Agentic AI: Utilities Boost Ops, Cut Costs Amid Low Sat.

Utilities are looking to agentic AI to improve customer operations and cut costs. This comes as customer satisfaction has declined significantly. A survey found that the share of customers "very satisfied" fell by 11 percentage points since 2018. Also, 29% of customers now report dissatisfaction, up from 18% in 2018. Here's the thing: 70% of customers are concerned about affordability, and they are engaging with utilities more often. This puts a strain on customer operations teams. The solution isn't just adding another AI tool. Instead, utilities need to rethink their entire customer operations around key journeys and workflows. What's interesting is that agentic AI can help reduce costs and improve satisfaction. For example, E.ON Next used an AI voice assistant to handle billing calls. This reduced billing-related inbound calls by about 50% and raised customer satisfaction by six points. The biggest opportunities for this transformation are in billing, payments, outage management, and field service requests. Billing and payments alone make up 40 to 50% of total customer calls. The bottom line: This shift is about redesigning the entire customer journey, not just managing individual interactions, and could significantly impact utility efficiency and customer experience.