It’s late, and the fuel warning light comes on. There might not be enough in the tank, so it’s time to find a gas station. But each station either has long lines or out-of-order pumps. Finally, a functioning station appears, but the pump nozzle doesn’t fit the car, and the automated system doesn’t accept cash, cards or contactless payments. To pay means installing an app and creating an account.
This sounds like a bad dream, but if we imagine the fuel in question is actually electricity and the filling stations are public charging points, then this story isn’t a dream, it’s a reality for many EV owners.
One chance to get customer experience right
Across business, but particularly within sectors where goods and services have achieved commodity status, the levels and consistency of CX a brand can deliver is its only true point of positive or negative differentiation.
Bad CX pushes people away. A good CX pulls customers closer in terms of loyalty and brand advocacy. In fact, most consumers would be willing to pay more for a product or service if it came with a premium customer experience.
But no one would knowingly pay a premium price for a product or service that, thanks to CX deficiencies, delivered a substandard ownership experience. And yet, thanks to the current state of the charging infrastructure and the relationship between the stakeholders developing it, buying and living with a battery electric vehicle has become exactly that type of proposition. A poor CX sold at a premium.
Customers know what they’re buying, but do they know what they’re buying into?
It’s easy to argue that because buying an electric vehicle is a conscious decision, owners have done their due diligence. They understand how charging networks function and how different it is from the fossil fuel refilling experience. EV drivers are pioneers, early adopters who see themselves shaping the customer journey for others to follow.
The automotive industry will also point to the age of the electric vehicle market itself. Battery electric vehicles have only been widely available for about 15 years, and only now are we reaching a stage where it’s possible to invest confidently in the supporting infrastructure and services — with a focus on both sustainable growth and financial returns.
But even if EV owners were historically ready to take the rough with the smooth, how ready have organizations in the automotive ecosystem been to collect and share the relevant data and use it to improve services, identify and remove pain points, and start mapping out an optimum mainstream customer journey?
Electric vehicle sales are growing faster than charging networks
Even if vehicle sales slumped over the course of 2024, the share of battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids is still growing year over year and region to region. In the U.S., EV sales were up 11% compared with 2023, while across the European Union, combined sales of plug-in hybrids and battery electric vehicles represented 20% of all new cars sold in 2024.
These sales milestones don’t mean that there are several million more tech-savvy early adopters on the road. As a market grows, it evolves and diversifies to suit new customer types, new personas, and new wants, needs, and expectations. And this is certainly the case today. Customers are just as likely to have chosen an EV because of government subsidies, available inventory or the commission structure for salespeople at dealerships as due to an inherent wish to go green.
To their credit, OEMs have been fastidious in providing easy-to-understand information regarding the EV lifestyle — even if all communication and guides have accentuated the positive. However, dealerships have to buy in, in equal measure, to ensure potential customers understand exactly what to expect when going electric. That, in turn, means salespeople have had to undergo training and really get to grips with the subject. And against the backdrop of a shrinking labor pool and rising salary demands, not all showrooms have been able to attract and retain employees with the right blend of hard and soft skills to help consumers buy with confidence.
As a result, a lot of today’s electric vehicle drivers are setting out on a road of discovery. What’s more, once on that road, their sense of direction will be dictated by how well-informed they were during the sales process and how much effort was made to onboard the customer into the EV ecosystem.
Consumers who go green shouldn’t end up seeing red
As EV ownership increases, the percentage of drivers with access to at-home charging decreases. In the U.K. alone, there are 8 million addresses — equivalent to 30% of the population — without at-home or on-street parking. In Paris, where apartment living is the only option, the city is currently in the process of removing 70,000 of its 140,000 available parking spaces to discourage private car ownership. And in every major world city, there are similar issues, even though ultra-urban areas are where an EV can perform at its very best in terms of reducing particulate and noise pollution and in being confined to shorter journeys where range anxiety is a lesser factor.
Public charging stations need to fill these voids and yet the coverage and capability of the necessary infrastructure is at very different levels of maturity from country to country and market to market.
But what most countries do have in common is that they’re either behind stated targets for charging points or their initial estimates in terms of coverage were far too conservative.
For some context, from 2035, it will be illegal to sell a car with an internal combustion engine in the state of California and across the whole of the European Union. In the U.K, that cutoff date is closer still — 2030. To support this transition, the British government has pledged to bring online 300,000 charging points by that date. At the end of 2024 there were just 72,594 active charging points serving the U.K. That’s a 32% increase from 2023, but it still means that a further 220,000 new points need to come online within the next five years.
It’s a similar story in most countries across Europe and North America, too. The only way for this story to have a happy ending is through investment and cooperation. There needs to be cooperation between charging point providers, the mobility and payments services providers, plus the wider stakeholder group of local government, private landowners, utilities and the charging point manufacturers and maintenance firms.
But crucially, it also means an investment in CX. As the networks are being built, so are brand perceptions regarding the different mobility service providers. And those providers that want a positive future brand perception need to get the CX equation right.
What is the electric vehicle CX equation?
It’s a combination of the physical location of a charging point relative to the customer in their moment of need; the steps needed to access the charging point; the time required to access accounts and settings, then to connect and charge the vehicle; and the overall cost of the service.
Currently, the only way to address the issue of location is through deeper partnerships with all existing charging point operators. With the right communication, customers themselves will understand and accept that, from a geographical perspective at least, the network is somewhat uneven in its distribution of charging points outside major cities.
But they won’t accept shortfalls in other aspects of the CX equation. As well as the ultimate annoyance of the charging point being out of service, the biggest frequent frustrations of EV drivers are waiting times — for the charger to become free for their own session to start and conclude — and the complexity of use. Consumers don’t want to discover that they have the wrong app or can’t make a one-off payment or, worse still, that they have all the necessary keys and authenticators but can’t get the charger to work.
Each of these is a moment of truth in the customer relationship and one where your customer needs to be able to engage directly to resolve the issue on an emotional as well as technical level.
A consistent conversation
Whether it’s a phone call, email or chat message and whether it’s to an e-mobility service provider or the charge point operator, when a customer reaches out, you need to be there. But more than that, you need to be able to identify who that customer is, see their customer history and be able to take action based on the issue.
This is easy if the issue is one over which you have direct control, but if it means interacting with another partner within the ecosystem, that process needs to be simple, transparent and easy to track. Especially if it’s one where the customer must remain in the loop.
Don’t forget, even though automation and self-service are popular and genuinely help customers help themselves when it comes to simple problems and frequently asked questions, consumers prioritize live channels and customer service representatives when it comes to solving a serious issue.
A real-time relationship
CX should be about setting customer expectations as much as about meeting them. Providing information and insights, proactively, will enhance the customer’s experience and reduce pressure on your channels and CX function. For instance, if certain geographical areas are very busy and wait times are increasing, share that information, proactively. The same is true of other issues that could adversely affect the charging experience.
Push that information out and use it as a way to maintain an existing conversation or begin a new engagement. These updates are an opportunity to do more to enhance the relationship; it could be a chance to discuss new tariffs or payment options or to discuss upcoming improvements, etc. Equally, it’s an opportunity to solicit customer feedback and use the findings to optimize existing operations.
Pain-free payments
As the market for electric vehicles grows, so does the diversity of needs and expectations within its customer base. Recognizing this diversity means more than providing a good mix of channels for issue resolution.
It means examining user interfaces and user experiences within apps and those integrated into charging points. Is navigation intuitive, and is it easy to initiate a charging session and pay for it?
That means accepting more than one payment option, and it also means keeping the payment process itself uncluttered and transparent. Prices can vary depending on the time of day, the source of the electricity, or whether the charging point is outside the mobility service’s existing app network. How and when these variables are communicated can enhance or detract from the customer experience and simplify or overcomplicate the payment process.
Sharing is caring
Even if e-mobility service providers are the “face” of EV recharging and perceived as the organization providing customer satisfaction, all ecosystem members are equal partners in the delivery of CX. Hence solving the equation and delivering a service that aligns with or surpasses expectations needs to be built on a foundation of data collection and data sharing.
Data relating to the availability of charging points and their current state — in service or out of order — needs to be shared with other partners who then need to provide that information to customers. And vice versa. If an EV driver reports an issue with a charging point, it will be with their service provider, not the charge point operator, and that information needs to be operationalized.
The same is true of network traffic. Information regarding a customer’s local geographical area and the most frequently used charging points needs to feed back into the wider ecosystem for future planning and network development.
This data and associated insights are also crucial to understand who today’s EV drivers are, what elements of the ownership experience they enjoy, and which elements are destroying their satisfaction. These findings are the basis for developing new service plans and adding new features to existing operations.
The automotive industry is going through the biggest change in its history. Read “Driving change: The best practice guide to CX in the automotive industry” and learn how to steer your brand towards future success.