Vattenfall
Vattenfall Business: Driving Sustainable Customer Relationships
Case Information
Vattenfall is one of the largest providers in the large-scale business energy market. Naturally, Vattenfall aims to maintain and further expand this position. To achieve this, it is crucial to continuously be aware of your customers’ needs and experiences, to remain in dialogue with them, and to continuously improve based on these insights. Vattenfall Business has been working with Blauw Research’s Voice of the Customer programme for several years to this end. This programme continuously gathers insights into customer experience and provides Vattenfall with the tools to implement structural improvements for sustainable customer relationships.
The Question
Continuous Insight into Customer Relationships and Drivers
Blauw collects monthly feedback from Vattenfall’s business customers. This is done through structured telephone interviews. We engage with customers about their overall customer relationship with Vattenfall (e.g., NPS) and the drivers and root causes influencing it. By continuously gathering these insights, Vattenfall Business remains constantly informed about customer concerns. Developments in the results can be analysed directly in a dashboard, and account managers, customer service representatives, and marketers can make immediate adjustments and take action.
The Challenge
Advantages of Telephone Interviews for a Business Target Group
Blauw always collaborates with the client to determine the most suitable method for reaching the target group. In consultation with Vattenfall Business, after extensive testing of various methods, structured telephone interviews were chosen. This method best suits the relationship Vattenfall has with its business customers. Telephone research also leads to a higher response rate within this target group. Business customers are generally less inclined to participate in email surveys. They are more willing to cooperate in a telephone interview and provide their opinion directly in a conversation with an interviewer.
The Approach
Directly Acting on Customer Feedback
An important part of our approach is following up on customer feedback in a dashboard. Customers who wish to be contacted are called back by their account manager based on the answers they provided. By calling customers back directly, the account manager can immediately address and resolve needs or potential issues for the customer. Employees record the insights and actions from these closed-loop feedback discussions in the dashboard, which continuously serves as input for structural improvements in creating sustainable customer relationships.
The Value of 'Closing the Loop'
Customers appreciate the feedback Vattenfall Business provides based on their input. They value that Vattenfall takes the time for feedback from individual customers and highly appreciate that any questions and problems are quickly addressed. This approach aligns well with customer needs, as research results show that many business customers desire regular contact with their account manager. The Voice of the Customer programme thus offers Vattenfall an additional valuable contact moment with the customer.
<span data-metadata=""><span data-buffer="">The Result
Sustainable Improvement of Customer Experience
Periodically, Vattenfall Business analyses the results, developments, and areas for improvement based on the structural feedback. Blauw provides input on which strengths and areas for improvement have the most impact on Vattenfall’s key KPI, the NPS. Blauw acts as a sparring partner for Vattenfall Business to effectively interpret the results each quarter and for a presentation to employees who will implement them. This results in targeted improvements to sustainably enhance the customer experience.
In practice.
Excelling in customer experience? It starts with effective research
