The 'Omni-Consumer' and the Utility paradox: Why legacy CX can't keep up and how Real-Time Agentic Automation changes the game

Utilities were never built to be loved, they were built to be reliable:

electricity flows, water runs, gas heats homes, waste disappears. The system works, quietly, invisibly; until it doesn’t.

But something fundamental has shifted and today’s utility customer is no longer a passive recipient of essential services. They are what analysts now call the Omni-consumer: a customer who expects seamless, intelligent, low-effort experiences across every interaction, channel, product, and moment.

They don’t separate:

• billing from service,

• energy from home services,

• water from vulnerability support,

• digital from human.

They experience one brand, one relationship, one journey. Utilities, meanwhile, are still running:

• multiple legacy billing platforms,

• siloed CRM and service tools,

• disconnected field operations,

• and increasingly, retail-style add-on services layered on top.

So the customer lives in one world and operations live in five. That is the modern utility paradox.

The shared enterprise reality across all utilities

Whether you operate in:

• Energy (electricity & gas)

• Water & wastewater

• Multi-utility groups

• Networks and retail arms

…the internal challenges rhyme.

1. Fragmented legacy estates

Decades of systems built for regulation, not experience:

• billing that doesn’t speak to CRM

• vulnerability data trapped in separate workflows

• service history spread across platforms

• field operations blind to contact centre context

Every customer interaction becomes a manual act of stitching truth together.

2. Swivel-chair operations

Agents are forced to become translators between systems:

• five screens,

• multiple logins,

• conflicting data,

• policy documents open in PDFs.

This is not “customer service” rather more it's now digital archaeology.

3. CX measured in moments, managed in batches

Most utility processes still operate on delay:

• overnight jobs,

• scheduled letters,

• queued decisions,

• back-office reviews.

But customers live in real time and frustration compounds faster than any overnight batch can fix.

The Omni-consumer doesn’t care about your org chart

The Omni-consumer expects:

• continuity between digital and human channels

• consistency across every interaction

• relevance, not generic scripts

• speed without sacrificing empathy

They do not care which department owns which system.They do not care which supplier manages which product.They do not care how many years of technical debt you carry.

They only experience:

“I contacted you. You should already know.”

And increasingly, that expectation is not emotional; it is economic. Customers who experience friction disengage. They stop paying attention, they stop trusting, they stop responding; they switch to a new supplier.

In regulated industries, that doesn’t always mean churn.But it does mean:

• higher complaint volumes

• lower digital adoption

• greater regulatory exposure

• higher operational cost per customer

• and slower revenue recovery.

Where complexity truly explodes: the modern utility portfolio

Utilities today are no longer just utilities.

Energy providers now sell:

• boiler insurance

• home services

• smart devices

• efficiency plans

• maintenance subscriptions

Water providers increasingly manage:

• vulnerability programmes

• affordability schemes

• social tariffs

• customer assistance services

• community support frameworks

These are good, necessary evolutions but they massively increase orchestration complexity within process. The problem isn’t the products, the problem is that CX, service, finance, and retail are being managed as separate worlds, while the customer experiences them as one.

A single household might, in one month:

• miss a payment

• request vulnerability support

• query a bill

• book a service visit

• and receive a product offer

If those journeys are not connected in real time, the experience collapses into contradiction.

This is not a data problem. It’s a decision problem.

Most utilities don’t lack data.They lack real-time decisioning across systems.

They have:

• billing data

• payment history

• service logs

• vulnerability flags/debt management

• policy frameworks

• regulatory rules

What they don’t have is a layer that can:

interpret all of that in the moment and guide the organisation toward the best next action.

That is the gap Real-Time Agentic Automation fills.

What Real-Time Agentic Automation actually means (in plain English)

It is not another chatbot.It is not a single AI model.It and it is not ripping out legacy systems.

Real-Time Agentic Automation is an orchestration layer that:

• connects legacy systems without replacing them

• interprets live customer context

• triggers the right workflows instantly

• guides agents and digital channels with next-best actions

• enforces policy and compliance automatically

• adapts decisions as context changes

In effect, it becomes the operating brain sitting above the utility’s existing technology estate.

What changes when utilities operate in real time

Across energy, water, and multi-utility providers, the impact is structural.

1. Agents stop guessing

Instead of navigating systems, agents are guided:

• what to ask

• what to offer

• what to escalate

• what not to do

Decision quality becomes consistent, not personality-dependent.

2. Customer journeys become coherent

Digital and human channels stop contradicting each other.Customers no longer repeat themselves.Offers, support, and actions align to context.

3. Complexity becomes invisible to the customer

The back-end remains complex but the experience feels simple.

This is the true mark of maturity:

Not fewer systems but smarter coordination.

The deeper shift: from process automation to enterprise intelligence

Traditional automation focused on:

• speeding up tasks

• reducing manual effort

• removing human steps

Agentic automation focuses on:

• improving decisions

• maintaining continuity

• shaping outcomes in real time

In utilities, that difference is everything.

Because utilities are not selling moments.They are managing long-term relationships under regulatory scrutiny, where trust, fairness, and consistency matter more than speed alone.

The quiet truth about the future of utilities

The next generation of utilities will not be defined by:

• who has the newest billing system,

• who launched the slickest app,

• or who adopted the most AI tools.

They will be defined by:

• who can orchestrate complexity in real time,

• who can treat every customer interaction as part of a single narrative,

• who can make legacy behave like intelligence rather than history.

The Omniconsumer is not a trend; they are simply the modern citizen encountering a system that was never designed for modern life.

Real-Time Agentic Automation is how utilities finally meet them where they already live and it's a view that is repeated across other consumer sectors such as banking, telecoms, insurance, healthcare and more.

www.trustportal.org

January 2026

Julie Cumberland

(Reference: EY Omniconsumer feature)