The first edition of the Customer Experience and Engagement Forum for the Energy Sector was met with an overwhelming response from the industry, confirming the need of the hour to engage in serious conversations about customer experience in the energy and utility sectors. In an age when customers are used to using most services on their smartphones and getting same-day deliveries from e-commerce companies, the energy sector had been lagging in addressing this very key factor. The industry needs to step up and deliver the same level of seamless experience customers are accustomed to from other service providers. The forum brought together customer experience and engagement specialists from the leading energy companies for 3 days of presentations, brainstorming, workshop and close networking.
The forum started off with a hands-on workshop led by Charles Bennett, Founder & CEO and Gordon Tredgold, Associate Partner at NextTen Innovation Solutions. The workshop took the delegates through techniques and tools to adopt a customer-centric culture and methods to preserve as well as enhance the ‘human element’ in this age of automation and efficiency.
Emmanuelle Cazaux-Garrabos, Architect, Head of Business Process & Systems and Christophe Holmes, Techlead DevOps from Terega, France started off the session with a presentation on adopting key CX principles into IT projects, and the importance of involving UX designers during the entire process of developing anything that is customer-facing.
Anna Spiralova from CEZ Prodej as, the biggest retailer in the energy sector in the Czech Republic, in her presentation ‘ How To Make Customer Experience Part Of Your Company’s DNA’ shared her insights from how CEZ, a traditional company focused on reinventing their customer experience and engagement strategy after losing half a million customers to new and modern energy suppliers. A complete redesigning of processes in a customer-centric manner and attaching metrics to every customer interaction resulted in the satisfaction levels going up.
Monique Elliott, Global Head of Customer Experience, ABB delivered a presentation on how ABB, a traditional manufacturing company has embraced the CX revolution by creating a seamless omnichannel experience through all customer touchpoints, by involving the marketing, communications, customer service, and IT departments.
In her presentation, Else Bylling Møller, Director, Customer Service Management at Vestas, Germany shared her experience of delivering best-practices and consistent customer experience throughout the customer journey across all touchpoints by focusing on transparency, individualization, and intimacy while closely watching and improving NPS scores.
Johan Ander, Business Development Director- Smart Homes at Fortum, Sweden shared his insights on customer experience and energy conservation in a smart city achieved by the adoption of smart devices, IoT, and data analytics.
The case study presented by Balázs Szabó, Head of CX, UX and Digital, E.ON, Hungary shared the steps in the journey of E.ON Hungary towards a customer-centric transformation and how NPS, Journey Design, UX Design, and a CX Culture impacted the business and the customers.
Thomas Rütting, Director Metering, Stromnetz Berlin GmbH, Germany delivered an interactive case-study on the challenges faced by an urban DSO, driving digitalization and customer focus in a changing energy landscape, and how a mixture of technology, employee involvement, diverse teams and close contact with technology startups is helping Stromnetz in that journey.
Jaroslava Novakova, Head of Billing, Innogy, Czech Republic shared insights on the customer journey from a billing perspective, the role billing plays in maintaining an ongoing customer relationship and how providing a seamless user experience across touchpoints, easy access to support and analyzing and acting on customer feedback contributes to increasing the overall satisfaction.
Jeff Montagne, Chief Data Governance Officer at Enedis, France, in his presentation, addressed the all-important issue of protecting customer data, GDPR compliance, building trust and using data analytics to empower the customers and improving their overall experience.
Dr. Carsten Totz, Professor for Digital Communications at The University of Applied Sciences for Engineering and Economics, Berlin shared with the delegates a research-based perspective on the co-creation of value in interactions and its impact on customer experiences in the energy sector. The presentation detailed the drivers and elements of value in experiences and how they directly impact the revenue of organizations.
The presentation on personalized energy transition through data and analytics by Ronald Root, Manager Data Science and Business Innovation at Eneco Group offered insights into the changing habits of energy customers and how the use of advanced analytics and data integration helps create a truly personalized experience.
Lamin Faye, Director of Digitalisation, BA Heat Vattenfall, Germany delivered a presentation on creating an organizational environment that is conducive for bold innovation in order to keep up with the changing digital landscape and going beyond traditional recruitment to onboard the talent to achieve this disruptive innovation.
Emre Celik, Head of Customer Experience Management, Enerjisa Enerji, Turkey shared with the delegates how Enerjisa’s systematic customer experience journey helped significantly reduce customer complaints, drive up customer satisfaction levels and NPS scores, and maximize resource optimization.
Charles Bennett, Founder, and CEO, NextTen Innovation Solutions delivered a presentation on how customer-centricity will change the landscape of the energy industry and shared his insights on driving outcome-based innovation and tips for organizations to start innovating from within to achieve real customer-centricity.
Annemarie de Jong, Director Customer Development: Sales & Customer Service at Sonnen, Germany delivered a presentation on understanding the needs of the customer, deriving actionable insights from customer segmentation and using the insights to improve the customer experience, executed through properly trained staff members.
The panel discussions- ‘In consumers’ shoes’ and ‘CX Future Outlook’ saw the delegates share their knowledge, expertise and exchange ideas on several topics including understanding customers’ needs, innovation for greater customer satisfaction, technology trends and the future of customer experience in the energy sector.
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