Introduction to data driven customer experiences (DDCX) for utilities businesses

A) Introduction

Utilities businesses have been on a journey over the last decade, responding to fundamental changes in the industry. Consumers no longer simply use energy – they can produce and store it too. Energy suppliers have had to pivot and reimagine how they can best engage and serve customers more effectively, across multiple channels.

The rise of digital technologies has led to increased competition in the industry, with new entrants disrupting traditional business models. Customers now expect a retail quality, personalised, convenient and highly responsive experience from their utility. As a result, companies are working hard to engage much more effectively with customers, to deliver multi-faceted services that build satisfaction and encourage loyalty.

Initiatives like smart metering, electric vehicles, and customer energy generation have created more data on customer behaviour and usage patterns than ever before, leading to new opportunities for engagement between utilities businesses and their customers, and the development of more targeted and personalised services.

The most successful companies are those that capture customer data from across multiple technology systems and touchpoints and analyse and interpret it, to build a multi-dimensional picture of the customer, before sharing it throughout the enterprise for maximum impact and value. Capgemini’s expertise within this industry showcases just how utilities businesses can consolidate their data and unlock precious insights to inform sophisticated customer engagement programmes. An important component of this approach is Salesforce Data Cloud.

B) Our Approach to DDCX

Our global utilities expertise and experience has provided us with a wealth of knowledge about how data driven experiences can enhance the management of customer relationships.

At Capgemini, our Data Driven Customer Experience (DDCX) service defines the tools and techniques that businesses can deploy to understand more about the data they are collecting, identify any gaps they might have, bring data sources together and analyse it to generate actionable insights about their customers, products and services.

DDCX helps businesses deliver personalized, engaging experiences to customers, improving retention and increasing sales. Our process begins with a top-down strategy to define objectives and identify the most appropriate enablers, from data, technology, people and process. Enhancements are delivered from the bottom-up, allowing for optimised execution of the strategy as enablers mature.

The DDCX framework organizes the following components:

• Top-down business strategy – looking into use cases and user journeys that you want to achieve
• Data strategy and collection – across zero, first, second and third parties
• Single customer view – utilising available data to create a single view of your customer
• Omnichannel strategy – ensuring the end-to-end journey across all channels is well orchestrated
• Data driven activation – delivering the right message at the right time.

C) The prize for utilities businesses

Historically the relationship between utilities and their customers has been purely transactional, with customers paying the going rate in exchange for a guaranteed supply of essential services. The customer data involved in the transactions was limited to account details, payment information and monthly consumption volumes for metering and billing.

In today’s digital-first world, the amount of data businesses across all the utility sub sectors are gathering is huge, in terms of volume, variety and velocity.

These companies can not only collect and store data from the list below, but combine it and make it relevant and actionable for maximum value:

• Zero party data – customers are willing to share more about who they are, via self-declared forms, my accounts and surveys
• First party data – customers are using various digital properties to engage with brands, including web searches, self-serve portals, mobile apps, customer care interactions and voice telephony
• Second party data – businesses are looking to partners to share data with, for example, vulnerable customers so they can better serve their different requirements
• Third party data – companies can enhance the depth and quality of their data by partnering with industry providers like Corella, ElectraLink and Smart DCC, as well as information services providers like Experian.

It’s also important to consider who needs access to what data sources and why. Typically stakeholders will include:

• The customer – to understand consumption behaviour and access offers
• The customer care agent – who wants a 360-degree view of their customer to serve customer faster and more effectively with personalisation
• The sales and marketing team – which wants precise customer segmentation for effective product and service marketing campaigning
• The business – which wants to understand how customers are using their products and services and where to focus its efforts.

Ultimately, we help businesses to create a single 360-degree view of all of their customers to enable all of these stakeholders to make informed, data-driven decisions that help them achieve their objectives.

Summary

Data driven customer experiences can help utilities to identify customers’ pain points, improve engagement and reduce operational costs. In our next blog post, we will explore real world use cases and highlight how Salesforce Data Cloud can support these efforts for today’s customers.