Momentum Energy reinvents its customer experience with the help of CloudSense

Introduction

Obstacles to a seamless customer experience

We talked to Natalie Davies, Momentum Energy’s Head of Customer Experience, to discover more about the project. First we covered the challenges the Melbourne-based energy retailer faced that compelled it to implement a set of new systems and new processes.

Legacy systems and a cluttered CRM

Before its business reinvention, Momentum Energy used a custom system to sell to and service their customers. As Natalie told us, unusually, it was the energy retailer’s billing system that had become the primary customer relationship management tool (CRM).

“Instead of a purpose-built CRM that acted as a single source of truth for the organization, we had gradually extended the functionality of our billing system, and were using it as our main CRM. The lack of a single, dedicated CRM resulted in cluttered practices and a reliance on inaccurate manual processes that impacted negatively on our customer experience.”

Incomplete view of customers 

The disjointed nature of Momentum Energy’s systems meant it was difficult to tell how long a customer had been with Momentum, if they had more than one property with the company or how many times they had moved while they had been a customer.

Natalie described the difficulties this caused, “Across the business, from sales to customer care and through to the billing team, there was an incomplete picture of customers and their interactions with Momentum Energy.” The lack of a single view of customers made it impossible to deliver a truly seamless customer experience.

Limited digital capability

The extremely competitive Victorian energy retail landscape meant customer expectations were rising, in Natalie’s words:

“To maintain customer loyalty we needed to provide an experience to suit today’s digital-first customers – for example the flexibility and convenience of an online portal.”

Frustratingly, disjointed manual processes and inflexible systems left the energy retailers unable to expose the functionality necessary to enable self-service.

To overcome these challenges, Momentum Energy knew they needed a systems overhaul and a single integrated platform from where it could deliver better for customers.

Momentum's primary reinvention objectives

To measure success and guide its reinvention project, Natalie Davies revealed the set of objectives and parameters Momentum Energy laid out for its project.

Delivering a single integrated platform

To provide a key part of the single, cloud-based, integrated platform it needed to successfully achieve its objectives, Momentum Energy selected CloudSense’s Salesforce-native platform. CloudSense extends the energy retailer’s Salesforce capabilities with Configure Price Quote (CPQ), Product Catalog, Order Management and eCommerce.

The CloudSense Platform’s CPQ and Order Management capabilities ensure the energy retailer provides a smooth and accurate sales and delivery process, supplying the business rules and automation necessary to make the best use of customer data in Salesforce.

"CloudSense’s CPQ and Order Management capabilities ensure the energy retailer provides a smooth and accurate sales and delivery process, supplying the business rules and automation necessary to make the best use of customer data in Salesforce."

CloudSense’s Product Catalog delivers flexibility around product, pricing and bundling and by exposing CloudSense’s eCommerce functionality, Momentum Energy now has the ability to offer online orders and self-service to their customers.

Although the new platform was essential to the reinvention project, Natalie Davies emphasized that delivering this solution wasn’t just a matter of changing systems, the organization had to evolve too, “Not only do we have new systems and new processes, we also changed our way of working – from putting the team on one floor, to adopting agile processes – we did everything we could to ensure the adoption of these new platforms went smoothly.”

A truly customer-centric experience

With CloudSense, Momentum Energy now has the single integrated platform and 360-degree view of customers it needs to provide a market-leading customer experience.

The genuine reinvention of the organization has seen most business processes change as a result of their new systems. Following the changes, the energy retailer has immediately seen tangible improvements in business results and customer satisfaction.

Automated online sales and order management

Automated online sales and order management processes have saved time, reduced errors and cut costs, while improving the customer journey – in fact, order fulfilment time has dropped by 94%.

Faster & more flexible go-to-market

The improvements for customers don’t end there. Momentum Energy’s online self-service offering delivers the convenience and flexibility today’s digital-first customers expect.

"Momentum Energy’s product team can now launch new products quickly, change pricing easily and bundle products using CloudSense’s flexible and unified product catalog, enabling Momentum Energy to go to market quicker."

The marked improvement is demonstrated by the reduction in product launch time to days instead of months – with 4 products being launched within the first 10 weeks of the system going live.

360-degree view of customers

Vitally, all data points and interactions are mirrored and updated in Salesforce in real-time to provide the all-important 360-degree visibility and continuity that ensures the customer experience remains consistent across channels.

Summing up CloudSense’s impact on the reinvention project Natalie Davies said, “CloudSense is essential to providing the single, integrated platform on Salesforce that Momentum Energy needed. CloudSense has seamlessly extended Salesforce, enabling us to improve our accuracy and provide a joined-up, customer-centric service all the way from quotes and the delivery of orders, right through to our eCommerce offering.”

“CloudSense has seamlessly extended Salesforce, enabling us to improve our accuracy and provide a joined-up, customer-centric service all the way from quotes and the delivery of orders, right through to our eCommerce offering.”

Natalie Davies, Head of Customer Experience at Momentum Energy