Utilities Market Research

We are specialists in customer and stakeholder engagement across the utilities sector.

Water

Electricity

Gas

Transport

EVs

Our research provides energy suppliers, network operators, water companies, transport providers, regulators, industry-specific consumer advocates, and Customer Engagement and Customer Challenge Groups with actionable insights.

Why work with us?

Price reviewsWe have experience in gathering the customer and stakeholder insight you need to create well-justified business plans for RIIO-2 or PR24.

Engaging seldom-heard voicesWe have expertise in engaging hard-to-reach customers and stakeholders including those in vulnerable circustances, future customers, the digitally disengaged and the time-poor in rural as well as urban areas across the UK

Qual and quantWe have expertse in qualitative focus groups, engaged customer panels, deliberative events and robust, large-scale surveys administered online, face-to-face, or by telephone or app.

QualityImpact is a Company Partner of the Market Research Society and accredited to ISO 20252:2019, the accredited International Standard for Market Opinion and Social Research. We have a fully-documented Quality Management system.

High-impact deliverablesFrom visually engaging Powerpoint presentations, animated videos and vox pops to detailed Word reports, our outputs are edited to publication quality.

Experienced teamImpact has been delivering utilities research since it was founded in 2010, and the senior team members have considerable previous experience too.

Our expertise includes stakeholder engagement, customer satisfaction, prioritisation, Willingness to Pay, customer segmentation, and behaviour change.

Selected case studies

Electric Nation: Understanding EV Charging Behaviours20200812160231

Electric Nation: Understanding EV Charging Behaviours

What Do Consumers Think About Future Energy Models?20200812150016

What Do Consumers Think About Future Energy Models?

Understanding Consumers’ Decarbonisation Attitudes and Behaviour20200812144841

Understanding Consumers’ Decarbonisation Attitudes and Behaviour

PR19 ‘Willingness to Pay’ Innovation20200812142506

PR19 ‘Willingness to Pay’ Innovation

Creating a Customer-focused RIIO-2 Business Plan with NGN20200812135445

Creating a Customer-focused RIIO-2 Business Plan with NGN

Reducing SME Carbon Emissions20200812123019

Workhop with overhead fluorescent lighting

Reducing SME Carbon Emissions

More case studies

EV customer sentiment tracker

Since early 2018, we’ve been tracking what consumers think about electric vehicles and the policies and infrastructure that are being developed to facilitate their adoption.

Find out more

Some of our Utilities clients

What our Utilities clients say

Impact were a delight to work with, a ‘safe pair of hands’ and a consultative approach that delivered real meaningful customer engagement. Insights delivered were succinct, effective and convincing; providing us with plenty of input for RIIO-GD2 business planning.

Elizabeth Warwick, Stakeholder Engagement Manager

Wales and West Utilities

Impact have provided a range of engagement support to our GD2 business planning process, from online surveys, to deliberative workshops through to Willingness to Pay Research. Across the board Impact have worked hand in hand with our team to create engagement materials that are compelling, relevant and easy to access for our stakeholders.

Melanie Taylor, Head of Stakeholder Engagement

Northern Gas Networks

Impact recommended and facilitated a creative and flexible approach, which allowed us to successfully meet the challenge of engaging with a limited number of individuals to robustly demonstrate that customers do not perceive changes associated with application of the Smart Street technique. Impact have been instrumental in the effective dissemination of these findings. Impact have developed a thorough understanding of the challenges faced by distribution network operators and the wider energy industry and their expert led approach to customer engagement has given us the confidence that we are engaging with our customers, using best practise market research techniques, particularly when introducing complex and sensitive topics.

Tracey Kennelly, Innovation Customer Delivery Lead

Electricity North West

Great for complex, large scale quant projects, backed with a knowledgeable and easy to work with team.

NIcholas Holloway, Customer Research and Insight Manager

South Staffs Water