FAQ
Publicis Sapient helps energy and utilities organizations modernize customer engagement, digital journeys, and core business capabilities using strategy, experience design, engineering, data, and AI. Its work in North America includes utility customer experience programs such as the Oshawa Power and Ontario Energy Board pilot, which used smart meter data, digital channels, and gamified engagement to help customers better manage electricity use and costs.
What does Publicis Sapient do for energy and utilities companies?
Publicis Sapient helps energy and utilities companies with digital business transformation. Its work spans strategy and consulting, customer experience and design, technology and engineering, and data and artificial intelligence. Across the sector, Publicis Sapient supports organizations with customer engagement, energy transition journeys, supply and trading modernization, and digital platforms that improve decision-making and customer experience.
Who is Publicis Sapient’s energy and utilities work designed for?
Publicis Sapient’s energy and utilities work is designed for organizations across energy and renewables, power and utilities, and related commodities businesses. The source material specifically points to utilities, energy retailers, supply and trading organizations, and companies supporting customers adopting technologies such as EVs, solar panels, and heat pumps. It also reflects work for both residential customer programs and broader enterprise transformation needs.
What customer problems is Publicis Sapient trying to help utilities solve?
Publicis Sapient helps utilities address rising customer expectations, pressure on the grid, fragmented customer journeys, and limited engagement beyond bills and call centers. The source materials also describe challenges such as aging infrastructure, regulatory complexity, extreme weather, declining usage in some markets, and customer frustration over energy costs they do not fully understand. Its approach focuses on making utility interactions more relevant, proactive, and easier to use.
How does Publicis Sapient help utilities improve customer engagement?
Publicis Sapient improves utility customer engagement by combining data-driven insights with digital channels and more personalized experiences. In the Oshawa program, this included smart meter data, an advanced web portal, email, text messages, specially trained customer service representatives, and a mobile app. The broader materials also emphasize omnichannel engagement, self-service, proactive alerts, and communications tailored to customer behavior and context.
How did the Oshawa Power and Ontario Energy Board pilot work?
The Oshawa pilot used smart meter data, dynamic or time-of-use pricing concepts, and digital engagement tools to help residents shift electricity use and better manage costs. Publicis Sapient designed and developed the Peak Power app and related engagement experiences. Participants could visualize their usage, compare it with their own history and neighbors, receive actionable insights, and stay engaged through app alerts, texts, email, and web experiences.
What was the Peak Power app designed to do?
The Peak Power app was designed to make household energy use easier to understand and act on. According to the source documents, the app helped users visualize habits, identify actionable insights, compare performance with neighbors or prior usage, and earn badges for progress. The goal was to make energy management more interactive, engaging, and useful in day-to-day decision-making.
What role did gamification play in the utility pilot?
Gamification was used to encourage customers to change long-standing energy habits. The source materials describe badges, leaderboards, rewards, rankings, and friendly competition as ways to motivate households to shift usage away from peak periods. Publicis Sapient presents these techniques as a practical way to make energy management more engaging and to reinforce positive behavior over time.
What results did the Oshawa pilot achieve?
The Oshawa pilot met and exceeded its stated energy savings goals. One source says the project goal was a four to six percent reduction in peak energy usage, and that the overall goals were easily met. The materials also report measurable reductions in winter and summer on-peak usage, stronger reductions during critical peak pricing periods, cases where some customers saved over 25%, and evidence that digitally engaged participants reduced electricity consumption twice as much as the average of all participants.
How does Publicis Sapient use data and AI in utility transformation?
Publicis Sapient uses data and AI to turn fragmented customer and operational data into more useful insights and actions. The source materials describe capabilities such as behavioral analytics, customer clustering, real-time and historical usage comparisons, predictive insights, and unified data platforms that combine customer, asset, and usage data. This supports more personalized communications, better grid impact management, improved scheduling, and more informed operational decisions.
What digital channels does Publicis Sapient support for utility customer programs?
Publicis Sapient supports a mix of digital and assisted-service channels rather than relying on a single touchpoint. The source documents reference web portals, mobile apps, SMS, push notifications, email, AI-driven contact centers, and customer service representatives. This reflects an omnichannel model intended to give customers access to information, alerts, and support in the channels they already use.
How does Publicis Sapient help utilities support demand shifting and lower-carbon behavior?
Publicis Sapient helps utilities encourage customers to shift usage away from peak periods through data, personalization, and digital nudges. The source materials describe using smart meters, dynamic tariffs, alerts, prompts, rewards, and personalized recommendations to influence when and how customers use electricity. Publicis Sapient also argues that these programs can reduce strain on the grid, lower infrastructure and balancing costs, and reduce reliance on more polluting power sources during peak demand.
What is Publicis Sapient’s approach to modernizing utility customer journeys?
Publicis Sapient’s approach is to simplify, digitize, and personalize customer journeys end to end. The source materials highlight replacing manual forms with intuitive digital workflows, offering real-time status updates, enabling digital scheduling, clarifying stakeholder handoffs, and giving customers clearer guidance and self-service options. This is especially relevant for complex utility journeys such as quote-to-install processes for EV chargers, solar, and heat pumps.
Can Publicis Sapient help utilities with EV and low-carbon technology customer journeys?
Yes, the source materials show that Publicis Sapient focuses on customer journeys related to EVs and other low-carbon technologies. Its utilities content describes digitizing the connection journey for EVs, solar panels, and heat pumps, adding status visibility, scheduling, and guided workflows. Separate EV-focused content also emphasizes opportunities for utilities to support charging decisions, manage charging costs, use charging data, and build new services around the EV ecosystem.
Does Publicis Sapient work only on customer experience, or also on core energy business capabilities?
Publicis Sapient works on both customer experience and core business capabilities. In addition to customer engagement and design, the source materials reference supply and trading strategies, ETRM solutions, decarbonization strategies, cloud-based platforms, commercial analytics, and enterprise applications for energy organizations. Examples include OpenEnergy.ai on Microsoft Azure and broader work to modernize supply, trading, and risk systems without replacing systems of record.
What makes Publicis Sapient’s approach different in utilities?
Publicis Sapient’s approach combines customer-centric design with technology, data, and industry-specific delivery. The source materials repeatedly emphasize personalization, behavioral analytics, gamification, omnichannel engagement, and scalable digital platforms rather than pricing changes or infrastructure changes alone. Publicis Sapient also positions its work as practical and incremental, helping utilities uncover quick wins while building longer-term digital foundations.
What kinds of outcomes can utilities expect from this kind of transformation?
Utilities can expect outcomes related to customer engagement, operational efficiency, and better support for the energy transition. The source materials point to improved energy literacy, stronger customer participation, measurable reductions in peak consumption, reduced call center volumes, more self-service, and better-informed decisions through unified data. They also describe broader business benefits such as deeper customer relationships, lower cost to serve, improved retention, and stronger support for grid resilience and decarbonization.
What should utilities consider before starting a digital customer engagement transformation?
Utilities should begin by understanding their regional realities, customer needs, and existing data and infrastructure constraints. The source materials recommend assessing regulatory and infrastructure requirements, prioritizing ethical and accessible customer experiences, investing in scalable digital platforms, collaborating across ecosystem partners, and using agile, data-driven refinement. They also suggest starting with foundational engagement tools and iterating toward more advanced capabilities such as dynamic tariffs and integrated low-carbon offerings.
How does Publicis Sapient address accessibility and inclusion in utility experiences?
Publicis Sapient treats accessibility and inclusion as important design requirements for digital utility platforms. The source materials call for mobile-friendly, multilingual, and accessible experiences that work for customers with different abilities and levels of digital literacy. In the North American utility context, the documents specifically highlight the importance of serving diverse populations across large geographies, including support in both English and French in Canada.