In the wake of deregulation, the utility sector, like most consumer services industries, has seen an influx of new competitors and a steady parallel increase in the churn rate. In this increasingly crowded and competitive environment where acquiring new customers is a costly endeavor, their top priority then becomes cementing relationships with existing customers: developing customer loyalty and reducing customer churn rates.
Fortunately, utility companies today can take advantage of a trend that not only enables them to advance technological innovation but, if incorporated into the company’s business models, proves to be extremely powerful in terms of economic performance: it’s personalization.
By adopting automated processes based on advanced data management, companies can develop personalized modes of interaction (and therefore proposals and calls to action) and thus enhance their user base: in other words, they can communicate more effectively, retain existing customers, and acquire new ones.
For this reason, the most attentive and proactive utility companies are already implementing customer-centric initiatives, redesigning their processes with the goal of improving the consumer experience. In this post, we’ll share some successful utility case studies where, thanks to their collaboration with Doxee, three leading players in the energy and gas sector have managed to communicate and interact with their customers in a more incisive and profitable way, creating solid relationships that have ultimately led to lasting business growth.
Doxee, a hi-tech cloud company that has long worked alongside some of the industry’s largest companies, develops highly innovative technological products that are capable of creating and distributing effective and engaging digital communications: products dedicated to CCM, Digital Customer Experience, and Paperless that provide customers and partners with an integrated set of applications that they can use to fully support the entire customer journey.
Doxee and Eni gas e luce: optimizing energy use with a high quality service
The first of the utility case studies we’ll discuss focuses on Doxee’s collaboration with Eni gas e luce, a company active in the retail and business markets for gas, electricity, and energy solutions.
The technology solutions created by Doxee have enabled the energy giant to achieve a number of important goals:
- To create post-billing and credit communication services for consumer customers,
- To enrich the digitization process of their customer base with innovative and interactive back-end services,
- To communicate digitally and more effectively with their customers,
- To reduce the use of paper,
- To increase and encourage digital payments.
The path to digitization passes through the Doxee experience
For Eni gas e luce, as for other organizations at the forefront of the utility sector, digitalization means above all establishing a new relationship with customers, creating the conditions for authentically innovative communication. To accompany companies on their digital transformation journey, Doxee starts with data from billing, payments, reports, and contracts and processes it through the Doxee Platform®, a cloud technology platform through which the Doxee interactive experience (ix), Doxee paperless experience (px), and Doxee document experience (dx) products are delivered.
The Doxee interactive experience: interactive bill and behavioral analytics
Eni gas e luce’s digitalization path began in 2018, with an initiative that included creating an interactive bill (Bolletta Smart), through the Doxee interactive experience product. In May 2020, the initiative, which immediately proved successful, was extended to its customers’ digital addresses and they were encouraged to choose a digital relationship with the company.
Doxee Pweb®, the Doxee product dedicated to the production and distribution of personalized micro-sites, also makes it possible to record the methods of interaction with the Smart Bill: it is the behavioral analytics that account for the actions and KPIs useful for discovering whether the personalized content is performing as expected.
Additional digitization activities based on Doxee services enrich customer master data through SMS and automate the distribution of reminders that address the digital payment experience. Two cautions in particular contribute significantly to the success of these activities: accurate cluster differentiation and the ability for each customer to change how they receive their invoice directly on traditional contact channels.
Doxee document experience: managing document processes and producing multichannel communications
Eni gas e luce then decided to adopt the Doxee document experience product for the orchestrated management of document processes and the production of multi-channel communications in the appropriate formats. Doxee document experiences guarantees the following services to the highest level of quality: Flexible and rapid management of digital channels (email, SMS) according to customer targets, issuing invoices and personalized commercial communications aligned to current campaigns, scalable production to manage peak volumes of communications thanks to a cloud-based service infrastructure.
The Doxee paperless experience: timely management of the electronic invoice lifecycle
Finally, thanks to the Doxee paperless experience, the product line that meets the needs of dematerialization of tax and document processes, all active electronic invoices to the Interchange System (SdI) are produced, stored, and monitored for a range of customer types, including B2B, B2C and B2G. Doxee enables maximum flexibility and autonomy in the timely management of the electronic invoice lifecycle.
Doxee for Eni gas e luce: accelerating process digitalization
Doxee products have enabled Eni gas e luce to move from mandatory communications to new digital experiences. The concrete results have been remarkable:
- Reduced calls to the call center
- Improved cost savings and efficiency;
- Reduced time to market for bill payment;
- Reduced credit risk.
The digitization journey enabled the company to go from 15% to around 30% digital customers in 24 months. During the first half of 2020, in the middle of the crisis caused by the pandemic, high levels of digitalization were achieved on credit processes, which constitute up to 65% of communications.
Doxee Pvideo® and Iren: personalized videos to promote innovative services
In the second of our utility case studies, Iren, one of the most important and dynamic multi-utilities in Italy chose the Doxee Pvideo® product line to propose its portfolio of innovative services to customers. In addition to the normal services (electricity and gas distribution), Iren proposed a series of additional services that it calls “New Downstream:” LED kits, the smart thermostat, or Clairy, an innovative air purifying vase that combines the qualities of plants with technology to reduce domestic pollution.
Personalized videos make it possible for companies to achieve two fundamental objectives:
- To welcome the customer, increasing his confidence about the purchased service,
- To propose new services that are in line with their interests.
Each video, using a simple and immediate language, provides a detailed description of the product and its characteristics, highlighting the advantages in terms of energy efficiency and savings. It also provides useful information on how to improve energy consumption and optimize spending while helping the environment. At the end, it offers the chance for, the customer to:
- Sign up to receive a digital bill through a call to action,
- Fill out a mini survey to enrich their profile.
The results: an engaging and effective initiative
The personalization functions combined with video make Doxee Pvideo® a digital communication tool able to engage the customer and facilitate his interaction with Iren. Thanks to the analytics included in Doxee Pvideo® it is possible to monitor the users’ actions in order to optimize the effectiveness of the content.
With the implementation of Doxee Pvideo®, Iren was able to communicate with the customer in a different and engaging way and to promote its additional services. Here are the results.
- +40% click-through rate,
- 80% views of the whole video,
- 60% surveys completed.
We covered this in a recent post where we described the main advantage of using personalized video in the utility sector: knowing your customers better means communicating effectively by providing them with the services they need and are interested in. That’s why, with personalized video, companies can design and create compelling, incisive, and truly useful communications that are crucial to building a valuable relationship with your customers.
Enel chooses Doxee personalized videos to help it move from paper to web billing
In our third utility industry case study, we will look at the Enel Group, its two core principles of innovation and sustainability, and how the solutions developed by Doxee have helped promote these principles while helping a major global player in the electricity, gas, and integrated services sector to pursue its business objectives.
When Enel decided to promote its digital bill, or web bill, it did so both to reduce the number of paper bills and to create added value for customers. The goal was to offer a personalized experience that clarified all the information needed to facilitate the transition to digital billing: a desire for user focus that Doxee, with its flexible and powerful solutions, was able to fully convey.
Solution: a personalized video to meet your needs
In collaboration with Advalia, a company dedicated to technological innovation in Customer Management, Doxee was able to make communication with Enel customers more interesting. Through a personalized video containing their data, users feel more involved. Thanks to the interactivity of the video itself, they can agree to join the digital billing service, communicating their email directly within the video through a special call-to-action.
Once again, let’s recall the features that make personalized video an ideal solution for optimizing the communication processes of utility companies.
1. Data personalization: the customer receives a unique video, made just for him. In fact, his name appears immediately at the beginning of the video. Subsequently, it shows data related to his bill, such as expiration date, amount, and the type of energy supplied.
2. Detailed information: Using a narrator’s voice and ad-hoc animations directly within the video, the advantages of receiving the bill via email are explained. This includes the savings of paper and the ease of payment, such as using a barcode displayed through the smartphone for payment at physical locations.
3. Call-to-action: thanks to the call-to-action present in the video, the customer can communicate his email and give his consent immediately, without having to take further steps.
The results: engaging the customer and facilitating interactions
The personalization functions combined with video make Doxee Pvideo® a digital communication tool capable of engaging the customer and facilitating his interaction with Enel. The data confirms this:
- 23% of those who received the video opened it,
- 80% of those who opened the video watched it until the end,
- 1 out of 3 customers who viewed the video clicked on the call-to-action, sharing their email.
Utility industry case study: optimizing energy use, thanks to Doxee
Using Doxee Pweb® and Doxee Pvideo® technology to engage customers in a digital, interactive experience based on their data, three utility industry leaders were able to flexibly personalize virtually every aspect of the microsite and video based on the recipient’s variables, from content to navigation, from recipient name entry, to call-to-action.
Personalization is not only a way to make a piece of content more engaging, but also a highly effective resource for inviting action.
With Doxee Pvideo®, in particular, you can easily create animated videos with text, images, and audio that are completely adaptable to the needs of each recipient, where the viewer can influence the development of the plot, thus creating an even more unique and personal experience that will make him or her feel at the center of the story. Thanks to the analytics included in Doxee Pvideo® it is also possible to monitor user actions to optimize the effectiveness of the content.
And by using and implementing Doxee products, the three industry giants who manage such complex and strategic services have been able to increase the digitization of their customer base and improve the Customer Experience, creating lasting and valuable relationships with their customers. They have optimized energy use, encouraging “efficient” consumption and avoiding waste.