Many Utilities now realize that a poor customer experience (CX) can put their organizations at risk, whether it’s reputational risk, or regulatory, financial or compliance risks. Risk mitigation is often thought of as a defensive tactic, but there are opportunities for Utilities to play offense—especially when it comes to experience.
In a recent webinar with Forrester, we discussed how CX can help Utilities mitigate risk by increasing revenue, decreasing costs, and increasing resiliency. Specifically, we looked at how an excellent customer experience can help Utilities sell more products to existing customers, acquire new customers, and reduce customer support complaints. The same focus on a total experience can create operational efficiencies and improve employee retention by automating or streamlining processes.
But today, there is no customer experience without employee experience. This means it’s not possible for Utilities to create a good customer experience without first creating a similar experience for employees. Both sides of the experience need to access common content, data, and process steps across all points of interaction – web, mobile, communications, contact centers, and many others.
In other words, it’s no longer enough to focus only on CX. Delivering a great customer experience requires a shift in thinking beyond the customer to consider total experience (TX).
Bringing customer experience and employee experience together
Creating long-lasting customer experiences and relationships is contingent on the employees that directly or indirectly serve your customers. Organizational, technology, and process barriers often stand in the way. Think of TX as an approach and strategy, and ask yourself how will a new experience or a change impact other connective points? Did I just create another silo?
Total experience (TX) brings together employee experience, customer experience and user experience to create a superior experience across (and beyond) the business, underpinned by technology. TX can increase both customer and employee satisfaction and loyalty, while also increasing productivity.
Operational experience (OX) connects business operations with CX and EX to deliver a TX strategy. Without this connection, organizations face weak business outcomes and disengaged employees due to digital friction. By prioritizing OX, organizations can align business operations with business needs to improve the speed and efficiency of transactional processes which ultimately impact CX and EX.
For example, employees expect the processes and systems they use in their day-to-day activities to make their jobs easier, not hinder them. Breaking down data siloes and providing a single source of the truth can ensure your employees have access to the information they need, when and where they need it. Automating mundane processes or simplifying complex ones can let your employees spend more time on their core tasks—including delivering an excellent experience to your customers.
Sustainability and total experience
Just as there can be no customer experience without employee experience, there can also be no sustainability without social relationships.
Utilities are leading the communities they service down a sustainable path, and they have a significant role to play in helping their customers transition to a more sustainable future. This, in part, involves equipping their employees to be the guides down this path.
For example, customer support and marketing departments can play a critical role in helping customers transition to a more sustainable future. How customers navigate your website, how they interact with your call centers, how they receive personalized communications, and how they learn best practices in their energy consuming habits are all examples of how employees influence customers’ sustainable journey.
These are also all examples of unstructured information in the customer journey. Now more than ever, it is imperative that Utilities have a digital experience platform to structure this information across the entire customer journey so that they can partner with, guide and even lead consumers to a sustainable future.
Guiding customers to a more sustainable future with an experience platform
The entire customer experience lifecycle—from attracting, to acquiring, to serving, to delighting and, most importantly, retaining—is cluttered with unstructured information. Utilities need customer experience technology that also prioritizes the employee experience to capture, organize, and integrate these insights—allowing them to provide an excellent TX while also helping their customers move towards a more sustainable future.
Utilities should consider a platform that is designed to modernize the entire customer journey process. This doesn’t have to be all at once. Utilities can take a modular approach in modernizing the customer experience as they—and their customers—are ready.
OpenText allows utility companies to manage experiences across the entire customer journey through all channels: websites, customer portals, personalized communications, self-service solutions, and call centers. As a modular solution, Experience Platform allows organizations to build block by block and integrate with their existing technology stack as they’re ready to modernize each step the customer will take in their journey towards sustainable energy consumption.
Learn more about how OpenText can help you develop and execute a total experience strategy.
