All stakeholders are interested in making the utility sector more "customer-centric." For most of the sector's history, customers have been viewed as "ratepayers" rather than individuals with different preferences and needs. This is slowly changing to allow for more customer options and choices.

The 2018 Annual State of the Customer Survey focuses on the customer's perspective on the current state of utility customer service and offerings. There are a number of tracking questions from prior years to provide trends analysis. As importantly, we have added new questions to explore new dimensions or offerings e.g., residential solar or electric vehicles that may appeal to specific segments of customers. We also reconfigured our question on net promoter scoring to more easily compare the utility sector to other sectors.

The 2018 findings represent an improvement from the 2017 survey. The utility sector has worked hard to support a better customer experience and to make it easier for customers to interact with utilities. The efforts of utilities have paid off in the form of higher customer satisfaction in 2018 than in 2017.

Yet, the old adage that "the past is not prologue" is especially true for the future of the utility sector.

The 2018 findings represent a crossroads for utility customer service. While the utility sector is strong on the basics of customer service, many customers are seeking for their utility to be a leader on climate change and take more pro-active steps to support customer's desire for renewable energy and electric vehicles.