From Authority to Trusted Advisor: The Utility's Changing Role
Utilities will need more and more capable customers who take greater ownership of their energy and make good decisions with regards to the product, service, and program innovations that enable energy ownership. Trusted advisors, whether live or automated, who are credible, reliable, intimate, and customer oriented, can help customers with these choices in a way that establishes a stronger relationship between customer and utility.
The Trusted Advisor
• Reach for your advice • Be inclined to accept and act on your recommendations • Bring you in on more advanced, complex, strategic issues • Share more information that helps you to help them, and improves the quality of services • Lower the level of stress in your interactions • Give you the benefit of the doubt • Forgive you when you make a mistake • Protect you when you need it • Warn you of the dangers you might avoid • Involve you early on when their issues begin to form, rather than later in the process
The Role of Human Rights in EU-US Bilateral Relations
This report aims to analyse the different dimensions and levels of EU-US relations, to survey the instruments the EU uses in this relation and to provide some recommendations for future EU actions. It provides an overview of the main similarities and differences between the EU and the US regarding human rights, and measures the influence of the EU on the state and practice of human rights in the United States. Likewise, this report analyses how the United States may affect human rights in the EU and its Member States, notably in light of US policies that are strongly criticized by the EU from a human rights-based perspective.