Energy Affordability Through Proactive Customer Engagement

Electricity affordability has become one of the most pressing issues facing the utility industry. According to J.D. Power, overall customer satisfaction has dropped to its lowest score on record, driven largely by average monthly residential bills that have surged 34% since 2020 to $189. Nearly a quarter of electric utility customers reported they could not pay their full bill or carried an outstanding balance.

At the same time, regulators and legislators are paying closer attention. Rate cases are drawing public scrutiny, and affordability has become a political action point heading into the 2026 midterms. Utilities that can demonstrate meaningful, measurable action on affordability will be far better positioned than those that cannot.

The good news is that utilities already have access to one of the most powerful tools available to address this challenge: their rates and programs. The key is supplementing reactive bill assistance with proactive, data-driven customer engagement that helps people find savings they didn’t know existed. Payment plans and assistance programs are essential safety nets, but they don't reduce the underlying cost to serve. Proactive rate optimization and demand-side engagement can by shifting usage away from the costliest peak periods, reducing infrastructure investment pressure, and ultimately bending the cost curve.

Here’s what that looks like in practice. Using smart meter data, a utility can analyze every customer’s actual usage patterns and run billing-quality comparisons across all available rates and programs. That analysis can identify which customers would save money on a time-of-use rate, which qualify for low-income programs they haven’t enrolled in, and even which could benefit from behind-the-meter solutions like solar, storage, or heat pumps, including the rebates and incentives that make such switches more cost effective. The utility then reaches out to those customers directly with clear, specific, dollar-denominated recommendations.

This approach has real-world results. A West Coast utility used personalized rate education reports and comparison tools to achieve enrollment rates that exceeded targets across all three rate variants. Among enrolled customers, 94% took action to reduce usage during on-peak periods. Over 80% of participants correctly identified peak periods after receiving rate coaching emails, and 90% found the communications useful. Customers shifted laundry, dishwashing, and EV-charging schedules, with roughly three-quarters reporting it was easy.

The business customer side tells a similar story. J.D. Power found that more than half of commercial customers selected a new rate plan in 2025, up from 43% the year before, with sharp increases in interest in specialty, time-based, and interruptible rate plans. Business customers are actively shopping for savings. Utilities that proactively engage those customers with accurate rate analytics and personalized insights are seeing measurable improvements in satisfaction and retention.

From Reactive to Proactive

The traditional approach to affordability has been largely reactive: wait for customers to call about high bills, then point them to payment plans or assistance programs. That model struggles to scale, and it doesn’t build trust. Deferred payment arrangements ease short-term cash flow strain for customers, but they don't reduce bills. For utilities, they accumulate as carrying costs and uncollectable debt risk. Real affordability requires reducing what customers actually owe, not just when they pay it.

Proactive engagement flips the model. Instead of waiting for a complaint or for a customer to fall behind on their bills, the utility proactively reaches out with a specific message: “Based on your usage, you could save $14 per month by switching to our time-of-use rate,” or “You qualify for our low-income discount program and could reduce your bill by 20%.” That kind of outreach demonstrates genuine customer care in a way that generic marketing cannot.

It also produces documented, measurable outcomes that regulators and legislators seek. When a utility can show that it proactively contacted 50,000 customers, enrolled 8,000 in programs they qualified for, and delivered an average monthly savings of $22 per household, that’s a concrete affordability story. It’s far more compelling than pointing to a general awareness campaign or a website page.

The Strategic Case for Rate Education

Well-designed time-varying rates serve a dual purpose. For customers, they create opportunities to save money by shifting usage away from peak periods. For the grid, they reduce peak demand, which is the single costliest element to serve and the primary driver of infrastructure investment that ultimately gets passed through to ratepayers.

But the rates only work if customers understand them and feel confident enough to enroll. That’s where personalized education becomes essential. When customers can see, in dollars and cents, exactly how a new rate structure would affect their specific bill based on their actual usage, the fear of the unknown goes away. They can make informed decisions, and they’re far more likely to participate.

This matters for equity, too. Research from RMI shows that one in seven U.S. households faces an average energy burden of 14%, signaling energy poverty. Low-income and energy-burdened customers stand to benefit the most from rate optimization and program enrollment, but they’re often the least likely to know about or navigate toward those options on their own. Proactive, analytics-driven outreach ensures that customers who need help most receive it, rather than leaving savings on the table for those who happen to find the right page on the utility’s website.

Demonstrating Results That Matter

Utilities today are under scrutiny from every direction. Regulators want to see that rate increases are paired with genuine customer support. Legislators want proof that affordability programs are working. Customers want to feel like their utility is on their side.

Proactive, personalized engagement addresses all three audiences simultaneously. It creates a documented track record of outreach, enrollment, and savings that can be presented in rate cases, legislative hearings, and customer communications. It builds the kind of trust that J.D. Power brand appeal data shows is directly tied to customer willingness to support rate changes and view their utility favorably.

The technology and data to do this already exist. Smart meters are deployed. Interval data is flowing. Rate comparison analytics can run across entire customer populations. The question isn’t whether this approach works. The question is whether utilities will move from existing customer engagement methods to building a program that delivers real, measurable affordability outcomes.

The stakes are high. Utilities that take a proactive approach to customer engagement and rate education won’t just avoid that outcome. They’ll build a stronger, more trusted relationship with the customers and communities they serve. Utilities that lead on this don't just satisfy regulatory requirements, they shape the conversation. By demonstrating proactive affordability outcomes before they're mandated, utilities can work with regulators as partners rather than defendants, influencing the design of future rate cases and affordability standards.