This document summarizes a presentation about how utilities can use social media to address challenges and become more engaging. It discusses how utilities face issues with their brand, recruitment, and customer service that social media can help with. Examples are given of utilities using Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and internal platforms to improve branding, recruitment, customer service, collaboration, and analytics. The presentation argues that social media can help utilities with energy management and make them "sexy" again by adding fun elements like gamification and sharing on external social networks.

1. Can Social make utilities
sexy again?
Tom
Ra'ery,
Principal
Analyst
RedMonk
1
Big ask, I know
Chris Chen
I think they can be

2. Tom Raftery
• Principal analyst, RedMonk
• GreenMonk.net
• twitter.com/tomraftery
• tom@redmonk.com
• +34 677 695 468
• SlideShare.net/TomRaftery
2
Bullet points - sorry!
More Bullet points on this slide than on the rest of the entire deck!
Prob won’t have time for q’s at end - will hang around but here are my contact details in case you can’t stay

3. SlideShare
http://www.slideshare.net/TomRaftery/
3
This is SlideShare - where you can view or d/l this deck

4. Show of hands
Photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/warmestregards/2789694551/
4
How many of you:
Read blogs?
Watch online video?
Have a FaceBook a/c?
Have a LinkedIn a/c?
Have a Twitter a/c?
Consider FaceBook/YouTube/Twitter a waste of time?

5. Social Media
5
Some of the social media sites

6. Social Media
Photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/7933170@N03/1098813767/
6
Social media fundamentally changed the web - now a two-way medium

7. What I had for breakfast?
Photo - http://www.flickr.com/photos/zanehollingsworth/3435030263/
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People often belittle Social Media saying - it is full of ppl saying what they had for breakfast
How many ppl empathise?

8. What I had for breakfast?
Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpMZbT1tx2o
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This video is 1.5 yrs old - the numbers in it are well out of date - most significantly higher now

9. Utilities, Social Media, &
APJ
9
Had a look around this region & found some great examples of SM use by utilities
quick selection...

10. APJ Utilities Social Media
https://twitter.com/powerwatercorp
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Australian utility - provides electricity, water and sewerage services to the Northern Territory of Australia
Faced issues with perception - were butt of many jokes - even in parliament
Rolled out social media, now 180 turnaround in reputation

11. APJ Utilities Social Media
http://www.powerwater.com.au
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Pull tweets onto home page
Also have Flickr & Youtube accounts

12. APJ Utilities Social Media
https://www.facebook.com/PUBsg
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Water utility
3412 likes
Zero interaction though

13. APJ Utilities Social Media
https://twitter.com/OfficialTEPCO
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> 262k followers 1 of 3 accounts
No interaction - all broadcast
But tells ppl of availability of electricity so big followership

14. APJ Utilities Social Media
https://twitter.com/iamkepco
14
Kepco - Korean utility
Twitter & Facebook pages
seems to have interaction but hard to tell given my lack of Korean (and GTranslate is no help!)

15. APJ Utilities Social Media
https://twitter.com/iamkepco/status/266090034871013376
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They do converse though, unlike many others

16. APJ Utilities Social Media
https://twitter.com/PowershopPromos
16
One of their two Twitter accounts
1305 followers - electrical promotions for customers

17. APJ Utilities Social Media
https://twitter.com/ausgrid
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2550 followers - but better yet is their video... !

18. APJ Utilities Social Media
Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXogX1WBcZA
18

19. APJ Utilities Social Media
Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXogX1WBcZA
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Has had nearly 20,000 views!

20. Challenges utilities are
facing...
20

21. Brand and image
Photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/smoy/3963201475/
21
Brand and reputation issues - utilities not trusted

22. Brand and image
Photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/photofarmer/3303387519/
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Utilities perceived as boring - doesn’t help recruitment/retention

23. Recruitment
Photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/legofenris/4003590489/
23
Brand and aging workforce issues have follow-on consequences for recruitment/retention

24. Exacerbated by
Photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/gagilas/3501432476/
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Recruitment issues all the more urgent because
In the U.S. energy sector, more than a third of the workforce already is over 50 years old - http://hbr.org/2008/02/managing-demographic-risk/ar/1
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: In the US approx 30-40% of the work force in the electric utility sector will retire in the next 10 years
And aging infrastructure

25. Increasing demands
Images http://www.paulchefurka.ca/EnergyGap.html
25
Increasing demand for energy at a time of dwindling supply

26. Increasing demands
Photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremybrooks/2473047860/
26
Also other demands -
- Customer service
- Reduced environmental impact
- More granular energy consumption information

27. So how can social media
help?
27

28. Brand Management
Photo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Deepwater_Horizon_offshore_drilling_unit_on_fire_2010.jpg
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Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20, 2010 - 11 men killed, 17 injured.
Over next 3 months - spilled about 4.9 million barrel & still leaking today 2.5 yrs later

29. Brand Management
https://twitter.com/BPGlobalPR/status/15504031663
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2191 RTs!

30. Brand Management
https://twitter.com/bpglobalpr
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31. Brand Management
https://twitter.com/BP_America
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Current BP account - still not learned lesson - all broadcast

32. OTOH
32

33. Brand Management
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE
33
Old Spice

34. Brand Management
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE
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This ad alone has had 43m views

35. Brand Management
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE
35
185 videos in 24 hours
Responded in realtime to questions posed to #OldSpice
Old spice sales up 100% in month that followed
Still up 50% a year later (with help from coupons) http://adage.com/article/viral-video-charts/spice-killing-youtube-sales/
229080/

36. Customer Service
36

37. Customer Service
https://twitter.com/esbarr_
37

38. Customer Service
https://twitter.com/esbarr_/status/261075213196865536
38

39. Customer Service
https://twitter.com/rupertmurdoch/status/261118254657966080
39

40. Customer Service
https://twitter.com/rupertmurdoch
40
Seems to be genuinely Murdoch tweeting

41. Customer Service
https://twitter.com/esbarr_/status/261126984225153024
41

42. Customer Service
https://twitter.com/rupertmurdoch/status/261178665386270720
42
Obviously this doesn’t scale but...

43. Customer Service
http://www.bge.com/
43

44. Customer Service
https://twitter.com/mybge
44

45. Customer Service
https://twitter.com/MyBGE/status/264406364514828290
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Gives ppl ETR’s via Twitter
Not new, was doing this last yr in response to Irene as well

46. Customer Service
https://www.facebook.com/myBGE
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>10,600 likes - also v interactive

47. Customer Service
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mybge/8159451822/
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Over 300 photos tagged “Hurricane Sandy”

48. Customer Service
http://www.youtube.com/BALTIMOREGASELECTRIC
48

49. Customer Service
http://www.linkedin.com/company/5115?trk=null
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Pull their SM resources together nicely here

50. Customer Service
http://www.zdnet.com/twitter-vs-icelandic-ash-cloud-how-one-airline-transformed-its-use-of-social-media-3040154420/
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Call centres swamped
120 people in shifts for 7 days on FB & Twitter
Now has 23 strong social media dept
“customer service agents in the social media dept are 75% more productive than those in call centres”

51. Customer Service
For the 27 airlines in the Star Alliance, nearly one-third of
customer feedback now comes from social media.
Jaan Albrecht, CEO of Star Alliance Services
http://www.zdnet.com/twitter-vs-icelandic-ash-cloud-how-one-airline-transformed-its-use-of-social-media-3040154420/
51

52. Customer Service
https://twitter.com/Iberia_en/status/262979795405647872
52

53. Customer Service
http://scn.sap.com/welcome
53
Early 2000’s SAP had 170,000 customers - support needs, esp for new products were becoming unmanageable

54. Customer Service
To make it work... would be 90% us and 10% them at
first. But we knew if we did that, it would eventually be
10% us and 90% them.
Mark Finnern, Chief Community Evangelist, SAP SCN
54

55. Customer Service
http://scn.sap.com/welcome
55
More than 100,000 joined in first 2 yrs
Now over 2.5m users
SAP: SCN improves customer retention, creates efficiency and drives top line growth and revenue

56. Inside the firewall
56

57. Retention
Photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephanridgway/4110712532/
57
David Legge - Fortis BC - guy walking out of interview

58. Retention
58
Twitter as news/info gathering medium

59. Retention
http://www.flickr.com/photos/traftery/5467650475/
59
For millennial’s - blocking SM is like putting a rotary dial phone on their desk with a lock on the dial

60. Retention
Twitter is a primary source to gather information about
changes in my industry. It helps the organization stay
current with the latest trends and thinking.
Casey Coleman, CIO of the U.S. General Services Administration
http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2012/07/26/social-media-for-the-innovative-cio/
60
Don’t take my word for it

61. Collaboration
61

62. Collaboration
Photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/dabhaid/314923760/
62
Social media can be powerful way to share info within orgs
And stop co losing info when ppl leave

63. Collaboration
63
IBM internal blogs
Tag clouds - recommendations, similar blogs
IBM has 20k internal blogs - running blog program 9 yrs

64. Collaboration
64
IBM internal blogs - going strong for years now
- internal social network
- knowledge sharing
- self-promotion tool

65. Collaboration
https://www.chatter.com
65

66. Collaboration
http://www.huddle.com
66
Cloud-based SharePoint alternative

67. Collaboration
http://www.successfactors.com/business-execution-software/jam/jamoverview/
67
SAP’s new Jam offering

68. Collaboration
http://www.successfactors.com/business-execution-software/jam/jamoverview/
68
Onboarding
ability to join groups

69. Collaboration
http://www.successfactors.com/business-execution-software/jam/jamoverview/
69

70. Collaboration
http://www.successfactors.com/business-execution-software/jam/jamoverview/
70

71. Collaboration
https://docs.google.com/
71
2 ppl working on a spreadsheet remotely
In a browser
And chatting

72. Big Data
& Analytics
72
No enterprise talk is complete without discussing big data & analytics!

73. Big data!
http://www.iabuk.net/news/iab-engage-2012-morning-session-review
73
Twitter - half a billion tweets per day

74. Big Data!
http://gigaom.com/data/facebook-is-collecting-your-data-500-terabytes-a-day/
74
2.5 billion content items per day!
More interesting stats on the page - was getting too bulletpointy,

75. Analytics
There's no such thing as information overload - only filter
failure.
Clay Shirky, Prof NYU,
Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society
http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2012/07/26/social-media-for-the-innovative-cio/
75

76. Analytics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InrOvEE2v38
76
Gatorade’s Social Media command centre - Mission Control

77. Analytics
http://readwrite.com/2011/07/21/how-dell-really-listens-to-its
77
70 employees monitoring and dealing with social media
11 languages
25,000 social media events for the company each day

78. Analytics
http://www.informationweek.com/government/information-management/inside-red-cross-social-media-command-ce/232602698
78
Dell contributed funding and tech for this

79. Analytics
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/jan/12/haiti-twitter-tracked-cholera-outbreak
79
Twitter is faster than, and as accurate as, the official records at detecting the start and early progress of the epidemic
American Journal of Tropical Medicine

80. Analytics
http://phys.org/news/2012-10-social-media-auto-vehicle-defects.html
80
researchers at Virginia Tech developed system that provides auto manufacturers an efficient way to discover and
classify vehicle defects
can be used to discover vehicle defects from social media posts across multiple car brands

81. Analytics
81
GE - Grid IQ Insight

82. Analytics
82
GE - Grid IQ Insight
If someone posts a pic - then utility knows exactly what equipment to send in truck roll

83. Analytics
83
GE - Grid IQ Insight
If someone posts a pic - then utility knows exactly what equipment to send in truck roll

84. Energy Management
84

85. Energy Management
http://www.oracle.com/us/industries/utilities/turning-information-power-195649.pdf
85

86. Energy Management
http://www.meregio.de/en/index.php?page=index
86
Minimum Emission Region - MeRegio - Baden-Württemberg
Research project involving SAP Research & 5 partners

87. Energy Management
http://www.flickr.com/photos/collinanderson/2696845391/
87
MTKD metric - mean time to kitchen drawer

88. Energy Management
SAP Smart Meter Analytics
88
SAP Smart Meter Analytics
Centrica demo at Sapphire - largest SAP customer
! - 18m residential customers
! - 1m business
Going from 75 million meter reads per annum to 120 billion meter reads a year

89. Energy Management
SAP Smart Meter Analytics
89
Posts to your Facebook wall

90. Energy Management
http://foursquare.com
90
Gamification - behaviour change

91. Energy Management
91

92. Energy Management
What-if Energy apps had:
•Ability to share to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc
•Leaderboards?
•Achievement badges?
•Targets and scores?
92
With increased information and ‘fun factor’ - people become more engaged -> the MTKD is prolonged

93. Conclusion
93

94. Conclusion
Social
94
Overlay social on issues like these...

95. Conclusion
95
and your org can be the sexy utility on the block.

96. Conclusion
As well as business advantages, social can make
utilities sexy once more!
96

97. Thanks!
Contact information:
Tom Raftery
Principal Analyst, Energy & Sustainability, RedMonk
Tom@redmonk.com,
GreenMonk.net,
Twitter.com/tomraftery
+34 677 695 468
97