B2C at Nuon, part of Vattenfall says, you
need to change your mindset and way of
working.
The key here is to accept and understand
that this change is much bigger than just
a new organizational design. It’s a change
of mindset and way of working. Customer
focus should not be something we ‘do’,
but should reflect who we ‘are’ and drive
everything we do as a starting point.
Responding to changing customer
demands
requires
flexibility
and
agile delivery teams. Following our
organizational change, we have established
a substantial programme to embed a
‘customer first’ mindset and agile way of
working, both in our leadership and our
processes.
You need to be obsessive about customer
experience as aptly put by Stephen
Mikkelsen, Executive General Manager
Energy Markets AGL Energy.
To be truly customer-centric you
must start by obsessing over customer
experience. If there was only one change
you were allowed to make it should
be to relentlessly design your systems,
policies, procedures, and processes from a
customer’s perspective. This can be quite
sobering as you realize how much these
There is a signifi-
cant difference be-
tween customer-first
and customer-cen-
tric. Being truly cus-
tomer-centric today
means going deeper
than just offering a
product or service
that the customer
wants, and truly rec-
ognizing how cus-
tomers think, feel
and behave, and then
delivering the most
optimized
experi-
ence possible across
each and every cus-
tomer touch-point.
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New expectations and new possibilities are
combining to shift the wider strategic con-
text and the customer context in which pow-
er utility companies operate. These are com-
ing from a number of different directions.
Regulatory expectations are changing, with
far-reaching energy transformation policies
in some countries and significant momen-
tum gathering in others.
things are biased towards solving internal
problems and not towards providing a
great customer experience.
At AGL one of our mantras is “make
it easy”. Importantly, make it easy for
customers and employees. And the good
news is, more often than not, we find
simplifying a process or a policy to make
it easy for customers is also the most
efficient and, almost by definition, the
lowest cost.
The importance of innovation, culture
change and collaboration cannot be over-
emphasized as Sanjay Kumar Shukla
Managing Director, MP (Madhya
Pradesh) Power Management Co Ltd and
Chairman, MP Discoms puts it.
The need to shift from an engineering-
oriented culture to a customer-centric
culture has long been discussed but
barriers to this shift still seem to
persist. The big ‘must change’ issues that
companies in the sector need to confront
according to Shukla is that given the
technical nature of the sector, it has been
primarily dominated by engineers.
This has resulted in the focus being more
on the operational aspects of the utility
rather than customer-centric services.
This cultural change is a must for the
utilities and thus it is important to have a
distinction between utility operations and
customer service.
One of the ways this can be done is by
having a separate department of trained
staff focusing on regular customer
needs and service, while the high-value
consumers should be serviced by a
separate dedicated department with both
technical and customer care officers to
better appreciate their issues.
As Joseph Nigro CEO, Constellation
and Executive Vice President, Exelon
posits, when it comes to innovation, a
wait-and-see approach is not an option
- unprecedented market conditions,
technological advances, and the rapid
increase in the installation of distributed
generation have changed the energy
landscape.
The Changing Business
Environment
The energy and utilities sector is shifting
away from its old ‘call center’ culture.
This is largely due to the adoption of new
technology within the industry, plus a new
wave of challenger brands using it to drive
operations.
In this ecosystem, how the brand is
positioned assumes far greater significance.
Placing the brand at the center eases the
tension between technology and people,
giving rise to a new type of synergy that’s
essential to all sides of the business: on the
inside, brands align culture and capabilities
for growth, directing innovation and
resource allocation; on the outside, brands
provide a platform to deliver a unique and
valued experience that reflects not just
what people want, but what they believe
in.
The enactment of the New Energy Law
has further moved the energy conversation
to a new level of competitiveness
from, Generators, Renewables, County
Government as Distributors and many
other players.
Changing brand purpose
Energy and utility brands have typically
marketed themselves as companies that
supply power. However, in recent years,
there has been a shift towards the ESP
model (energy service provider), with an
emphasis on reducing energy consumption
rather than merely supplying it. This calls
for clarity about the nature of purpose.