Electricity is something most households depend on every day, but customers may not think much about their energy provider until their bill increases, an outage occurs, or they need assistance with their account. For Black Hills Energy, understanding what residential customers value and what concerns them can help the company communicate more effectively and provide services that better fit their needs.
To represent this customer segment, I created a fictional persona named Sarah Miller. Sarah is a 38-year-old homeowner living in Rapid City, South Dakota. She has a bachelor’s degree, works full-time as an office manager. She is married with two children and lives with her family in a single-family home.
What Matters to Sarah?
Sarah’s priorities center around her family, financial stability, safety, reliability, and convenience. Between working, maintaining a household, and raising two children, she does not want managing her electric service to be complicated. She expects electricity to be reliable and wants convenient ways to pay bills and manage her account.
Cost is also important. An unexpectedly high electric bill can disrupt a household budget, especially during seasons when energy consumption increases. Sarah may question why her bill changed, whether her family is using too much electricity, and what she can do to reduce future costs.
Black Hills Energy provides several resources that could address these concerns. Customers can manage their accounts and payments online, and the company offers Budget Billing to help make monthly energy expenses more predictable. Black Hills Energy also provides energy-efficiency information, assistance programs, and residential rebates for qualifying energy-efficient improvements.
Sarah’s Online Behavior
Because Sarah has a busy schedule, convenience plays an important role in how she interacts with businesses. She is comfortable paying bills and managing household accounts online. If she notices an unusually high electric bill, she may first search online for explanations and solutions rather than immediately calling customer service.
Her searches might include phrases such as “why is my electric bill so high,” “ways to lower electricity use,” or “Black Hills Energy outage.” She may also visit the Black Hills Energy website to check her account, learn about billing options, or look for energy-saving resources.
Social media is another potential communication channel. This means educational posts about seasonal energy use, efficiency tips, outages, rebates, and billing programs could help Black Hills Energy reach customers similar to Sarah.
Sarah’s Customer Journey
Sarah is not making a one-time purchase. Her relationship with Black Hills Energy is ongoing. Her customer journey may begin when she purchases or moves into a home and establishes electric service. She then creates an online account, receives monthly bills, monitors household expenses, and continues using the service every day.
Her interaction with the company becomes especially important when something changes. For example, an unusually high winter bill may cause Sarah to investigate her family’s energy usage. She might visit the Black Hills Energy website, look for ways to reduce consumption, explore Budget Billing, or investigate energy-efficiency rebates.
Her experience during these moments can influence how she views the company. Clear information, reliable service, accessible customer support, and easy-to-use digital tools can help create a more positive relationship.
Helping Customers Feel More in Control
Sarah’s biggest concerns include unpredictable bills, rising energy costs, service reliability, outages, and understanding what she is actually paying for. Her spouse, friends, neighbors, local news, online reviews, and information from energy or home-improvement experts could influence how she responds to these concerns.
For Black Hills Energy, this creates an opportunity to provide useful information before customers become frustrated. Content explaining bills, seasonal energy usage, Budget Billing, rebates, outage procedures, and simple ways to reduce energy consumption could make customers feel more informed and in control of their household expenses.
Sarah’s mindset can be summarized as: “I want my family to be comfortable, but I also need our monthly expenses to stay predictable.” Understanding customers like Sarah shows that residential energy service is about more than simply providing electricity. Reliability, affordability, communication, convenience, and trust all contribute to the overall customer experience.
https://e360.yale.edu/features/how_data_and_social_pressure_can_reduce_home_energy_use