As part of KPMG’s Unlocking the Energy Transition series, we invited industry experts from Northumbrian Water and BP to discuss how Energy organisations can empower their customers. A key topic from this event was the importance of understanding the customer’s changing needs and the support they require to deliver sustainable long-term transformation for the sector.
In this session, we drew on insights from the recently launched KPMG Customer Experience report, where three themes came out strongly for organisations in the ENR sector. These were:
- the value exchange
- integrating sustainability into CX
- striking the balance between transitioning and sustaining experiences
The value exchange:
With prices of energy and utilities skyrocketing, customers seem to not be getting extra value. Along with the media clamour on “excess profits” customers are looking to Energy and Utility providers to help them get the best possible value. This therefore is placing a demand on energy providers to focus on the moments that matter – supplementing the ‘as is’ to deliver rising demands, communicating effectively, and leveraging institutional channel mix.
Integrating sustainability:
Over 87% of respondents from our Customer Experience report expressed their expectations for companies to make sustainable products. 49% confirmed they were willing to pay more for sustainable products; indicating the growing importance placed on sustainability and social responsibility to customers. Although this may not be front line in the current economic realities, it is imperative for providers to have proactive, open and honest dialogue with customers on the role they are playing and how that helps customers reduce their personal carbon footprint.
Transitioning whilst sustaining experiences:
Many of the organisations in this industry are caught between firefighting the energy and cost of living crisis, trying to reduce cost to serve all whilst developing new propositions and experiences. The juggle is very real yet keeping that delicate balance is important. The key to this is deciding if you are an innovator or a fast follower. From this point, be intentional about how you invest and operationalise around customer experience, whilst keeping a mature set of KPI’s to monitor and maintain what you serve today.
However, to ensure that we address both the current demands of customers and consistently deliver excellent customer experience, we highlighted the key pillars that define customer experience from previous years survey responses. These key pillars are:
- Empathy: Be very present (front and centre) and displaying empathy in listening to their demands and offering support
- Personalisation: Give dedicated, individual attention to drive an emotional connection with customers – including Mapping communication styles to customer types especially with the widening split of generations i.e., leaving contact centre lines open while encouraging the adoption of digital channels
- Time and Effort: Minimise customer effort and creating frictionless processes
- Expectations: Manage, meeting and exceeding customer expectations
- Resolution: The ability to turn a poor experience into a great one and above all,
- Integrity: Be trustworthy and engendering trust
Most importantly, organisations that excel in customer experience are those who possess a customer centric mindset. Make sure to have a shared passion for and focus on customers across the entire organisation cascaded down from leadership.
To find out more about customer changes and impacts on your business, read the CEE report, and visit our insights page.
