E.ON Next Removes Silos and Maps Customer Journeys with Experience-Led Growth

Abdul Khaled is obsessed with CX strategy.  

An experienced CX specialist, Abdul has spent a lot of time working for major companies to improve customer experience. At E.ON Next, the biggest challenge he faces is to earn customer trust, especially during a cost-of-living crisis where energy prices are the highest they’ve ever been. So, while working on a strategy to invest in CX and make E.ON Next a customer-centric organization, Abdul took a closer look at how customer feedback data was being used across the business.

‍

‍

He realized that while all teams were focused on CX, each had its own way of prioritizing feedback data and incorporating it into their individual CX strategy. So, while E.ON Next has been using Chattermill’s platform since 2021, Abdul decided to join the XLG Acceleration Program to drive an enterprise CX strategy. 

“Experience-Led Growth as a model for us was how do we bring all of our teams and all their strategies together into a consistent approach of end-to-end customer experience excellence,” says Abdul Khaled, Head of Digital and Customer Experience & Digital Products at E.ON Next.

The E.ON Next team uses XLG to overcome the silos created by individual strategies. Specifically, they identify their existing and target maturity, run customer journey mapping, and get deep insight reports from expert consultants.

‍

As a result, E.ON NExt is seeing these results:

144% increase in NPS from +9 in 2023 to +22 in 2024

Boosted Customer Happiness Index by 48%

E.ON Next app went from 1.1 on the app store rating to 4.8

‍

Multiple teams, multiple CX strategies 

What Abdul discovered is what amounted to decentralized CX strategies that prevented an effective overall business strategy.

“We ended up in a situation where we were growing quite rapidly and quite fast - our customer journeys were getting bigger and more complex and what you ended up having was several touch points of a single journey being owned by different teams, which then that started resulting in silos,” explains Abdul.

“We wanted to make it an everyday part and parcel of everyone's role, micro-level, macro-level. That's the first thing that we've managed to enable and that's allowed people to be really focused on customer-centricity and customer excellence. We have a trusted source of data and insight. That's really fueling that and a lot of direct impact on our CX metrics.”

‍

“CX is our differentiator”

Understanding that E.ON Next’s main competitors differentiate based on technology,  Abdul led a project to look for ways to compete by making CX their differentiator. This meant having a single strategy across the business to remove team silos. The key for E.ON Next was the clear process and framework enabled by XLG.

“Where we feel we could invest our energy is the customer experience layer. And that's the differentiator for us. We've made a conscious decision to invest in-house in customer experience and in that layer where customers have that first moment and interaction with us and that's what sells it to them, not anything else,” says Abdul.

‍

Implementing the XLG maturity model 

E.ON Next began with the XLG maturity assessment designed to provide a really accurate assessment of exactly where they were and where they wanted to get to.  This included looking at the four key areas of maturity; the data and insights available to teams, how E.ON Next enables and takes action from data, which outcomes are measured, and how the business sustains a CX culture. 

“That was a great way for an external partner like Chattermill to come in and evaluate where we are in our customer experience maturity. That really helped identify the gaps that we have and also allowed us to see where the target model is,” Abdul says.

“So that's been massively helpful and really forced us to challenge ourselves in terms of what we - in some areas - were aware was a problem and be able to quantify that. In some other areas - that we thought were not a problem - we’ve actually realized there are better ways of optimizing.”

“So having that outside-in perspective has really helped us gauge what our strategy should be and how we can fill the gaps,” adds Abdul.

‍

Focus on mapping their customer journey 

After evaluating the four key areas of XLG maturity, the different customer journeys were mapped to provide a comprehensive view of the customer's experience. The maps showed how well the customer's voice was being understood at each stage, highlighting where there was a good level of understanding and where gaps needed to be filled. This made it possible to take a strategic approach to business decisions and the prioritization of improvements.

“We've also done some customer journey mapping, which has also been really useful. Not just to get a customer journey that shows you how a customer goes from A to B, but to really embed the customer insight and feedback that we get from Chattermill across those touchpoints,” explains Abdul.

“I think that is a game changer for us because it's not just looking at a customer journey A to B. It's looking at what are the different sentiments and the different feedback at every single touchpoint that we have. And so how do you enable that? So getting the right data sources, plugging those gaps, getting the right quality of data, and then visualizing it has been an absolute game changer in then driving our strategic approach on the back of it.”

‍

Prioritize feedback with monthly insight deep dives

Importantly, E.ON Next needed to close the customer feedback loop to gain deeper insights and avoid missing out on hidden gems. Chattermill provided monthly insight deep dives which help E.ON Next to understand what is broken and why. 

Rather than proving/disproving a hypothesis, this means looking at what the data showed based on impact on NPS and prioritizing based on a combination of volume and impact on score.  E.ON Next then have a prioritized list of actionable insights to address with their internal teams.

“One of the reasons we took the monthly insight deep dives from Chattermill was to get that outside-in perspective from neutral people with a customer experience specialism who can identify patterns and trends that maybe we're not able to in-house. When you're in the detail, sometimes you notice things that don't actually scream at your face as a problem that needs addressing because you've seen it so many times and you've become victim to the curse of knowledge,” says Abdul.

‍

“Now, office noise for us was something that we started seeing in the reports, but it wasn't a large volume of people complaining about that issue. So it was things that would always get low priority because you'd always go after the items that had the highest volume. Now, what Chattermill was able to identify was that despite it having a low volume of complaints, the fact that people were complaining about it showed there was an underlying root cause.”

“So we took that data and then triggered further discovery within our internal teams. It acts as a trigger point for us to then pivot to a topic which we know is then grounded on some sort of analysis and data, which means we're already confident in that approach and investing time and resources within it,” he adds.

‍

Improved buy-in and alignment from a CX roundtable

Internal stakeholders from across E.ON Next participate in a CX roundtable. 

“One of the things we wanted to do was to put customer experience at the heart of the organization. Not just so that it’s driving decisions, but also allowing us to implement strategic drivers and to understand the root cause behind everything that we do. By implementing a CX roundtable, we can bring different people from the organization around a specific point to discuss our customer experience metrics and topics and look at the performance,” explains Abdul.

“That's one of the things we really wanted from the XLG program, is to enable that type of conversation to happen. It’s just a conversation, but you need the right format, the right data, the right insight, and the right strategic approach to make the best out of that conversation.”

“We have that regular cadence now with CX roundtable. So you talk to anyone in the business now, top-down or bottom-up, they'll all know what the key drivers and the key issues and the root causes are behind the strategy. I think this has been a phenomenally impressive thing to do and also a difficult thing to do.”

‍

Improved digital product ratings and NPS scores

E.ON Next’s cross-functional teams have been included in the XLG program. So far, the program’s major impact has been on the organization's NPS and digital product scores.

“One of the key areas of the business - that's a really important measure for us - is the NPS around our billing services. Billing is the key touch point for customers. It's also the most difficult touch point to get great customer experience,” says Abdul

“You can make it as enjoyable as possible by making sure that it's as easy to use, it's personalized, there's less friction in there, and if you need support and guidance, it's easily accessible. We can make sure there are really important solutions in place to help you manage your efficiency around your energy better. We've gone from plus 9 last year to plus 22 this year, which is an incredible 144% increase, which again, for that touchpoint, is extremely, extremely difficult.”

“We've also seen a great increase in our app. It went from really bottom of the pile in the industry, 1.1 on the app store rating, to 4.8, which is now the joint highest-rated app in the marketplace. This is phenomenal growth, again, for an energy app, which is, again, not something that you're going to be utilizing with the same enthusiasm as you would with a shopping app, for example,” explains Abdul.

“So to be able to get that experience right and the satisfaction right has been phenomenal. It’s rooted in the customer insight and feedback that we get to guide us towards what we should prioritize, what we should build, and how we should react to customer issues and problems.”

‍

Unexpected benefits

As they have implemented XLG opportunities have begun to appear. Interestingly, E.ON Next has discovered the power of XLG to transform customer experience across notoriously difficult touchpoints. 

‍

“So by introducing a digital bill that tackles all the key issues that we've seen from our customer feedback, they want more clarity. They want to be able to understand what the reasons behind the charges are. They want quick actions that they can follow up on. We've taken all of that and allowed it to prioritize our digital bill, and the growth has been phenomenal in that metric.”

‍

More comprehensive CX strategy than ever before

By implementing an enterprise-wide XLG strategy built on understanding their current level of maturity, focusing on customer journeys, and extracting deep insights from data, E.ON Next experienced overall improvements in customer experience metrics and app store product ratings.

“We've won several awards and recognition within the industry, not just for the solutions and services we've produced - we've not only accomplished that - but the model that we've taken is very much underpinned by the XLG program. So, the return on investment has been pretty immediate, and it's been pretty obvious,” says Abdul.

‍

Discover how Chattermill can help you drive Experience-Led Growth.

‍