YOUR UTILITY EV INFRASTRUCTURE PROGRAM COULD FAIL!

Attention given to these EV program customer experience tips will help successfully grow EV adoption in your region.

Hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent on utility electric vehicle (EV) charging programs across the country. EV charging programs are unique to utilities due to the high amount of customer touchpoints needed for a single site installation. In launching San Diego Gas & Electric’s EV charging program and working with hundreds of workplace, multifamily and fleet customers it is clear that a key factor to meeting budget and timeline milestones is ensuring a positive sales and charging installation experience.

There are five ways utilities can masterfully create a positive customer experience to set themselves up for success of their current EV charging programs and approval of future programs:

1. Companywide employee training: Employees across numerous utility departments like Customer Service, Public Affairs, Commercial Account Executives, Construction, Community Relations, etc., all play a crucial role in showcasing the utility as their customers’ EV charging resource.

2. Create a nimble sales team: With any new program, mid-stream coarse corrections will be needed. We will provide specific examples of case studies.

3. Develop a uniform sales protocol: This streamlines the customer sales process for consistency making it easier for the utility’s sales team to ramp up installations.

4. Develop a desktop review process: Providing commercial customers non-technical charging installation designs they can easily understand speeds their internal review process and reduces the sales process time. All of which is important to completing the overall program on time.

5. Improve the car-buying process: When the chargers are installed, drivers will begin to buy cars. Implementing a dealership training program ensures the next step of increasing the chargers’ utilization will be smooth and continue to grow. Most dealerships are not properly trained to sell EVs.