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

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.”

“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 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.

“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.

“It's looking at what are the different sentiments and the different feedback at every single touchpoint that we have. 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 driving our strategic approach on the back of it.”

Prioritize feedback with monthly insight deep dives

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. 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.

“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,” says Abdul.

“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. 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.”

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. 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.

“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.”

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. 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 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 for an energy app,” explains Abdul.

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. 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.