Industry Monitor Energy: Digital Experience

• What do prospective customers expect from their future provider?

• How has the industry responded to changing customer needs and new technical possibilities so far?

• Which potentials still seem untapped?

• Which service gaps should be filled in 2018?

We invited selected users who had recently been looking for a new tariff into our UX & Design Thinking Lab. Through interviews and UX tests, our experts identified the needs involved in searching for a suitable electricity tariff and customers' expectations of the website and online services of a modern energy supplier.

Motivators when searching for an electricity tariff

From our research and user interviews, we were able to identify various aspects and motivators that, alongside price, are particularly relevant to customers when choosing a suitable tariff and provider.

From this information, our experts identified archetypes and created personas that illustrate customer needs as representatives of a particular target group.

Anyone wanting to become a customer expects this to be simple and quick. In particular, prospective new customers don't want to go through lengthy registration processes. Existing customers, above all, want to be able to make changes to their contract and tariff data online, simply and regardless of time of day. And anyone wanting to save electricity wants their energy supplier to advise them on the topic too.

Today's customers bring expectations shaped and changed by their circumstances and by service standards they already know from other industries. Energy suppliers wanting to adapt to their customers' needs as part of digitalisation must respond to precisely these expectations.

The trends

Based on the identified user needs and market developments, interactive tools has derived concrete trends relevant to energy suppliers' business model: a website that works just as well on a smartphone as on a home computer (responsive design) has become just as standard as a tariff calculator on the homepage or quick contract conclusion.

Regionality, points of identification, and ultimately the entire brand experience (emotionalisation, storytelling) are, by contrast, playing an increasingly decisive role when it comes to differentiation and recognition against strong competition.

Customer loyalty and the expansion of online services are also gaining importance here, so as not to lose existing customers to often cheaper competitors. Smart measurement and eMobility are slowly coming into focus, but are not yet decisive factors. Full details are available in the complete report.

Digitalisation is shaking up many industries, and the energy sector is no exception. Customers have high expectations of standards, partly shaped by their experience with other industries and brands.

However, this isn't a threat — it opens up new opportunities:

• A consistent focus on the user and their needs creates room for innovation and growth. With service design, processes and online services can be perfectly optimised to user needs, avoiding drop-offs and abandonment and successfully marketing your products.

• Content marketing also plays an important role in focusing on the customer. Text, graphics and videos can be used to explain products and convey processes. It's about interlinking content, but equally about a strategy that includes all relevant channels, so content reaches customers wherever they are. The right tools for measuring and analysing communication activities are essential here.

• The right corporate and communication strategy is decisive in all this, since it's about positioning and showcasing your own brand and products in order to differentiate from the competition and create a recognition effect in the jungle of comparison portals.