Hidden Challenges Limiting Key Account Success (and How to Overcome Them)

Managing key account relationships can feel like a constant uphill battle for many utilities, especially when facing the hidden challenges limiting key account success. Key account managers constantly juggle the needs of their largest commercial and industrial (C&I) customers but despite their best efforts, the standard engagement model is still a reactive approach. 

Key account managers are caught in a quiet struggle: missing insights buried in data, scrambling to address issues after they appear on a bill, and struggling to build trusted and strategic relationships with their accounts. To overcome key account challenges, utilities must move beyond the traditional C&I engagement strategy, which isn’t keeping up with the changing needs of today’s energy-savvy businesses, and limits the success of both your utility and your C&I customer goals. 

Five Hidden Challenges Undermining Your Success

While not always apparent, there are five key issues that limit your team’s ability to succeed:

1. Limited Visibility: C&I customers often lack clear, actionable insights into their energy consumption patterns and cost drivers. Without a simple way to visualize their data, they’re left in the dark about how daily operations impact their bottom line and where they need to make changes.
2. Reactive Management: Key account managers have been left to put out fires after an issue appears on a bill one too many times. They’re stuck in a reactive engagement model where they spend valuable time dealing with these issues instead of building relationships and developing proactive strategies to help C&I customers manage their energy.
3. Cumbersome Data Analysis: Getting detailed energy usage data into the hands of C&I customers is a manual, time-consuming process for your team. By the time a custom report is generated and delivered, the opportunity for meaningful intervention has passed, and energy and money were wasted.
4. Unpredictable Energy Costs: Without tools to forecast energy expenses, C&I customers face surprise energy bills that disrupt their budgets and lead to frustrated calls to your team. 
5. Sustainability Reporting Challenges: Many of your largest accounts are under pressure to meet corporate sustainability goals. Without the right data from you, they struggle to measure and report on key environmental metrics and see where there’s room for improvement. 

Real World Consequences

These hidden challenges have a ripple effect on your utility’s operational efficiency, customer relationships, and success. Without clear visibility into their data, C&I customers continue to waste energy, hurting both their bottom line and their trust in your ability to provide value beyond basic service delivery. Relationships with your key accounts can easily become strained when key account managers have to spend more time explaining bills or data delays than trying to be a strategic advisor.  

Not addressing these challenges shows up in customer satisfaction scores. A 2023 J.D. Power study found that business customer satisfaction scores were at an all-time low due to lack of personalization and proactive outreach and rising rates. The same study showed that only 15% of key accounts even knew they had an assigned account representative. Additionally, an Escalent survey showed only 35% of key accounts said they were proactively contacted by their utility when they had an outage. Satisfaction scores for customers who were contacted are 20 points higher than overall key account satisfaction, emphasizing the importance of proactive outreach for your largest customers. On the bright side, J.D. Power’s 2024 Annual Report showed business customer satisfaction scores increased for the first time since 2020, partly due to improved communications from their utility.  

Internally, your team wastes time generating reports and being reactive to issues when they arise. They have little bandwidth for key initiatives that focus on strategic account growth or driving program participation. Valuable opportunities slip through the cracks without access to granular data. It’s hard to effectively segment your account portfolio, identify opportunities to smooth the demand curve, or target the right accounts for energy efficiency and DSM programs. 

There’s a Better Way Out There

The good news is that you don’t have to stay stuck in this reactive cycle. With the right tools, you can shift from damage control to strategic thinking, delivering more value to your key accounts and getting time back to focus on initiatives that will have a real impact. 

• Enhanced Visibility & Control: Provide C&I customers with intuitive dashboards that visualize energy consumption patterns and hidden costs. Help your key accounts turn these costs into manageable assets that align with their business operations and goals. 
• Time Back: Giving C&I customers more accessible data and reports helps to reduce reactive support calls, giving your team more time to focus on strategic account management. 
• Strengthened Relationships: Customers are happy when they save money and energy. Satisfaction scores rise when your key accounts can see and understand their energy data and in turn recognize the value you add beyond just basic service.  
• Program Participation Growth: When key accounts can easily see the positive impact and financial benefits of energy efficiency and DSM programs, they are more likely to enroll and engage, leading to big savings and hitting their sustainability goals.