The photo above is from the E Source Utility Customer Experience Conference, which I just had the pleasure of joining in Las Vegas. E Source’s mission is “To advance the efficient and environmentally sound use and provision of energy.”

My friends know that I love the rush of public speaking—It’s even better when I can combine it with my visual summaries. So I was delighted that E Source asked me to give a talk synthesizing the ideas bouncing around the conference. I love creating visual notes all the more when I get to use them as a backdrop for a presentation.

At the conference, representatives of major utilities (mostly electricical, but a few other utilities participated as well) shared insights, successes, and challenges related to focusing on the utility customer experience. Utilities are in an interesting position where they are often operate without direct competitors. But they still have plenty of motivation to focus on the user experience it turns out. Since every household and organization in North America needs to interact with utilities, an improvement in their customer experience has a broad impact.

It was heartening to see the participants in the conference think about the big-picture reasons to value customer experience, as well as to explore case studies of how industries within and outside the utility industry are improving their customer experience.

(Our friendly Zappos tour guide and Customer Experience Magician, Rocco)

From outside the utility industry we heard from FedEx, Sprint, and Zappos. We even got a tour of Zappos, which maintains its office conveniently around the corner from our conference venue. The tour drove home the message the culture is bedrock of customer experience—Zappos is famed for both its creative and supportive culture and its focus on delivering a “Wow” customer experience.

I was wowed by the conference that E Source put together, they clearly care about the experience of their customer, and it showed.