Energy, utilities and telecoms organisations have invested heavily in digital over the past decade.
Customer expectations have risen in step with that investment, shaped by experiences in retail and banking that these sectors are still catching up with.
The UK Customer Satisfaction Index for utilities reached 73.1 in January 2026, its highest point since tracking began, but well below what customers now expect from digital interactions. The variation between individual organisations is significant, and it is not explained by platform capability or budget.
Four structural issues explain where the return goes missing.
1. Self-serve journeys need continuous optimisation, not just a launch.
When customers pay bills, report outages and manage accounts online, contact centre volumes fall, cost-to-serve reduces and satisfaction improves. With 33 million UK homes now carrying smart meters, the data to understand and improve those journeys exists at a granularity that simply did not exist five years ago.
Working with United Utilities, we helped drive 70% of website traffic to self-serve and task-based content, with 5% of all site visits resulting in a customer paying a bill directly online. Sustained performance at that level requires continuous optimisation around the journeys that matter most to customers and to the business, not a single deployment followed by periodic reviews.
2. Smart meter data needs to move faster than quarterly reports.
UK utilities now hold half-hourly consumption data on tens of millions of customers. Using it well means identifying usage patterns and surfacing relevant, personalised communications at the right moment rather than in the next reporting cycle. Ofgem's proposed energy Smart Data scheme, currently in development toward a minimum viable product in late 2026, will increase pressure on digital leaders to demonstrate that customer data is actively improving experience.
For telecoms providers, Ofcom's renewed focus on out-of-contract customers and vulnerable consumer support creates the same pressure through a different regulatory lens. Building that insight activation capability now means being better placed for what both regulators are moving toward.
3. Optimisation needs a permanent operating model behind it.
A one percentage point improvement in a self-serve journey completed by hundreds of thousands of customers each month is commercially significant. Capturing that value consistently requires a hypothesis pipeline, a testing cadence, clear ownership of outcomes and a way of measuring success before work begins.
Our partnership with Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks, part of FTSE-50 energy leader SSE and serving 4.1 million homes across northern Scotland and central southern England, is built on exactly this. A platform engineered to stay resilient during peak demand including storm season, self-serve capabilities that reduce call centre pressure, and continuous optimisation embedded from day one. Treating optimisation as a permanent operating discipline is what produces consistent return from digital investment over time.
4. Digital priorities need to connect to regulatory and commercial outcomes
Customer satisfaction scores, complaint volumes, digital channel shift, cost-to-serve and net zero progress communication are the terms regulators and boards use to assess digital performance. Setting digital priorities in that context, and demonstrating a clear connection between optimisation activity and movement on those metrics, is what makes digital a credible commercial function rather than a delivery one.
Investment is a foundation. A structured programme is what delivers the return.
Mando Group works with utilities and energy organisations including United Utilities and SSEN on these challenges, connecting strategy, insight, operating model and performance management into a coherent approach.
The Digital Optimisation Assessment is a short self-assessment that shows where your digital activity stands across those four areas. It takes a few minutes and produces a personalised score and recommendations.
