July 2016
Making a Business Case
for Utility Mobile Apps
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©2016 KUBRA
Making a Business Case
for Utility Mobile Apps
Juniper Research predicts that “the number of apps
downloaded this year will increase by nearly 28%,
to more than 235 billion” and that “sectors such as
Lifestyle, Productivity and Social Communications
will [... see] more than 30 billion downloads
worldwide during 2015.” While lifestyle, social media,
and games remain the most popular app categories,
the increasing use of smartphones creates both
demand and opportunity for innovative use of the
hardware. For example, Pew research says that 7%
of Americans are “smartphone-dependent” users,
meaning that they use a smartphone as their primary
source of internet access.
This white paper provides information on the
benefits for utilities of harnessing native mobile apps
as a customer contact channel. The analysis in this
document is based on research from organizations
including Chartwell, Pew Internet, and comScore.
It also includes results and analysis from solutions
deployed at major investor-owned utilities.
Mobile apps provide a customer experience that:
•meets customers where they are
•is becoming more popular, especially with younger consumers
•provides an opportunity for time-sensitive messaging via push alerts
•includes connections to GPS data and phone cameras to allow location- or image-based services
Mobile apps offer opportunities for customer
engagement that are not matched by any other
form of customer interaction, including websites and
in-person interactions. The combination of portability
and interactivity presents an opportunity for utilities
to create new experiences and connect to customers
outside of the traditional circumstances of a
once-a-month bill or an outage.
Mobile apps as a
communication channel
Mobile apps continue to gain popularity among
consumers, and they are gaining ground against
other forms of digital media. Mobile apps accounted
for 44% of total digital media time spent as of June
2015, and they contributed 77% of the total increase
in time spent using digital media in the past two
years, according to comScore’s 2015 U.S. Mobile
App Report. Pew research indicates that 59% of
smartphone owners “use apps on their phones at
least several times a day.”
Nearly 50% of respondents to the 2015 Chartwell
Residential Consumer Survey say that it is very
important for them to manage their account, view
and pay their bills, report outages, and get outage
status on a mobile device (the exact percentages are
between 43.7% and 49.1%). The importance of paying
bills using a mobile device is especially high among
younger consumers: 86% of those between the ages
of 18 and 34 say that mobile bill payment options are
very important.
Between June 2011 and August 2015, there were
629,588 downloads of KUBRA iMobile™ apps
implemented at six utilities. On average, these
downloads represent about 5% of the utility’s total
customer base after one year and about 10% of the
utility’s total customer base after two years. One
utility has seen an average of about 1,200 bills paid
and 2,600 bills viewed each month using the app. The
same utility received about 14% of its total outage
orders during Hurricane Sandy from the app.
How do mobile apps
provide increased customer
engagement?
comScore says, “It may be more challenging to build
a large audience on apps, but those app users are a
very loyal bunch. They spend more than 3 hours per
month on the Top 1000 apps on average—about 18x
greater than what mobile web visitors spend on their
Top 1000 properties.” The top seven apps among
millennials are social. However, number eight on the
list is Mint, a personal finance app (comScore). The
success of Mint suggests that a well-crafted utility
app could succeed in the same way.
Another tip from comScore, based on app strategies
used by leading retailers: “If an app isn’t likely to be
used frequently for its mobile content alone, it can
piggyback on offline behaviors to help drive more
regular engagement.” For example, retailers like
Target include features in their mobile apps such as
in-store coupons or price comparison tools. Utilities
could take advantage of this strategy by offering a
map of in-person payment locations to provide value
to customers who pay their bills in person rather than
online.
While utility customer preferences are still spread out
among multiple communication channels, mobile apps
are gaining in popularity. The Chartwell Residential
Consumer Surveys for 2014 and 2015 showed a 6%
increase in the percentage of customers who selected
mobile app as a preferred channel (up from 33% in
2014 to 39% in 2015). On average, four of the 10 toprated utilities in each region used for the J.D. Power
2015 Electric Utility Residential Customer Satisfaction
Study provide a mobile app.
Mobile apps provide a built-in method for collecting
feedback from customers in the form of app ratings.
Looking at the comments on app reviews can provide
both a measure of how effective the app is and
suggestions for future development. Even unrelated
comments can provide an opportunity to improve
customer service, as they allow a representative to
reach out to the customer who provided the review.
Indirect savings from
additional programs
Mobile apps can be used to create innovative
service offerings using connections to GPS data and
smartphone cameras, as well as through interactive
push notifications. For example, an app can use GPS
data to help a customer report an issue more quickly
than if the customer had to search for an address. If
the app is also connected to the smartphone camera,
the customer can take a picture of the issue and
include it with a request for repair.
33% of smartphone users often or always accept
push notifications and 36% sometimes accept push
notifications, according to comScore’s 2015 U.S.
Mobile App Report. Push notifications can be used
to support demand response programs, either by
notifying customers about conservation days or by
keeping them informed about their energy usage.
Push notifications can also support prepay programs
by giving customers the opportunity to be more
quickly informed about their account. Near real-time
information helps customers act to adjust their usage
in time for their behavior to have a visible impact on
their bill, which in turn leads to increased satisfaction
with the program and the utility.
Mobile apps can also connect to in-home devices such
as smart appliances or thermostats, giving customers
an additional degree of control over their power usage,
along with an additional reason to interact with their
utility. Smart thermostat controls can be especially
useful for customers on time-of-use or other variable
rate programs, since they allow customers to adjust
their thermostat (decreasing their usage) even when
they’re not at home.
Compared to website tracking, mobile apps can
provide advanced tracking of customer actions within
the app. This includes number and length of sessions,
screens viewed, and even the order in which actions
are taken. Being able to tell exactly how customers
are using an app can help with tracking return on
investment, testing new customer service offerings,
and making ongoing improvements to the app’s
design.
Need to allocate sufficient
resources
In order to see the most benefit from implementing
a mobile app, utilities need to allocate enough
resources to development and testing. Customers will
quickly reject an app that does not meet their needs
or which contains bugs. Focus groups or surveys can
help determine the mobile app features that are most
important to a particular customer base.
Oracle makes a point in Best Practices for Web SelfService User Interfaces that applies equally to mobile
apps: “It may be helpful to think about [the effort]
in terms of a long-term sustainable commitment
to your customers achieved through continuous
refinement and improvement. [...] Successful
customer experiences are multifaceted, and it often
takes organizations years to fully mature to the point
where they can reliably deliver amazing results.”
Best practices (adapted from Oracle):
•Make it easy to use - focus on design simplicity, understand that about 80% of visitors are looking for about 20% of content, make the
most probable issues easy to resolve and the most probable transactions quick to complete
•Provide clear and readable content - use simple language, visuals, bullet point lists, etc. to make pages easy to scan (simple language is also easier to translate)
•Understand your customers’ issues - most customers are either looking for information or seeking help
•Optimize based on customer feedback
•Measure performance data - slow apps won’t be used
•Deliver a personalized experience - don’t make
users log in more than once, use login information to automatically fill some fields (email addresses are easier to remember than specific usernames)
•Ensure accessibility - both among devices and for assistive technology for people with disabilities
•Make it easy to find - integrate information about
the app and links to app stores on your website, design the app so that it matches your larger corporate presence
•Offer multichannel choice with a unified experience - web self-service and email are good for low-complexity problems, apps offer additional interactivity and personalization, CSRs are good for handling high-complexity problems
Conclusion
KUBRA is a leading provider of interactive, integrated
mobile apps for utilities. Our KUBRA iMobile™ apps
provide a range of self-service transactions designed
for use on mobile devices, including billing and
payments, usage management, interactive maps, and
outage and streetlight issue reporting. The KUBRA
professional services team has years of experience
integrating customer systems with utility back-end
applications, and we can move quickly to deliver
a specific solution set or work with you to plan a
comprehensive, enterprise-wide deployment of
KUBRA iMobile.
Sources
Chartwell, “2014 Residential Consumer Survey” and
“2015 Residential Consumer Survey.” Referenced
in a presentation at the 2015 Chartwell Outage
Communications conference, https://www.chartwellinc.
com/wp-content/uploads/Outage-CommunicationsBenchmarks-and-Best-Practices.Chartwell.pdf.
comScore, “The 2015 U.S. Mobile App Report.” September
2015, http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Presentationsand-Whitepapers.
J.D. Power, “Communicating with Customers and
Higher Price Satisfaction Increase Overall Satisfaction
for Residential Electric Utilities.” July 2015, http://
www.jdpower.com/press-releases/2015-electric-utilityresidential-customer-satisfaction-study.
Juniper Research, “The App Landscape Today.” February
2015, http://juniperresearch.com/.
Oracle, “Best Practices for Web Self-Service User
Interfaces.” June 2012, http://www.oracle.com/
us/products/applications/web-self-service-userinterfaces-1676881.pdf.
Pew Internet, “Americans’ Views on Mobile Etiquette,
Chapter 1: Always on Connectivity.” August 2015, http://
www.pewinternet.org/2015/08/26/chapter-1-always-onconnectivity/.
Pew Research, “U.S. Smartphone Use in 2015.” April 2015,
http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/04/01/chapter-one-aportrait-of-smartphone-ownership/.
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