No utility executive wakes up thinking, Today, we lose trust. It usually happens quietly. A bill goes up with little explanation. An outage alert comes late—or not at all. A customer clicks through three pages online and still can’t find a straight answer. None of these moments feel catastrophic on their own. But together, they add up. And increasingly, customers are keeping score.
At Mower, we spend a lot of time with utility leaders talking about performance: reliability, resilience, investment. Those fundamentals still matter. But when we look closely at the data—and listen to customers—a different driver keeps surfacing.
JD Power Scores Rise and Fall on Trust.
The Utilities Outlook 2026 from J.D. Power reinforces what many leaders are already feeling on the ground. Utilities are investing heavily in infrastructure and modernization, yet customer satisfaction remains under pressure. Bills are higher. Outages feel more frequent or at least more visible. Expectations around communication and digital experience keep climbing.
Customers still expect reliable service. What’s changed is how they evaluate the relationship. They are no longer judging utilities solely on whether the lights come back on. They’re judging how clearly utilities communicate, how transparent they are when challenges arise and whether they feel informed and respected along the way. That shift puts trust at the center of the scorecard—whether utilities intend it to or not.
JD Power research consistently shows that proactive, timely communication has a measurable impact on satisfaction, even when outages or disruptions can’t be avoided. Customers are more forgiving when they feel informed and included. When communication is delayed, vague or overly technical, satisfaction drops fast—regardless of restoration speed.
In other words, trust doesn’t soften the impact of a bad experience. It determines how that experience is remembered. That’s why improving JD Power scores isn’t about chasing isolated fixes. It’s about building trust deliberately, across the entire customer experience.
What Trust Looks Like in Practice
Trust isn’t a message or a moment. It’s the accumulation of decisions, behaviors and signals over time. Utilities that perform well in JD Power studies tend to share a few common traits.
They treat communication as core infrastructure.
Communication isn’t improvised during a crisis. It’s planned, resourced and tested with the same discipline as physical assets. Clear playbooks, defined channel ownership and visible leadership during disruption directly influence how customers score their experience.
They explain the why, not just the what.
Affordability has become a trust issue. Customers want context around rising costs, investment decisions and reliability improvements. When utilities explain these factors in plain language, perceptions of fairness improve—and fairness is a powerful driver of satisfaction.
They take digital experience seriously.
For many customers, the website or mobile app is the utility. When digital tools are intuitive, current and easy to use, confidence grows. When they’re slow or confusing, trust erodes quickly. Digital experience has become a credibility check.
They show up before something goes wrong.
Preparedness guidance, energy efficiency programs and ongoing education aren’t just nice-to-haves. They’re opportunities to establish credibility long before a storm hits or an outage occurs.
What Our Own Research Shows.
Our research makes the trust gap hard to ignore. In our recent Making Fierce Friends study of 500 utility customers nationwide, most respondents said they lack confidence in their utility’s ability to guide them through rising costs, outages or preparedness needs.
Instead of turning to their utility, many said they seek information elsewhere or take matters into their own hands. That’s a clear breakdown in trust.
When customers don’t see their utility as a credible guide, satisfaction suffers—even when service is technically reliable. That erosion shows up directly in how customers rate their experience and, ultimately, how they score their utility in JD Power studies.
Because in the end, the grid customers judge most closely isn’t made of wires or substations. It’s the relationship.