and develop a "single-solution suite" for utilities looking to deliver a "modern residential customer experience."
• This is Tendril's second acquisition of the year; in January, the company acquired energy analytics provider EEme, building out its disaggregation capabilities.
• The power sector's focus on customer experience is growing rapidly: Bidgely and Oracle both recently unveiled new analytics tools designed to help utilities improve customer satisfaction and build more effective marketing programs.  

Dive Insight:

Tendril's acquisitions are allowing it to beef up its customer engagement and load monitoring capabilities at a time when both of those have captured utilities' focus. 

EnergySavvy develops both customer-facing and internal systems, which Tendril will now merge with its advanced energy analytics, Home Energy Management product, behavioral engagement systems and other capabilities. The purchase of EEme allowed Tendril to add nonintrusive load monitoring and disaggregation capabilities to its data analytics platform. 

Tendril is "bringing together" companies that "extend the technical capabilities of our platform," CEO Adrian Tuck said in a statement.

"EEme gave us the industry’s most accurate disaggregation technology, and now EnergySavvy brings us best-in-class personalization," he added.

EnergySavvy works with more than 30 utilities and its offerings have helped companies reduce call volumes while increasing program enrollment rates, customer trust scores and other metrics, the companies said in the deal announcement.

Utilities see customer calls as a cost, and generally work to reduce them. But once the customer is on the line, it becomes an opportunity to connect them with products and programs offered by the utility.

Aaron Goldfeder, CEO of EnergySavvy, said the deal with Tendril "creates a platform that unites all residential utility customer data, analytics and insights in one place."

Bidgely and Oracle have a similar strategy, with both recently updating their own customer care solutions,

Bidgely has turned to artificial intelligence, bringing it to bear in utility customer service centers through its CARE system. Representatives have access to customer meter data in order to resolve problems and offer better rates or energy-saving programs.

Oracle has also improved its customer information systems, which it says are guided by a decade of behavioral science research. New capabilities include enabling utilities to track meter and device inventory and monitor performance in the same systems used for capturing meter reads and customer accounts.