Modernization of a major Spanish utility provider’s customer interaction portal with Capgemini

With pressures mounting from intensifying competition, tightening government regulations, and increasing customer expectations, utility service providers across the globe are amplifying their focus on customer experience. Consumer touchpoints such as bill checking, usage monitoring, and support requests through online accounts represent essential elements in which innovation is now expected. If an organization wants to remain competitive, it must possess a platform that provides seamless, intuitive customer engagement across every touchpoint and delivers an above average experience.

This Spanish utility service provider was looking to create such a platform. Previously, the organization had used an online portal dubbed Virtual Office, which had been built using legacy technology and had struggled to meet customer expectations – partially due to the limited insights on customer interactions that it provided. In addition, the platform had become difficult to maintain and scale, causing maintenance costs to rise. To address this, the client partnered with Capgemini to redefine and radically upgrade the customer service experience. In 2019, Capgemini signed a contract to help the company modernize customer channels in order to improve the customer experience, while also empowering sales teams.

Powering growth with a one-stop shop for customer experiences

Together, the partners established that the project’s primary goal was for a modernized Virtual Office to act as a one-stop shop for residential and commercial customers to perform functions such as checking and modifying account details, accessing invoices and duplicates, registering requests and complaints, and viewing historical consumption patterns. The updated platform also needed to provide new avenues for the sales team to reach out and propose new energy solutions to target customers. However, this modernization was rife with challenges due to a large number of systems and suppliers interacting within the Virtual Office application.

The Capgemini delivery team initiated the project with an assessment of the existing legacy application to identify weak spots that were hindering user friendliness and scalability. The team also worked to understand various system interactions to determine the impact that the Virtual Office application was having on the wider application landscape. In applying ADMnext’s extensive consulting, development, and design experience, the Capgemini delivery team was able to clearly recommend advanced technologies based on the company’s business requirements and provide recommendations on the modernization of architecture. After this blueprint was in place, the team came up with a viable one-year roadmap for the comprehensive implementation of the modernization project.

The partners then defined a governance framework that assigned the entirety of development responsibilities to the Capgemini team, while product ownership and quality assurance tasks were given to the client’s business and technical teams. In line with ADMnext best practices, Capgemini utilized an Agile operating model to minimize risk and accelerate the development of the new Virtual Office. The team leveraged Capgemini’s customized Jira platform to coordinate development activities and monitor project progress as per the defined schedule.

As the application scope involved both back- and front-end aspects, small development teams were aligned to each focus area. In order to make the solution nimble and scalable, the back-end team leveraged a spring framework for development, while application programming interfaces (APIs) were utilized for seamless integration with other applications. Additionally, for the first time in the client’s history, the design team introduced React JavaScript, an opensource JavaScript library for building user interfaces or UI components, to unlock transformational interfaces and enrich user experience. The design team also followed a single-page application (SPA) approach that enabled faster webpage rendering. Working as a single unit for the client, Capgemini teams were able to deliver an integrated solution that supports required business functionalities in a timely fashion.

While Capgemini will continue to work on further enhancements, it has successfully deployed and handed the solution over to the client. The new platform, with distinguished capabilities, has transformed the way customers interact with the company’s Virtual Office – and this updated system has elevated the client’s position in comparison with competitors.

Overall, the key benefits that Capgemini helped the company attain include:

• Improved customer experiences and reduced customer churn
• A modern architecture that enabled effortless system maintenance
• Increased efficiency and a decrease in recurring costs by 10%
• Further improvement in customer experience with access to customer behavior insights.

The road ahead with ADMnext

After working with Capgemini to modernize its Virtual Office into a one-stop shop for intuitive residential and commercial customer experiences, the client is also looking to integrate a payment platform within the Virtual Office. This would reduce complaints by enabling customers to more easily pay their bills, while proposed weather update functions would help customers anticipate possible infrastructure breakdowns.

The partners also plan to improve the maintenance of the company’s field agent application to provide better service to end customers, along with transforming its corporate application maintenance to an efficient center of excellence model.

Following the success of the Virtual Office update, the company will continue to demonstrate its commitment to developing and maintaining an appealing customer journey.

Learn more about Capgemini’s ADMnext here.