Getting customers to shift their energy habits is one of the hardest things a Community Choice Aggregator can do.
It’s not because residents don’t care. Most of them do. The challenge is that behavioral change requires more than a well-intentioned ask — it requires the right message, delivered at the right moment, through a channel the customer already trusts.
What That Looks Like in Practice
Timing and framing aren’t just nice-to-haves. They’re often the difference between a message that changes behavior and one that gets ignored.
A reminder to shift EV charging to off-peak hours is far more effective before a routine is established than after a customer has already settled into a habit. A nudge to adjust the thermostat on a high-demand day lands differently when it comes with context — when customers understand why it matters for the local grid, not just that it’s being asked of them.
Timing, framing, and trust: these are the levers that determine whether outreach actually moves the needle.
Moving Beyond Awareness
At REACH, we help CCAs develop behavioral change communications strategies designed to move beyond broad awareness and toward meaningful customer action.
In practice, that means:
- Understanding timing — knowing when customers are most receptive to a specific ask, rather than treating every message as equally likely to land
- Crafting connective messaging — framing individual actions in terms of community and grid impact, so the ask feels meaningful rather than arbitrary
- Building delivery infrastructure — creating the systems and channels needed to reach customers consistently, at scale, not just as one-off campaigns
Awareness campaigns can tell customers what to do. Behavioral change strategy is what gets them to actually do it.
