I recently joined Utilities Technology Council’s (UTC) C-Suite Conversations podcast to talk about one of the most important shifts taking place across the utilities industry: the move from traditional customer service to intelligent, proactive and highly personalised customer experiences.
In this piece, I share a little of what we touched on. To listen to the full conversation, please click here.
Customer expectations have moved on
For decades, many of the processes that sit behind utility customer service have remained largely unchanged. Customers received a bill, called to report an outage, logged into a portal to find information or waited to speak with a representative. That model served the industry for a long time, but expectations have moved on.
Customers no longer benchmark their utility experience against other utilities. They compare it with the best digital experiences they have every day.
Today’s customers expect service to be simple, immediate and available on their terms. If they can book travel, manage banking or order transport in a few clicks, they increasingly expect that same level of control and convenience from their energy provider. That is especially true for younger generations, who want access to information instantly and prefer to decide when, where and how they engage.
Removing friction from the experience
One of the biggest opportunities in front of us is to remove friction from the customer experience. Password resets, multiple portals, long wait times and repeated handovers between service representatives all create unnecessary barriers. Customers do not want to work hard to find the information they need. Increasingly, they are asking a more direct question: why should I have to look for it at all?
From portals to conversations
That is where artificial intelligence has the potential to fundamentally change the model – and it is a future we at Hansen are already working on now.
Through Hansen’s AI Virtual Agent, we are helping utilities move beyond basic chatbots and static self-service. The solution is designed specifically for utility customer service environments and integrates with customer information systems, including Hansen CIS, so it can do more than answer simple questions. It can support real service interactions -from payments and payment arrangements to account updates, move-in and move-out requests, outage communications and routine billing enquiries.
Instead of logging into a portal and navigating menus, a customer could simply ask for what they need. How much energy have I used this month? What will my next bill look like? Can I change my payment arrangement? An AI assistant can understand the request, retrieve the right information and respond immediately, including with analysis or visualisation where helpful.
The future of customer service is not about making people use software better. It is about making the interaction feel more like a natural conversation.
That distinction matters. For utilities, the value is not in adding another digital channel. It is in creating an intelligent, integrated layer that can work across voice, SMS, email and chat, while still handing over to a human agent when the interaction becomes complex, sensitive or better suited to a person.
Automation with a customer purpose
At Hansen, we see AI playing a central role in that future. Our Hansen AI Virtual Agent is built to work alongside customer service teams, not replace the human connection that remains so important in utilities. The goal is not automation for automation’s sake. It is about improving the customer experience by reducing the moments people find most frustrating: waiting on hold, being transferred, repeating information, being constrained by service hours or having to start again when a conversation moves between channels.
We are already seeing how this can change day-to-day operations. In live utility environments, Hansen’s AI Agent is handling high-volume enquiries, supporting concurrent conversations, helping customers complete routine transactions and giving human representatives more time to focus on complex, higher-value customer needs.
That is the real opportunity: using AI to increase capacity, improve consistency and make the service experience feel more responsive.
Supporting the next generation of utility workers
There is also a major workforce dimension to this transformation. Utilities are facing a generational shift, with experienced employees retiring and taking decades of knowledge with them. At the same time, newer employees expect modern digital tools. AI can help bridge that gap by supporting knowledge transfer, guiding processes and helping people learn from established ways of working.
Moving from reactive to proactive service
The industry also has an opportunity to move from reactive service to proactive engagement. Instead of waiting for customers to call about an outage, a bill or a service interruption, utilities can use data and intelligence to communicate earlier, provide more transparency and anticipate needs before they become issues.
This is also where Hansen’s work is extending beyond the traditional call centre. AI can help utilities proactively notify customers about service issues, planned works, leak alerts or payment-related information through the channels customers already use. In practice, this means moving from a model where customers have to chase answers to one where utilities can anticipate the next best action and communicate before the customer needs to ask.
AI gives utilities the opportunity to move from reacting to customer issues to anticipating customer needs.
The biggest changes are still ahead
Over the next three to five years, I believe many long-established processes across the utilities industry will change significantly. The most exciting part is that this is no longer theoretical. With Hansen’s AI Virtual Agent, we are already bringing conversational and generative AI into real utility customer service environments in a way that is practical, secure and grounded in industry workflows.
This matters because not all AI is built for this environment. Generic AI tools don’t understand rate structures, meter data or regulatory context and in a regulated industry, that gap is the difference between AI that genuinely helps and AI that creates new problems. Purpose-built, utility-specific AI is trained on this context from the start, which is what allows it to operate safely and effectively within real utility workflows.
Consumption and billing information will become more transparent. Customers will have greater visibility of their usage and costs as they happen, rather than being surprised at the end of the month. More flexible payment models will become easier to support. And AI will increasingly help utilities deliver faster, smarter and more personalised service across every interaction.
For me, the key takeaway is simple: AI is not a distant concept for utilities. It is already reshaping how we think about customer experience, operational efficiency, knowledge transfer and innovation. At Hansen, we are focused on making that shift practical for utilities – by embedding AI into the workflows, systems and service moments that matter most.
The biggest changes are still ahead of us – and the organisations that embrace them thoughtfully will be best placed to meet the expectations of the next generation of utility customers.