Problem
This Tier One energy giant was facing a series of challenges across the large Commercial and Industrial (C&I) customer base cost to serve, third party requests and a limited digital customer experience lacked key data access & self-service functionality.
As a household name in the Utility sector, this company has approximately 5,500 employees and operates both generation and retail in all states of Australia.
The company was dissatisfied with its large C&I customer engagement, high segment cost to serve, and the number of ad-hoc customer requests that were being incurred as a result of the current client portal not fulfilling the sophisticated end client requirements.
The company identified the need to find an advanced digital solution to transform the customer experience, reduce overheads, and once solved, reallocate staff time savings to more valuable tasks. The head of the C&I billing operations reached out to Bid to explore how they might be able to assist.
Solution
The retailer set a clear strategic vision to reduce the segment cost to serve and provide a leading digital customer self-serve experience.
The company began exploring differentiated value-added digital services. With a clear focus on platforms/portals where end-users could easily gain visibility and access to their billing and electricity data. They also required support with more sophisticated key spend management reporting capability. So, they started exploring value-add initiatives for end-users, like independent third-party portfolio analytics to identify cost-saving opportunities beyond the energy commodity spend.
Key opportunities identified were:
- Ease of configuration & ability to modularize elements of our full RPA solution suite.
- Retailer cost savings as a result of RPA automation.
- Automated audit & process assurance for the accounts payable team.
- The robust agile development framework (hosted on the AWS cloud) could accommodate the necessary data lake, billing system, and integrate with the retailers existing CRM.
Outcome
Bid has deployed a branded retailer portal solution that has significantly reduced third-party ad-hoc requests and digitally enhanced the user experience. End-users satisfaction has markedly increased which the company expects will positively impact churn. Users have immediate access to bills & usage data, along with self-serve analytics and strategic insights at their fingertips, anywhere, anytime.
Other Benefits included:
- End-users now have seamless and easy self-serve access to a robust, insights and information-rich portal.
- The retailer expects to see more than a 30% reduction in the number of ad-hock third party & end customer requests for bills and data which delivers a significant bottom-line improvement.
- A 3%-5% cost saving is also expected across the entire C&I portfolio associated with delivering cost-saving analytics and strategic insights through automated workflows.
- The retailer has been able to redistribute staff to higher-value tasks that were previously tied up with ad-hoc end-user requests.
- Improved end-user NPS and reduced likelihood to churn, now end-users and support staff all have all the data and analytics at their fingertips to quickly resolve any queries.
Before
- Extensive money being invested in a solution with limited functionality instead of the retailer opting to develop a custom configured energy self-serve platform solution.
- Higher than expected costs to service the segment, including additional costs of meeting 3rd party requests.
- Customer dissatisfaction by not being able to easily see and access their energy portfolio and spend data.
- Customer frustrations caused by data accuracy and integrity in their energy portfolios.
- Less than satisfactory reporting and insights capability, inhibiting end client’s opportunities for continuous cost improvement.
- Customer feedback was putting pressure on the department as a whole and effecting the retailer’s NPS.
After
- Significant retailer time and financial savings deploying Bid’s custom-configured solution vs alternative internal development of a portal.
- Much lower cost to serve for the overall segment.
- Increased customer, retailer, and third-party visibility & access to energy portfolio and spend data.
- Improvements to the data completeness and integrity for customer portfolios benefiting retailers and end-users.
- Enhanced reporting & insights driving additional end-user savings and opportunities to improve energy performance.
- Greater end-user customer experience, increased NPS, and retention rates.
- Estimated operational annual cost savings of over AUD $1m.
With offices in the UK, USA, and Australia and servicing Europe and Canada, we’re already in discussions with other key Utility Retailers across the globe who are keen to reduce their cost to serve, cost to acquire, improve client experience, and get closer to their customers.
We’ll have more Utility Bill Case Studies available soon OR read the Utility Bill Portal factsheet
