UT - Data Pack

Leading a Universal Team

Data

start

The Context

The Why

The How

The What

Welcome to the future ! This is the place where knowledge and agility are the keys to delighting and enriching our customers' lives. This is the place where our customers will remember their experiences they’ve had with us and the relationships we’ve built with them and we’ve got the power to have that positive impact on people’s life and change their perception of the energy industry whilst helping them become powered by sustainable energy.

For a seed to grow or a flower to blossom, they will need the right environment which will ensure that they’ll be able to get everything they need to thrive. Similarly, the environment within a Universal team has to encourage and stimulate growth, focus on building strong bonds and relationships relying on collaboration rather than competition, and a high level of synergy where the people’s strengths complement each other. These are the foundations of a high performing Universal team which is at the heart of of our operating model and the ‘Micro-business’ approach ensures that every member of the team is a stakeholder and is accountable for achieving the collective goals to make the micro-business a success, thus contributing to the overall success of the wider business.

The universal agent model brings highly skilled Energy Specialists into teams who provide end to end customer service. Each team works and functions as it’s own micro business and is responsible for their customer base. The model is built on empowering and ensuring everyone is accountable for everything. 'Universal Team' isn’t just limited to helping customers, we should all be universal agents with everything. This includes:

1. We are all HR
2. We should all look after the wellbeing of our people
3. We are all responsible for the growth and development of our people

Data

Data Obsessed

Resource Planning

Customer Demographics

Resource Planning

Every high performing team or organisation will have a plan of action which will be dictated by the leader and communicated in advance to the team. In E.ON Next, it’s the responsibility of the team leader to create and communicate that schedule with their own team before every day starts.

Case Study

Info

Reflection Time

The team leader will always be the one to create the schedule as they are the ones closest to the data ( e.g. comms sent out, previous demand ), also they should have their own tracker of each work-stream that’s impacting their customer portfolio ( e.g. number of refunds outstanding, number of disputes that need responding etc. ). The schedule should reflect the top 3 goals for the week, knowing your priorities will help you create an effective schedule based on how important and urgent the goals are. The schedule should be created on Friday in advance for the week that will follow as Workday will provide the information of who you’ll be able to count on and who’s off ( e.g. holidays, medical appointment ). As with everything in life, there will be intraday changes that will need to happen, however based on what standards have been established within the team, each team member should communicate any changes that would impact the schedule at least a day prior, or, worst case scenario, at least an hour before customers will contact us. Another aspect to consider, looking at the historical data available through Tableau, trends and patterns can be identified which will also influence how the schedule would look like. For example, the first and last weeks of every month will tend to be busier as most customers will try to contact us then because that’s when they pay their bills, provide a meter reading or a price cap takes effect. One important thing to remember, is that the schedule shouldn’t be treated as gospel depending on what is impacting your team in the day, and the approach of the team should be an agile one to be able to adapt to the unpredictable ( e.g. Twilio crashes and no calls can be answered - an agile team will then move on to tackle other work-streams, whilst Tech is addressing the issues ). Top Tip: Celebrate the agility of the team when things don't go according to plan! For more tips on Scheduling, please click on the link below: The Art of Scheduling

Think of a high performing team in the Premier League, the manager will schedule each player to cover a certain position on the field, and that team will start with a clear formation of where everyone needs to be which will be communicated before the actual game starts to ensure the collective goals of the team are being met.

Reflection Time: What are the implications for the team if there's no schedule in place ? What about for our customers?

Data obsessed

The future is built around data, and for a Universal team, having the most up to date, relevant, and easy to understand data makes the difference between achieving the collective goals and offering the highest quality experience for the people that are being served.

Case Study

Info

Reflection Time

As we’re a data obsessed company, leaders have at their disposal various platforms that are able to provide this data in order to effectively decide the best course of action, implement any course-correct adjustments intraday and problem solve when things go wrong or take a proactive, innovative approach. E.ON Next provides a plethora of systems that provide data from every important perspective that contributes to our mission like : Chattermill which enables you to understand the customer sentiment, OfficeVibe which enables leaders to receive feedback from their own team and understand the team’s engagement and Tableau which covers data from A - Z enabling leaders to understand all the metrics contributing to E.ON Next’s ambition. A Universal team will need to know what good looks to achieve the collective goals and this is achieved through transparency and honesty, where everyone is being held accountable.

Morning messages should include how the day before went and the customers feedback on the back of CHI responses and daily updates should be posted with the number of customers helped on the phones and intercoms. Here's an example below: The team leader has provided an individual update on how each member of the is performing and the progression of the collective goal when it comes to the number of customers helped. Also, as one of the goals for the week was to reduce the volume of letters received from our customers, an update has been provided to keep the drive and engagement from the team.

Reflection Time: What are the impacts on our teams and customers if all data available is not being used? How can you make the most out of all the existing that E.ON Next has to offer?

Customer Demographics

In the context of a Universal Team, understanding the demographics of their customer database leads to building better relationships with those customers and a better understanding of what our customers actually need as the demographics are able to provide a detailed view of specific characteristics of the portfolio of customers a universal team is serving.

Case Study

Reflection Time

Info

Team X from family Y has always had more phone demand versus the other teams in a family. The leader of team X has had the idea of profiling the customer database and has worked with the data team to create a Tableau report with the demographics of the customers database. This has then revealed that team X had less customers that had an email address and an online account set up compared to the rest of the teams in the family which drove the phone demand to be higher. The leader has then got together with the team to tackle this aspect and come up with ideas and solutions together to increase the number of customers with an email on their account and an online account set up and with this focus, the phone demand has gradually reduced over the course of the 4 weeks. This win would not have been possible without the spirit of innovation from the leader, the cross-collaboration with the data team and the commitment and buy-in from the team.

Reflection Time: What are the benefits of understanding the demographics of your customer database? How can you use this understanding to improve the customer journey?

What are Demographics? Demographics are the characteristics of human populations and population segments, especially when used to identify consumer markets. The customer demographics information is particularly useful as it allows you to profile your customer database giving you an insight into particular customer behaviours. Just like a detective trying to resolve a case, examining all characteristics surrounding your customers enables you to come up with strategies to proactively prevent demand and to better serve them. For example, if the majority of your customers prefer their comms to be sent by post which takes longer to be delivered, you would only see the impact on your phone lines and intercoms ( potentially ) after a week as it takes 5-6 days for the letters to be received. Another example of why periodically reviewing the customer demographics is useful is that if the majority of your customers pay on receipt of bill, you might see an influx of calls on the lines and your team taking a lot of card payments, when this could’ve been avoided if a direct debit would’ve been set up which would’ve been more convenient for the customer and for the business, not to mention the discount offered to customers who pay by direct debit.