It Will Take More Than Social Media to Lower the Electric Bill

By Rico, 7:07 pm Sun Feb 24 2008 - Analysis - What Do You Think?

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“I can’t wait for one of the more progressive utilities here in the Philippines to effectively apply social media to transform their customer relationships and unleash their employees’ abilities to operate – an initiative that has to be enabled at the very top of the organization. It will push the whole sector forward, I’m quite convinced.”

So begins a short article entitled The Key To Lowering Philippine Electricity Prices by Nick Nichols. We agree with Mr. Nichols in the broadest sense—applying technological won’t hurt.

Yet it will take much more than social media to lower the electric bill. A business that decides to use social media to interact with its customers is displaying a willingness to listen to what they have to say. We simply don’t see this in our power companies and cooperatives, and thus see no possibility for social media to be employed.

This has a lot to do with the nature of distributing electricity. Despite the power industry’s deregulation, electricity providers are usually the sole provider in their area. In other words, the players in the power industry lack competition. Why should they take steps to improve their processes? Why should they bother reaching out when there’s no incentive to do so?

And even if power companies are willing to genuinely pay attention to customer concerns, there’s also a question of reach. How can a business use the internet to reach out to rural areas that pay the electric bill—but have no interest in going online whatsoever?

It will take much more than social media to lower the electric bill—or solve other social problems for that matter. We at Technograph believe that for social media to be capable at solving social problems, businesses need to have an incentive to interact more effectively with their customers, and more Filipinos need regular online access. Ironically however, for connectivity to become really relevant in our society, more pressing social problems must be addressed first.

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