Next, try some of these best practices and accomplish your goals:
Customer-centric design is infiltrating every industry. Leading airlines, banks, retailers, and telecommunications companies are using their digital experiences to attract, retain, and delight customers. And those experiences influence your customers’ expectations. According to Accenture, 90% of customers expect their utility to provide an experience that is comparable or better than traditional retailers.
A truly customer-centric design needs to be tailored to the needs of utility customers. By collaborating with industry leaders in customer-centric design, you can meet your customers’ unique needs, while freeing up resources to focus on your core capabilities.
Leading airline, banks, telecommunications, and retail companies are using their digital experience to attract, retain, and delight their customers. Their customers are your customers. Let other industries test innovative design strategies first and then cherry pick the best design elements that will work for you. After all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
By working with utility-specific design experts who have experience working in other industries, you can meet your customers’ needs while freeing up resources to focus on your core capabilities
Personalized insights engage customers, prompt them to return to the web and inspire them to take action. According to Accenture’s 2017 New Energy Consumer research, 82% of customers said personalized insights are the number one factor that would prompt them to buy additional products and services from their utility. And, Oracle’s research has found that when customers view Opower insights on their first visit, they are 30% more likely to become digitally engaged users in the future. By giving customers detailed breakdowns of their energy usage, bill explanations and forecasts, and energy advice that’s specific to their home, utilities can position themselves as trusted energy advisors.
One of the most significant touchpoints between customers and their utility is the start service moment. Not only is this your customer’s first impression of their utility, but it is a high cost transaction that can reach $20/call. The good news is, there’s room for improvement. According to Oracle’s research, on average 13% of customers try to start service online, but fail. By automating the start service moment through tight integration of the digital experience with back-end systems, and customer-centric design that prompts customers to complete the experience completely online, you can reduce your call center volume and create digitally engaged customers from the moment they start service.
18% of utility executives say program enrollment is their biggest challenge on the web, according to Navigant. And, despite current marketing efforts, only 13% of customers are aware of programs that can benefit them. By using your website as a marketing channel and serving up targeted next best action recommendations, you can boost program participation. As an example, when a competitive retailer in the U.K. replaced their static program promotions with targeted recommendations based on customer data, they increased click-through rates by 132X, resulting in a 12% increase in interest in products and services.
According to JD Power, billing and payment tasks account for 70% of all web activity. Therefore, improving your online billing and payment functionality can transform the majority of your customers’ web sessions and drastically reduce costs. Improving online billing and payment functionality means prompting customers to go online through personalized bill alerts, placing billing and payment-related actions front and center, and using design and insights to answer customers’ questions.
On-Prem (6 years)
On-Prem
|
$13,091,005
|
SaaS (6 years)
SaaS
|
$10,422,600
|
Savings
Savings
|
$2,600,000
|
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