Enhancing Customer Engagement with Utility Services Integration

[DJacobi]

Hi HubSpot Community,

I’m working on a project for a regional service provider that involves integrating utility bill inquiry tools into their CRM to enhance customer engagement. The tool, FESCO Bill, allows customers to check their utility bills conveniently and could serve as a great value-add for businesses targeting regional users.

My questions for the community are:

1. Has anyone integrated third-party tools like this with HubSpot CRM? What would be the best approach to ensure a seamless experience for both the business and its customers?
2. Are there recommended workflows or automation strategies for managing customer interactions around utility services?
3. How can we best use the data from such integrations to drive better customer insights and engagement?

I’d love to hear your thoughts or experiences with similar projects! Thanks in advance for sharing your expertise.

Best regards,

[Josh · Accepted solution]

Hi @DJacobi,

This could get fairly complex, but here are some ideas to get you started.

• 3rd party data (FESCO) will need sent to HubSpot unless you plan to plan to embed data somehow -- the user experience will likely be better if you send the data to HubSpot via API
  • Depending on the data source and your programming capabilities, you might even consider a non-programming connector like Skyvia to send the data over to HubSpot
• You could send data to custom objects associated with the contact or potentially send it to HubDB
  • With the little I know about the project so far, I'd probably lean toward custom objects
• You'll want to use Memberships to show the correct data to the correct people
  • To reduce the legwork on your side, you might consider using something like the Nexus Portal Theme in HubSpot -- it's work pretty well for us and their customer support is responsive
• Customer interaction workflows
  • When there are important updates in their account -- this could be triggered by a property change
  • When there is something time-sensitive
  • When they view an FAQ page or something related 
• As far as customer insights and engagement, this would be specific to what's important and/or relevant for the customers
  • Think about what you want to hear about from your utility companies and how often you want to hear from them
    • Personally, I would like to be able to chat with someone or even a chatbot if it could provide the right answers
    • I'd like to be able to access information online easily
    • I'd like to be able to see/pay my bills

Hope this was helpful!

Josh