E.ON - Reimagining customer service through the development of a best-in-class app

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The challenge

The challenge

With multiple new entrants to the Energy sector and significant restructuring going on, E.ON was feeling the heat. They needed to cut costs to defend themselves from new competition whilst at the same time improve the customer experience so that people felt valued and less open to switch. E.ON needed to reposition itself and represent the future Energy aspirations of a young connected audience.

Working in sprints

Recognising E.ON needed a series of innovations to occur for their app at pace we used innovative service design principles to allow for rapid prototyping. E.ON’s interest in customer acquisition and retention as well as reducing cost to serve focused our strategy work on defining the future of the app in 3 key areas: Customer Service, Smart Meters and Business & Community Solutions. We tackled each area in a 7-day, collaborative sprint, resulting in the creation of 3 prototypes to visualise the ultimate customer experience.

Future-proofing

Our work with E.ON allowed us to flex a total brand experience mentality first by auditing for key strategic improvements, then using an agile delivery model to work with E.ON product owners and relevant 3rd parties to implement UX/Design and development improvements quickly and effectively. Our unique cultural and operational connectivity with the client allowed us to carry out front-end development and also integrate the code directly into the E.ON technology stack. Our efforts to reduce cost to Our efforts to reduce cost to serve are highlighted by the building of a live chat and asynchronous messaging system.

Growth

We slashed costs-to-serve while improving customer experience:

• 1,033,000 (29.3%) of 3.52m UK customers are now active app users

• Cost-to-serve savings of £320k to date

• Over 100,000 meter readings uploaded every month (growing twice as fast as any other submission channel)