Jemena uplifts digital interactions to meet customer expectations

Jemena is an energy utility company that owns and operates a diverse portfolio of energy assets across Australia’s northern and east coast regions. 

With over $11 billion worth of major utility infrastructure, it provides millions of households and businesses with essential daily services, including supplying gas to almost 1.6 million customers in New South Wales and electricity to more than 350,000 customers in the northwestern parts of Melbourne. 

Sandra Centofanti, general manager, Customer & Commercial for Jemena, says the energy industry is evolving rapidly, with more options available to consumers. 

“Customers are much more active in the market, transitioning between energy alternatives and opting for new solutions such as solar generation and electric vehicle charging infrastructure. We wanted to make the most of the opportunities for growth and innovation for our customers ”

To enable this, Jemena embarked on a customer transformation project to become a customer-centric organization, with the first stage of the journey named "CX (Customer Experience) Uplift."

“We are dedicated to crafting enduring relationships with customers, and we realized we needed to improve our customer relationship processes to meet expectations through timely communication and service offerings. 

“Our CX Uplift program is the first crucial step to transforming the way we operate our energy network distribution businesses as we head into a changing consumer-led energy market,” says Centofanti.

Siloed data across disparate systems

Jemena’s key challenge was gaining a single source of truth for customer data across the organization. Data was siloed across multiple systems, making effective consolidation and gaining a 360-degree view of customers and services problematic.

Pratham Bhandari, acting general manager, Digital Market Platforms for Jemena, says that, in order to derive valuable insights from customer data to refine its service offerings, the company needed to rethink how it designed its customer services. 

 “The processes required to deliver services to customers were not connected across our systems, which led to issues with data transference, duplication of data and the inability to access specific customer data when needed. 

“It was clear that our aging technology architecture was not matching up with our business ambitions. It was the perfect timing for us to pathway to a future-proof digital landscape for the organization.” 

Jemena also relied heavily on manual processes, resulting in slow response times to customer inquiries and claims applications. These limitations were evident across its digitized support service, and Jesse Mills, CX Innovation Manager for Jemena, says these deficiencies were impacting the customer experience.

“What we were hearing from our customers is that they wanted to know more about their interactions with us. They wanted to know what they can do to help speed up the process of getting their home or their business connected.

“The software we were using no longer offered the capabilities and functionality required to serve our customers effectively. Only part of our team had visibility across raised customer service tickets, and processes such as delegated financial authority approvals were completed manually.”

This meant Jemena employees spent much of their time either trying to locate siloed data or manually re-typing data to fill out forms or tickets before they could be actioned, explains Mills.

“These time-consuming tasks also affected our customers, with the high risk of human error and the poor visibility across customer service requests creating inefficiencies throughout the customer journey.”

Achieving end-to-end functionality

Before choosing a solution to replace its legacy applications, Jemena considered which technological architecture would best suit its current needs and meet its future business goals.

“By focusing on the processes that would improve customer service, we were able to identify solutions that would deliver end-to-end functionality to provide accurate, consistent and timely information,” says Centofanti. “Simplify, automate and digitalize where possible were the three key design principles used.” 

SAP Service Cloud was selected due to the ease of its cloud-based integration with other SAP products, allowing Jemena to consolidate its customer data and create a robust case management and communications system. 

Jemena integrated SAP BTP (Business Technology Platform) with SAP Service Cloud to build automated workflows and a stronger back-end connection; SAP SuccessFactors to sync employee and organizational data; and SAP Customer Data Cloud for identity management to refine its understanding of individual customers and drive more informed service delivery and decision-making.

DXC Technology was selected to help implement SAP’s Service Cloud application and integrations. As the chosen implementation partner, DXC supplied highly-skilled SAP solution architects as well as functional and technical consultants to customize SAP BTP to serve Jemena’s CX project goals better.

“What distinguished DXC was their deep expertise in human-centric design and agile principles that puts the customer at the heart,” says Bhandari.

Customer transformation success entails a shift in business structures from a "one company does it all" model to a "work-together" approach, says Julien Capraro, chief digital officer for Jemena. “This means we had to embrace open and flexible structures where partners can solve business problems together. This is where the DXC partnership was key.”

Mohanraj Murugesan Kuppusamy, acting engagement, planning & delivery manager, Digital Market Platforms Delivery for Jemena, continued: “One of the standouts for me personally working with DXC was their collaborative approach and willingness to listen to customer requirements."

Simpler processes for customers and employees

By implementing SAP Service Cloud, Jemena has gained a consolidated source of truth for all its customer, employee and service data. With this improved visibility and functionality, it can offer customers a more efficient and beneficial digital support service, streamlining customer interactions with the business.

One process that has been improved significantly for customers is Jemena’s customer claims, explains Mills. 

“Before, our customer service agents would receive a submitted form and manually update our systems with the information, slowing the resolution process considerably. 

“We have now updated our standard enquiry form to enable customers to select a claim area and receive information related to that type, such as whether they might qualify for a claim. 

“Customers can now upload images and supporting evidence to forms. As our forms are directly integrated into SAP Service Cloud, we can keep our customers automatically updated regarding their claim status changes.”

From an employee perspective, SAP Service Cloud offers a one-stop shop for customer management. Jemena can now manage all individual customers, account customers and contacts across the organization in one system, and differentiate between one-time and returning customers.

According to Bhandari, this allows Jemena to further personalize its services and customer communications.

“We have also built an automated ticket management system that is searchable and can be tagged to individual customers, creating traceability and easy access to all previous interactions with that customer, including data such as meter readings, disputes and service notifications. 

“By consolidating our customer data, our service agents can focus on resolving tickets instead of inputting data, while our managers benefit from simplified workflows such as the claims approvals process, which originally had multiple approval cycles and required manual approval of every individual payment.” 

Centralizing collective data has also empowered Jemena to perform more sophisticated data analysis and reports to refine insights, ensuring it can continue to support customers into the future. 

With the CX Uplift program delivering on its promise to simplify both the user experience and customer experience through integration of historical data silos, customer satisfaction scores are very strong.

“The CX Foundation program was truly a notable example of a business-led, digital-enabled change supported by strong external partnerships with customer centricity and employee experience being the center of the change,” says Capraro. 

“It was a role model project focusing on organizational change management which resulted in a smooth and seamless transition.”

The future

Centofanti concluded, “The program has enabled our teams to have a 360- degree view of all customers and it's much simpler and easier to do business. We’ve seen benefits for our employees and the way customers interact and interface with us. The next phase for us is "Transform," where we unlock further benefits for our customers.”