E.ON
Redefining the role of the energy provider
Introducing transparency and care as key experience factors
In the competitive energy market, it’s difficult for customers to see the differences between energy providers. For providers, the challenge is improving the ways customers perceive value compared to what they pay for in their energy bill.
To meet these challenges, E.ON, one of the leading European utility companies, tasked DGI in redesigning their entire customer journey from the moment of meter reading to payment (from meter-to-cash), to establish new customer experience pillars while also digitalizing processes, and defining the moments that differentiate E.ON.
We also designed a new method for the E.ON teams to manage the innovation process to help rethink their approach and tools to achieve tangible solutions. We ran effective and iterative daily cross-business unit sessions on creativity and decision-making.
Service design for change
A service design approach gives organizations a comprehensive view of how the elements of a business work together, it’s the perfect tool for a company that needs to change. Service design illustrates how people, process, technology, and data work together to deliver a meaningful experience to the customer.
We created dedicated tools to collaborate with the client, share information on the evolving project, and make decisions ranging from the design to the user test feedback. Throughout the sprints, we constantly improved and iterated the approach and the tools – to unite different business units in a common objective.
Remote working gave us the possibility to create an open playground, where together with the client we were able to share, build and make decisions in an efficient and creative way. The beauty of this remote collaboration is that we built a sincere relationship with the actors of this journey. People as an enabler, digital as a tool.
Mathilde Leroy, senior service designer
Map the gap – bringing together data and design thinking to create an actionable customer journey
We partnered closely with our sister company Nunatac to map out the customer journey. Together, we stretched the most representative of all service design tools – the service blueprint – and turned it into an ad hoc tool for the E.ON IT department to answer their needs and make user requirements actionable, sustainable in the implementation, and easy to monitor over time.
This map collects information for the E.ON IT department to draw the correct requirement sets (user needs, actions, touchpoints, data, IT capabilities, and processes) for evaluating future IT decisions.
E.ON is close to the customer. You feel this desire to be close to him, to cuddle him, follow him, protect him and reassure him. This non-indifferent approach makes me evaluate this provider positively
User test participant
Mapping psychological and behavioural patterns
The service designers and data scientists worked together with a psychologist to analyze the psychological and behavioral patterns from the voice of customer sessions and user testing, and with the design team, crafted the meaningful journey experiences.
The added value comes from the new framework that builds a relationship between key business objectives, ecosystem touchpoints, and the desired impact on the customer experience, nudging customers towards a more fulfilling relationship with E.ON.
The behavioral analysis we ran brought to light two main interaction profiles that we used to map out the typology of interactions, and build appropriate proposals for both profiles, bringing value to all experiences.
The user test, done through 40 remote interviews, generated a knowledge base of character traits. We identified 8 personal nuances to use in creating user profiles for E.ON (e.g archetype, personas).
Engagement for a digital transformation acceleration
The active involvement of the core business unit in an iterative yet timely manner reinforced engagement and awareness of a new way of serving customers and adopting a digital-first experience for all. It’s a fertile growth opportunity for the digital and business transformation of E.ON. Constructive alignment at all levels supported E.ON in choosing the right technology to invest in for the implementation of the ideal customer experience.
“Digitization, innovation, and human touch were our specific requests for the work topic because we are sure that the human approach to the customer experience is essential for a company like E.ON that focuses on people as partners, colleagues, and customers. The result we are aiming for is an increasingly digitalized service but focused on people that guarantees simplicity of interaction, transparency, rapid feedback, and personalization, minimizing the effort required from the customer.
This is in favor of a growth in the value of the relationship, in which E.ON becomes the enabler of solutions that can change behavior so that together we can change the way energy is consumed and managed efficiently,” says Davide Villa, Chief Customer Officer, E.ON Italia.
