Utilities, for the customer who now switches.
The growth, retention and trust partner for utility brands, not a systems integrator
Your customers compare, switch and complain in public, and increasingly ask AI who to trust. Wise Pirates is the growth, retention and reputation partner for utility brands: energy and telco first, then water, waste, infrastructure, territory and municipal services. We win customers, cut churn, rebuild trust and get you found in AI-era search. We market utilities, we do not re-platform them.
What we do for utilities, in one minute.
The rest of this page goes deep. If you read only one part, read this: we help utility brands win customers, keep them, and be trusted, in competitive markets where switching is easy and trust is scarce.
A growth engine for utility brands
Acquisition, GEO and AI visibility, self-service apps, loyalty and automation, CRO, reputation and first-party data, built for energy, telco, water, waste and municipal services.
Easy switching, scarce trust
Customers compare and switch in a click, and utilities are among the lowest-trust categories. Winning and keeping them is a marketing and data job the integrators do not solve.
New customers, kept and loyal
More qualified switchers, lower churn, recovered trust, and a measurement you can defend, on data you own, not vanity metrics.
In one line: we win, keep and earn the trust of utility customers, deepest in energy and telco, across every utility, and we prove what it returns.
Every utility, one growth playbook.
Utilities split into two kinds, and the job is different in each. In competitive markets like energy and telco, customers choose and switch, so growth is acquisition, churn and lifetime value. In regulated and public utilities like water, waste and municipal services, there is usually no switching, so the job becomes engagement, digital adoption and trust. One team, one data spine, two speeds. We are deepest in energy and telco, and extend the same playbook to the rest.
Competitive utilities
Liberalised markets where customers compare and switch. Growth is winning the right customers, cutting churn and lifting lifetime value. This is where our proof is deepest: three large energy companies and two telecom operators in the last two years.
Regulated & public utilities
Where there is usually no supplier to switch to, so the job changes: get citizens to engage, adopt digital services and trust the operator, while cutting cost-to-serve. The same growth team, applied to water, waste, infrastructure, territory and municipal services.
Two audiences run through both: B2C residents and subscribers, and B2B and B2G businesses, municipalities and government. We build for both, on one data spine.
Switching is easy. Moving is not.
Changing a utility is technically a click, yet in most EU markets fewer than one in ten customers actually move. Inertia is still the default. So the job is two-sided: capture the minority already in-market, and give everyone else a real reason to reconsider, by making your value proposition impossible to ignore, whether they switch to you or stay with you. Discovery is also shifting into search and AI answers, and trust is at record lows.
We market utilities. We do not re-platform them.
The big consultancies own the enterprise transformation lane: smart grid, AMI, meter-to-cash, the digital core. That is not us, and we do not pretend it is. We happily plug into whatever billing, AMI and CRM stack you already run, and we solve the part those platforms do not: winning customers, keeping them, and earning their trust.
Below the systems integrators, and above the tactical campaign shops, sits an empty middle: a consultative, brand-plus-growth-plus-data marketing partner that treats utilities as one deep specialisation, spans B2C and B2B, and leads with acquisition, churn, reputation, loyalty and AI-era discovery. That is exactly where Wise Pirates lives. Portugal-founded, we know this market and its regulators well, and we work internationally.
Not another integrator
No smart-grid or meter-to-cash pitch. We take the customer, growth and trust job the integrators leave open, and we own the result.
Broad and deep
One specialisation across energy, telco, water, waste, infrastructure and municipal, with the deepest proof where it matters most.
The empty middle is the opportunity. The integrators are enterprise and abstract; the performance shops are tactical and local. We are the consultative growth, retention and trust partner utility brands actually need, and almost no one else is standing here.
Win them, and keep them.
In a market where switching is a click, acquisition without retention is a leaking bucket. We run both as one connected system on your data: a machine that wins new customers, and a machine that keeps them loyal. Most agencies do one and forget the other. We name the numbers each is judged on. For regulated or captive utilities, where there is no switching, "win" becomes engagement and adoption, and "keep" becomes trust and cost-to-serve.
Bring in customers who convert and stay
Reach in-market switchers across search, social, GEO and partnerships, and convert them to real contracts, not vanity clicks, with quality built in from the first touch.
- Performance and programmatic tuned to switchers
- GEO and AI mentions so you are the answer
- Landing, sign-up and CRO that actually convert
- Offer and tariff testing that protects margin
- Clean attribution to contracts, on your data
Judged on cost per acquisition, conversion to contract and quality of base.
Cut churn and grow lifetime value
Turn the base you already paid for into loyal, higher-value customers with proactive lifecycle journeys, loyalty, self-service and trust, before a cheaper offer pulls them away.
- Proactive churn prediction and save journeys
- Loyalty programmes and lifecycle CRM
- Self-service and CX that remove friction
- Reputation and complaint recovery that rebuild trust
- Automation that acts before customers leave
Judged on churn rate, retention, lifetime value and NPS.
Energy: win, keep and electrify the customer.
Energy is liberalised, competitive and mid-transition. Switching is easy, tariffs are getting dynamic, EV and self-consumption are booming, and trust is low. We turn that into a growth story: acquire switchers, cut churn, and help customers adopt the transition, on your own data, aware of the regulated and liberalised split and the margin behind every tariff.
Win switchers, not just clicks
Performance and GEO acquisition tuned to in-market switchers, with clean attribution to real contracts, not platform clicks.
Cut churn before it happens
Lifecycle journeys, loyalty and proactive retention on first-party data, so you keep the customers you paid to win.
Grow with the transition
EV charging, self-consumption, prosumers and dynamic tariffs, marketed as adoption and loyalty, not compliance.
Self-service that satisfies
Apps and journeys that make billing, usage and switching easy, and turn service into a reason to stay.
The market we know: in Portugal the electricity market is around 95% liberalised, household smart-meter penetration is among the highest in Europe at close to 99%, and public EV-charging use grew about 45% in 2025. A modern, digitalising energy customer, exactly the one we build for.
Telco: win subscribers, defend them in a price war.
Fibre and 5G are near-saturated and a new entrant has reset prices, so the game is acquisition, convergence upsell and, above all, churn defence. We help telcos win the right subscribers, bundle them deeper, and keep them when a cheaper offer is one click away.
Fibre and 5G that convert
Local and performance acquisition for fibre and mobile, aimed at high-value subscribers, not just cheap volume.
Bundle deeper, raise ARPU
Convergence and upsell journeys that move customers up the value ladder and make leaving harder.
Churn management that holds
Retention and win-back that augment your CVM team, especially when a rival drops price, so you keep your base.
Grow business connectivity
Demand generation and account marketing for B2B connectivity and services, beyond the consumer line.
The market we know: in Portugal fibre reaches around 96% of dwellings and is now most of all fixed access, while a new low-price entrant has forced the market into hard churn management and flanker brands. Defending value in a converged, price-pressured market is exactly our brief.
Water, waste and municipal: engage, serve, build trust.
Here there is usually no supplier to switch to, so growth is not about acquisition. It is about getting citizens to engage, adopt digital services, sort and save, and trust the operator behind the tap, the bin and the meter. The same team and the same data spine, pointed at engagement, adoption and cost-to-serve instead of churn.
Reach and activate citizens
Awareness, education and behaviour campaigns that get residents to sign up, sort, save water and use the services they already pay for.
Digital adoption and self-service
Apps, portals and journeys that move contacts online, cut cost-to-serve, and make smart metering and e-billing something people actually use.
Reputation with public and regulator
Clear, substantiated communication on price, service and sustainability that earns citizen trust and stands up to public and regulatory scrutiny.
committed by the European Investment Bank to water investment for 2025 to 2027, including smart meters and sensors. A sector digitalising fast.
million tonnes of EU municipal waste in 2024, with recycling stalled near 48% against a 60% target for 2030. Citizen participation is the lever.
A low-trust sector. We help you earn it back.
Independent studies put utilities among the lowest-trust, highest-complaint consumer categories, and rank complaint handling as one of the biggest drivers of satisfaction. US residential utility satisfaction hit a record low in 2025, around 500 on a 1,000-point scale. Trust is an underused growth lever in utilities: it moves both retention and acquisition, yet few brands treat it as one. We turn a complaint into recovered trust, and recovered trust into loyalty.
We manage reputation where customers actually form it: search, social, review sites and the AI answers that now recommend providers. In a sector this distrusted, the brand that handles trust best wins both the switch and the stay.
When a customer asks an AI who to switch to, are you the answer?
Customers now ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews which provider to choose, switch to or trust. When an AI summary appears, most searches end with no click. Ranking still matters, but increasingly you also need to be part of the answer, and few utilities are engineering for it yet.
A corroborated entity
Your brand, tariffs and coverage, confirmed in the structured data and knowledge graphs the models and comparison engines read.
Citable content
Clear answers on price, switching, coverage and green claims that the models want to quote, not brochure copy they skip.
Ecosystem presence
Comparison sites, reviews, maps and the sources an AI trusts, so your brand is in the answer, not only on your own site.
This is our Wise GEO Compass framework applied to utilities: we engineer the citable content, the entity and the ecosystem presence that make search and AI name you, and we measure your share of the answer against competitors, every month. The provider the AI recommends wins the switch.
The full growth toolkit, part by part.
Everything connects to one outcome: new customers, kept and loyal, and trust you can measure. We do a lot in this sector, and we start where the return is fastest.
Acquisition that converts
Search, social and programmatic tuned to in-market switchers, measured to real contracts, not clicks.
Be the answer, build AI traffic
Generative and answer engine optimisation so your brand is cited in AI answers and grows AI-referred traffic.
Self-service that satisfies
Websites, sign-up flows and self-service apps for billing, usage and switching that customers actually like.
Keep them, automatically
Loyalty programmes and lifecycle automation that reward the behaviour you want and act before customers leave.
More from the same traffic
Conversion optimisation across sign-up, self-service and switching, so every visit is worth more.
Own the trust story
Monitor and manage search, social, reviews and AI answers, and turn complaints into recovered trust.
One customer view, owned
Unify and activate customer data for marketing, on your own stack, as an asset you keep.
Prove it to the CFO
Marketing mix modeling and incrementality on your real data, so acquisition and retention spend is defended.
A great team, best practice, and proprietary tech that makes the difference.
Our proposition is a service and proprietary technology working as one. In the service you get the best of our people, our installed experience across 300+ brands, and the leading best practices. Where the field is new and moving fast, AI discovery, honest measurement, we bring proprietary frameworks competitors do not have.
Senior, cross-disciplinary, independent
Media, data, GEO, web, CRM, loyalty and reputation in one crew, bold and transparent, judged on your customers and retention, not activity.
Proprietary edge for emerging areas
Wise GEO Compass for AI and search visibility, Wise BI Foundry for one customer view, our marketing mix modeling for honest measurement, Wise Sidecar for senior advisory that stays.
Run it, ride beside you, or advise
We run the growth engine end to end, work beside a lean internal team, or set the strategy and standards. Tech-agnostic, no lock-in, one owner of the outcome.
Why it matters: the sector is split between enterprise integrators and tactical campaign shops. The wedge is senior expertise plus proprietary tooling, engineered for the AI-era customer, aimed at acquisition, retention and trust. That is exactly what we bring.
Growth also needs automation, security and people ready for it.
In utilities, marketing does not win alone. The same senior team brings the operational and technology layers that make growth stick, and that matter especially in critical-infrastructure sectors.
Serve millions with a lean team
We automate acquisition, onboarding, retention and service journeys, and put governed agents to work, so a lean team handles a mass-market base.
Critical infrastructure, critical trust
Utilities are critical infrastructure and hold sensitive customer and payment data. We secure the agents and the data, with security built in and our ISO 27001 discipline behind it.
The capability stays in your team
The biggest blocker is skills. We get your marketing and customer teams using data, AI and the tools safely and fast, so the know-how stays in-house.
These run on our Process Automation & Agentic AI, Agentic Security and AI Enablement practices, alongside Wise BI Foundry for the customer-data foundation. One partner for the growth engine and the operational backbone under it.
Every utility team runs on email, docs and collaboration.
Beyond growth, every utility and municipal operator needs a solid partner for email and the docs, sheets and slides suite its people live in. We are a Google Workspace reseller for one of the fastest-growing productivity suites in the world, at competitive prices, with Gemini AI built in, and set up for marketing, commercial and customer teams.
One partner, better pricing
Consolidated billing in euros, competitive pricing, migration and real support, so the productivity backbone is one less thing to worry about.
AI where your team already works
Gemini across Gmail, Docs, Sheets and Meet, so your teams draft, summarise and analyse faster, and respond to customers sooner.
Seats for the whole operation
Shared drives and calendars across departments and regions, secure by default, and it works on the devices your teams already use.
The same partner for your growth engine and your everyday tools. See our Google Workspace offer →
The combination that decides utility growth.
The sector is served by two camps: enterprise integrators that run the platforms, and tactical shops that run campaigns. We bring a different combination, the angles that actually decide utility growth in 2026, backed by proprietary technology and certified processes.
| What decides utility growth in 2026 | Enterprise integrators | Performance shops | Wise Pirates |
|---|---|---|---|
| Smart grid, AMI, meter-to-cash platforms | Strong | Limited | We plug in, not our lane |
| Acquisition and retention as one engine | Rare | Partial | Yes, on data you own |
| Reputation and trust as a growth channel | Rare | Partial | A core part of what we do |
| GEO and AI-era discovery for utilities | Rare | Partial | Proprietary framework |
| Proprietary market and creative intelligence | Varies | Rare | Wise Horizon and Wandrome |
| Security and data governance | Strong | Limited | ISO 27001 and ISO 9001 certified |
| Every utility, B2C and B2B, one partner | Enterprise, broad | Tactical, local | Service plus proprietary tech, results-first |
We connect acquisition, retention, reputation and AI-era discovery into one engine, across every utility, backed by proprietary tools and ISO-certified processes, and we answer for the result. The advantage is the combination: a senior team, proprietary frameworks like Wise Horizon and Wandrome, security certification, and proof, on the angles that decide utility growth.
What the data is saying.
The shift is documented. We build for it.
Trust is at a record low
US residential utility satisfaction fell to its lowest ever in 2025, and complaint handling is the single biggest driver of whether customers stay.
The market is still in play
In most EU markets fewer than 10% of customers switch, so the base is sticky but winnable for the brand that earns attention and trust.
Discovery moved to AI
When an AI summary appears, most searches end with no click, so being the answer an AI gives now decides who gets found and switched to.
Independent, published figures, not ours. Every one was checked before publication.
What it looks like when it works.
From work across energy, telco and public utilities in the last two years, three large energy companies and two telecom operators among them. These show the shape of the work; client identities and confirmed figures are shared under engagement.
Win switchers, then keep them
- Rebuilt acquisition around in-market switchers, measured to real contracts.
- Added proactive churn journeys and loyalty on first-party data.
- Attributed both acquisition and retention to margin, not clicks.
Result: double-digit reduction in cost per acquisition from switcher-only targeting, and lower churn from proactive save journeys.
Defend the base in a price war
- Stood up data-driven churn prediction and save journeys.
- Ran convergence upsell to raise ARPU and lock-in.
- Measured retained value against the cost to save.
Result: a materially higher save rate on at-risk subscribers, and higher ARPU from convergence.
Trust and digital adoption
- Drove self-service and app adoption to cut cost-to-serve.
- Managed reputation and complaint recovery across channels.
- Lifted satisfaction and digital engagement, measured monthly.
Result: a large shift to digital self-service, and faster complaint resolution.
Every pattern runs on the same principle: win, keep and earn trust, and measure it to real outcomes on data you own. Client identities and confirmed figures are shared under engagement.
A partner with the range this needs.
Elite method, aimed at growth, not platforms. We bring the measurement and data discipline usually reserved for enterprise transformation, and point it at acquisition, retention and trust. Clients rate us on it: in our latest client survey, satisfaction ran 94% good or excellent on readiness and responsiveness, with an NPS above 60. Bold, independent and transparent: no holdco markup games, no black boxes, and a team not afraid to have an opinion. We bring the best of people, frameworks and proprietary technology to one thing, your business results.
We benchmark first
Before we promise anything, we read your acquisition, your churn and your share of the AI answer, so the starting line is honest.
We measure on real outcomes
Marketing mix modeling and first-party data reconcile spend to contracts, retention and lifetime value, not platform clicks.
We report in your metrics
Cost per acquisition and quality of base for winning; churn, retention and NPS for keeping. Your numbers, defended to the CFO.
100+ utility cases, and a network across 50+ markets.
We are an independent agency and a member of ICOM, an international network of independent agencies. Through it we can draw on more than 100 utility cases, more than 40 in energy and more than 30 in telco, and a network of independent agencies across more than 50 markets: shared benchmarks and playbooks, specialist partners, and local-market and regulatory knowledge on the ground. A utility brand gets global pattern recognition and international reach, with one accountable partner and no holding-company overhead.
What works, proven elsewhere first
We bring pattern recognition from utility work across markets, so your plan starts from what already worked, not from a blank page.
On-the-ground market knowledge
Partners who know the local rules, regulators, media and language, useful when a utility expands or runs a campaign across several markets at once.
Network reach, boutique accountability
You get the reach of a network and a single senior team that owns your result, without the layers and markups of a holding company.
The network extends the reach. The accountability stays with one team: ours.
Because winning, keeping and trust are one job.
We market, we don't re-platform
Acquisition, retention, reputation and loyalty, on top of whatever stack you already run, from one accountable partner.
Trust and AI discovery, done well
Reputation as a growth channel, and presence in the answers AI gives, in a sector defined by low trust and easy switching.
We bring proprietary tech
GEO Compass, BI Foundry, MMM and Sidecar make the difference in emerging areas where best practice alone is not enough.
The platforms change; the team, the frameworks and the customer data you own stay. That is the partner a utility brand needs for the next decade.
The frameworks that power your utility growth.
The utilities playbook runs on the rest of what we do, so demand turns into customers, customers into loyalty, and loyalty into measured revenue, with one partner.
Utilities, answered.
What does Wise Pirates do for utilities?
Are you a systems integrator? Do you do smart grid, AMI or meter-to-cash?
Which utility sub-sectors do you cover?
How do you help with churn and retention?
Why do GEO and AI search matter for a utility brand?
Can you help with reputation and trust?
Where do the numbers on this page come from?
Your customer is one click from leaving. Be the one they choose, and keep.
Start with a conversation: a benchmarked read of your acquisition, your churn, your share of the AI answer, and a reputation and retention plan. In weeks, not months. A working session with our senior team, not a generic pitch.
Talk to our team →See all frameworks →
