E.ON
Improving brand experience through touchpoint check-up
Designing a better customer experience
You don’t really think about your utilities company until you receive a bill. How can the moments of billing and payments be better managed so as to improve a customer’s overall experience?
By collecting insights about the customers’ behavior during the moments of billing and payment, we helped E.ON, one of Italy’s leading energy operators, identify new service opportunities. Our goal was to validate different touchpoints and use them to speed up late payments, improve customer awareness and price perception, take down the number of complaints and misunderstandings – ultimately, to create a better overall customer experience.
Combining human-centered approach and quantitative data to uncover new opportunities
Collaborating closely with E.On’s customer experience and credit teams, working with a very tight schedule to deliver results fast, we used our touchpoint check-up framework to identify gaps and opportunities for improving the interaction between E.ON and its customers.
By working with real data from the customers gathered through qualitative research, we brought on a deep understanding of human behavior to leverage and therefore guide the design of new solutions, which were finally tested with 1000+ customers.
A human-centered design approach allowed us to provide not only accurate guidelines for the touchpoints analyzed but also to describe customers’ needs as behavioral patterns and opportunities in order to improve the entire customer journey.
We set up an environment of clear communication and mutual feedback, which helped us work smoothly together with the E.ON team and fostered trust. We provided evidence throughout the entire design process, promoting the importance of internal collaboration to look beyond the individual touchpoints in order to improve the overall customer experience.
Marco Di Norcia, Service Design Lead
SMS and videos:
Improved messaging for engagement and awareness
We started our work by testing the payment reminder SMS and video messages E.ON wanted to send to its customers. We validated the most appropriate channels for the targets, as well as the timing and the content to drive the virtuous behaviors E.ON wanted to support for its tardy customers, and provided E.ON with tangible tone and voice guidelines to improve the interaction with the different types of customers the company has.
Emails and bills:
Information architecture and content improvements
Based on our information analysis and desk research, we provided recommendations on how to improve the information architecture of E.ON’s bills and notification emails for clearer communication and improved customer experience.
Sustainability, for example, is important for E.ON. We discovered that for the customers, it is relevant to receive information not only about the various initiatives but also their impact, so we recommended short updates to continuously inform customers about the progress the company is making.
The bill is our king touchpoint, our proof point for the level of customer experience we want to provide our customers, and for our brand positioning. It's important to make sure it is in line with customers' needs and expectations.
Involving our customers in doing this, co-designing it together with them, makes us confident we're providing our customers with the best bill possible.
Francesca Lavagnoli, Head of Customer Experience, E.On
From single touchpoints to improving the complete customer experience
While working on the single touchpoints, we also zoomed out to consider them as parts of the overall customer journey, aiming at an overall positive customer experience. By applying a systemic view, we deepen our understanding of the reasons for the customer behaviors, as well as the consequences of our proposed solutions.
Touchpoints are the main interfaces through which a brand communicates its value to customers over time, and it is the correct orchestration of these that creates a distinctive brand experience. It is crucial to adopt a multidisciplinary approach in order to understand the role they play, the needs they serve, and their strategic impact on the entire experience journey.
Seamless collaboration and research from remote
The customer research phase of the project took place during the COVID-19 lockdown of spring 2020. We created a workflow to conduct both the interviews and the tests from remote, using various easy-to-use digital tools to collaborate with the participants.
