Somewhere in your territory, a customer is still mad about a deposit from 2017. You forgot. They didn’t.
Anger has no expiration date. People judge you on a pile of small moments, and they keep score better than your billing system does.
This is a people problem.
- 45% post about a bad experience. Only 30% post about a good one.
- 54% tell five or more people about a bad one. Just 33% do for a good one.
What makes a moment matter?
Money. Safety. Silence. A broken promise. Repeated effort. “Why is my deposit so high?” “How long is this outage?” “The tech was supposed to be here at noon. It’s 3.” When one of those shows up, you’re either earning trust or spending it.
Starlink debuted in the 2026 ACSI rankings at 76, tying the fiber average. No local office. No counter. Your fiber isn’t the moat around the castle anymore. Your experience is—or should be.
In that same ACSI study, call center satisfaction ranked dead last. The phone line, where the hard conversations happen, is where the industry is weakest.
Your score may not be telling you the whole truth
High ACSI scores often hide comments like these:
- Rated 10: “It kept logging me out, so I gave up and mailed a check.”
- Rated 9: “Nobody told me about a program that could lower my bill. I heard it from a neighbor.”
- Rated 8: “I guess billing has better phones than the outage line.”
A 9 doesn’t mean the journey works. It might mean they like you in spite of it. The number doesn’t tell you the whole story.
Why nobody signs up for your programs
In Pivot’s call coaching program, we can hear that the majority of the time it’s the member who brings up a program or another service you offer, not the employee.
We aren’t offering. They’re hunting. Usually because staff doesn’t fully know the programs, can’t connect them to the person on the phone, or say the caller doesn’t have time.
Program adoption and offering other services is a handshake between marketing and the front line. Marketing builds the awareness and maybe a catchy billboard. It can’t stand at the counter and explain it. Journey data tells your people when to bring it up: new service, a high bill, a move, an upgrade and allows leadership to make sure it’s being done.
Are you mapping your members’ journey?
Most utilities think it starts at the phone call. The journey started weeks earlier, with a move, a Google or AI search, or a chat with a neighbor and it needs to be followed through to the end to find all the ways you can serve better.
How it feels is what they remember. The people you serve are neighbors, and often owners. Serving them well is the job, and they deserve your new best. Not what we said was best 20 years ago—what’s best now!
Want to chat about customer experience? We’re all ears.
Sources: ACSI Non-Fiber Internet Service Providers, 2026 · Zendesk customer experience research · Pivot market research
