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Articles by Heather Siebken
What We Learned at EMACS This Year
07 Oct 2026 By Heather Siebken, Director, Councils and Marketing | 4-minute read EMACS 2026 brought utility leaders together around a customer landscape that continues to change quickly. Across sessions, peer conversations and discussions about the future of the utility, several themes stood out. Customers expect more. Technology is advancing faster. And utilities are looking for practical ways to connect the two. Here are five takeaways from this year’s EMACS conversations. 1.
Liz Pratt Named Inaugural Recipient of Chartwell Women in Energy Leadership Award
07 Oct 2026 By Heather Siebken, Director, Councils and Marketing | 4-minute read Chartwell is proud to announce Liz Pratt, Chief Communications and Corporate Responsibility Officer at LG&E and KU, as the inaugural recipient of the Chartwell Women in Energy Leadership Award.
Beyond the Medical Registry: Rethinking Support for Medically Dependent Customers
02 Sep 2026 By Heather Siebken, Director, Councils and Marketing For most customers, a power outage is an inconvenience. For customers who depend on electricity to power essential medical equipment, it can become a health and safety emergency. The population affected is significant. Approximately 14.5 million U.S. households report having medical devices that require electricity to operate, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Could Mutual Aid Solve Contact Center Demand During a Crisis?
13 Aug 2026 By Heather Siebken, Director, Councils & Marketing | 2.5-minute read A major outage can mobilize hundreds of utility employees, contractors, and crews across organizational and geographic boundaries. Mutual assistance has become a well-established part of utility resilience, allowing organizations to share resources when the scale of an event exceeds what one utility can manage alone. But what happens when the greatest strain goes beyond the electric system?
Marketing’s Seat at the Utility Strategy Table
12 Aug 2026 By Heather Siebken, Director, Councils & Marketing | 3.5-minute read Marketing at a utility has traditionally been measured by what it produces: campaigns launched, emails sent, social posts published, and customers reached. But the role of marketing is becoming considerably more strategic. The strongest utility marketing organizations are influencing decisions well beyond communications.
Using Propensity Modeling to Drive Smarter Customer Engagement
14 Jul 2026 By Heather Siebken, Director, Councils & Marketing | 4-minute read Utilities have never had more customer data at their fingertips. Between AMI, billing systems, digital interactions, customer service records, and program participation history, the challenge is no longer collecting information; it’s determining how to use it to create better customer experiences and improve business outcomes. Utilities often rely on customer segmentation to shape communications and program outreach.
If Coca-Cola Is Reimagining Customer Experience With Agentic AI, Should Utilities Be Doing the Same?
12 Jul 2026 By Heather Siebken, Director, Councils & Marketing | 2-minute read What can a global consumer brand teach the utility industry about the future of customer experience? More than you might think. The Coca-Cola Company is reimagining its operating model around agentic AI, not as another technology investment, but as a catalyst for better decisions, deeper customer understanding and more personalized engagement.
Utility Affordability Has Become a Customer Experience Imperative
06 Jul 2026 By Heather Siebken, Director, Councils & Marketing | 3-minute read For many utilities, affordability challenges are exposing how well the organization is aligned around the customer. Supporting customers experiencing financial hardship requires coordination across customer experience, billing, collections, operations, technology, communications, and customer programs.
CX Maturity Assessments: Stop Scoring Yourself and Start Using Them to Drive Change
10 Jun 2026 By Heather Siebken, Director, Councils & Marketing | 5-minute read Resources: Building a CX Maturity Assessment Playbook | Assessment Dimensions Infographic | Sample Assessment Questions Customer experience maturity assessments are becoming a standard tool across utilities. In a recent Customer Experience Leadership Council poll2, 38% of attendees completed one, and another 50% plan to do so soon.
Customer Communications After Remote Reconnect
09 Jun 2026 By Heather Siebken, Director, Councils & Marketing | 1-minute read Remote connect and disconnect capabilities have delivered significant operational efficiencies for utilities, reducing truck rolls, lowering costs, and improving service restoration times. But as more utilities embrace these technologies, a practical question is emerging: How much guidance should customers receive before power is restored?
Digitalizing Energy Assistance: Removing Friction to Improve Customer Access
03 Jun 2026 By Heather Siebken, Director, Councils & Marketing | 2-minute read As affordability pressures persist1, utilities are increasingly recognizing that the challenge is not only the availability of energy assistance programs, but how easily customers can access them. In many cases, customers are actively seeking financial support but do not successfully complete enrollment due to fragmented or manual processes.
How Utilities Are Using Social Media to Engage Customers Beyond Outages
14 May 2026 By Heather Siebken – Director, Councils and Marketing (3:15 min read) | Download as a PDF Download the Playbook Download the Response Model Graphic Download the Training Checklist Download the Social Listening Keywords and Phrases Infographic For a long time, utilities primarily used social media as a crisis communications tool.
Recognizing Early-Stage Financial Stress Before It Becomes a Collections Problem
07 May 2026 By Heather Siebken – Director, Councils and Marketing For many utilities, bad debt and collections are no longer a cyclical challenge; they are a structural one. Even as processes, tools, and outreach strategies improve, the underlying issue persists; customers are often entering formal delinquency too late for early intervention to make a meaningful difference.
Turning Assistance Events into Real Financial Relief
06 May 2026 By Heather Siebken – Director, Councils & Marketing Customer affordability has become one of the most important priorities for utilities, not as a short-term issue but as a sustained operating reality. And customers are highly sensitive to affordability as well; Chartwell’s 2025 Residential Consumer Survey reported 47% percent of consumers agreed or strongly agreed that their household budget was more constrained in 2025 than in 2024.
Enhancing Digital Experience to Boost Self-Service Adoption - Chartwellinc
19 Mar 2025 By Heather Siebken, Senior Manager, Councils & Events While trends show consumers moving towards self-service, industry reports show they still prefer calling in for utility needs. This is likely due to an inadequate digital experience. Self-service reduces costs and improves the customer experience by freeing up agents to handle complex issues instead of managing high call volumes.
Chartwell Blog - Chartwellinc
Chartwell Blog Blog By Heather Siebken, Senior Manager, Councils & Events While... Blog Chartwell recently completed work on our Residential Consumer and... Blog By Jennie King, Principal Consultant For any customer, residential... Blog By John Burnap, Senior Advisor ETR, or estimated time... Blog By Suzan Greene, Senior Consultant Utilities are using a... Blog By John Bord, Senior Consultant While many utilities focus... Blog By Pat Ricks, Senior Consultant In today’s rapidly evolving...
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