E.ON Home moves Customer Experience

Brief

How do we improve the home moving process to make it a better customer experience that is more effective at retaining existing E.ON customers and acquiring non-E.ON customers when they are moving home?

Client

E.ON Residential

Output

This project was run over 3 phases, outputs for the project were delivered at the end of each phase:

Research: An understanding of the customers’ experience of moving home with/without an energy provider, landscape overview and data insights from Google Analytics.

Ideation: We provide a range of ideas that addressed the pain points and customers’ needs through different stages of the home moves journey. The deliverable were a range of quick-wins and future-facing initiatives.

The Brilliant Basics: Optimisation and quick wins.

The Game Changers: Channel shift and proposition development.

Design & Prototyping: Ideas were selected from the ideation phases, which I designed and were brought to life through interactive prototypes.

THE TEAM

The initial phases (research and ideation) of this project I co-led with an Experience Strategist. I led the Design & Prototyping phases where I wire-framed the designs and worked with a UI Designer on the hi-fidelity designs and interactive prototype. At the end of each phase the work was presented back to the E.ON Customer Experience team.

Why are we looking at the Home Moves journey?

Issue 1: High cost-to-serve

Home Moves is a costly journey. Poor online and offline experiences are driving customers to reach to the phone for issue resolution - accounting for the biggest driver to the call centres (4.2%).

Issue 2: High churn driver

One in five customers switch away when moving, with many deciding before E.ON can react. Those who do stay are a risky base - with many deciding to leave not soon after, or remaining on high-cost-high-risk SVTs (standard variable tariffs).

RESEARCH

We looked at the following competitors, comparators and services below to identify competitor trends. To gain a further understanding of consumer’s experiences when moving home with/without and energy provider I conducted customer research sessions and to understand how the journey is performing we reviewed the insights from the journey through Google Analytics data.

Customer research

I interviewed 15 people in the user research sessions, they had all moved home in the past 12 months and spoke about their experience with their energy provider and moving home. Below are the common themes:

01 Energy supply is a low priority when moving - but can act as a trigger to reconsider.

02 Customers are often informed by the previous occupier - or find out from less-than-welcoming communications as a first handshake.

03 Customers expect the process of moving home to be simple, but it’s often a lengthy and cumbersome experience with E.ON.

04 On top of driving calls, the web experience can have a big effect on how consumers view future interactions with E.ON.

05 Lack of understanding cost can lead to bill shock - ‘waking up’ unengaged customers and driving them to look elsewhere.

competitor landscape

BEST IN CLASS AND MARKET FINDINGS
We looked at a broad mix of competitors and comparators.

COMPETITOR TRENDS

We uncovered six market trends that are influencing customer expectation.

GOOGLE ANALYTICS

Organic search accounts for the highest volume to online forms: Customers are often taken to the wrong journey when they decide to inform E.ON they are moving home, there are multiple journeys and forms on the site.

The CTA in the global navigation has a low engagement - driving users elsewhere: This drives users to look elsewhere on the site, or give up altogether.

Home moves is the biggest issue resolution driver: Poor web performance is driving customers to reach to the phone - and driving up the cost-to-serve.

Key Takeouts from the research

The five issues influencing customer perception about moving home

MOVING INTO THE IDEATION PHASE

The Challenge to face

It’s easier, faster, and likely cheaper to move home and switch to a competitor than it is to move with E.ON. If customers do move with E.ON, a lack of expectation management is resulting in customers feeling like (or actually) they’re paying more than they should.

The home moves direction

Be the customers purposeful Home Moves companion, supporting them from start to end - engaging in the right moments, through the rights channels, for the right reasons.

IDEATION

DESIGN PRINCIPLES

CLEAR
We simplify the complex by removing uncertainty, managing customers expectations. Breaking down what’s required from the customer at each stage of the journey removes some of the lingering worries they may have about moving with E.ON.

SIMPLE
We minimise the effort and time required for energy customers to move home with E.ON. Effortless interactions built around our intuitive, personable Live Chat channel - making it easy for customers to move with E.ON, and setting a great precedent for new customers.

PROACTIVE
We engage with our audience when they need us, through the right channels. Real-time engagement like push notifications ensure that we solve problems before they become problems - and make the most out of our digital channels.

SUPPORTIVE
We help our customers make sure they make the most out of their energy in their new home. Positioning E.ON as a companion for energy needs gives us relevant and purposeful cross-sell opportunities that help our customers get the most from energy.

approach to ideation

Using the value proposition framework we took the journey and stages of moving home, considered what the JTBD (jobs to be done) are for the user and what E.ON require them to do. A value proposition was also created for each product and servide idea which would address a pain-point insight, provide a benefit to the customer and E.ON and meet the business KPI.

EXPERIENCE MAP

Below are the range of quick-wins and future-facing initiative conceived in ideation phase using the value proposition canvas, across the journey of home moves, thinking of moving; decided to move; moving in; settling in.

The Brilliant Basics: Initiatives we can achieve now that bring our experience up to scratch with the leading market players, and matches the modern consumer expectation through optimisations and quick-wins.

The Game Changers: Future initiatives that give E.ON unique, market-differentiating value - going above-and-beyond the competition, and excelling in delivering best-in-class customer experiences through channel shift and proposition development.

Each of the ideas (marked with a red box) are for a service or product, to each of these a value proposition specification document was created. Below is an example:

Value proposition: Customer-centric Moving Home page

Our moving home landing page helps customers who want to find out how they can move home with E.ON by allowing them to self identify and filter content based upon their needs and feel reassured that the process is quick and easy.

INSIGHTS
In user, testing participants mentioned that they would like relevant content and helpful tips when moving property and settling into their new home with E.ON. When users turned to FAQs and the Online Assistant it caused more confusion as they were not always served relevant answers to their query. This can be delivered by an update to the Moving home with E.ON landing page.

CUSTOMER BENEFITS
User know how quick and easy it is to move home with E.ON

E.ON BENEFITS
Fewer abandoned user journeys.
Increased opportunities to cross-sell E.ON products.

KPIs
Acquire new customers
Grow cross-sell opportunities
Reduce cost-to-serve
Increase journey NPS

THEMES ADDRESSED
Ease as the deciding factor
A poor web experience

DESIGN

Agreeing with the stakeholders six ideas were chosen which I designed and were brought to life in a prototype. With these ideas, we illustrated the improvements to the design and digital channels for existing E.ON customers to increase the likelihood that they’ll stay.

User: Existing E.ON customer moving to a Non-E.ON property

Scenario: “We’ve put our house on the market, so I’m getting started on the things I need to take care of - I’m with E.ON now, but I’ll be looking for the easiest energy option.”