Customer Experience
Customer Experience
Empowering teams to enhance customer experience
Customer Experience (CX) has become a critical differentiator in Energy and Utilities, evolving from traditional customer service to a comprehensive strategy that spans the entire customer journey - from brand perception and marketing to product quality and satisfaction.
In an industry where margins are tight, delivering exceptional CX isn’t just a nice-to-have, it’s essential. Poor customer experience can drive up complaints, increase cost to serve, and risk damaging your reputation. We understand these challenges and help companies manage them effectively, all while working within key regulatory constraints.
Regulatory initiatives across Utilities like Ofgem’s Consumer Confidence programme, and Ofwat’s focus on service standards, are accelerating the shift toward customer-centricity. These efforts compel companies to prioritise trust, transparency, and service excellence, making superior CX a critical factor for compliance and competitive advantage.
We firmly believe that exceptional CX begins with engaged and empowered employees. Recently, we helped E.ON Next to uplift leadership capability by 40%, through an immersive leadership development programme.
Customer Experience
Delivering the right CX solution for your organisation
A poor customer experience brings significant financial and reputational risks. In the servicing elements, when suppliers don’t get it right first time, unexpected inbound demand and repeat contact becomes a drain on resources, compounded by the impact of complaint handling costs. Companies with poor CX can also see a drop in Citizen’s Advice ratings, which can have long-lasting effects on trust and customer loyalty.
To maintain a strong position, it’s crucial to build empowered, engaged teams that can resolve issues at first contact, reducing unnecessary costs and ensuring a seamless customer experience.
At BFY, we focus on helping clients maximise the resources they have, so our solutions aren’t immediately about new platforms or expensive technologies. Instead, we optimise your existing operations and leverage what you already have, to enhance service delivery. This means improved first contact resolution, streamlined processes, and reduced hand-offs.
We also recognise that sometimes, a broader transformation is needed, creating a target operating model that makes it easier for customers to deal with you. We’ve previously combined this approach with a leadership excellence programme for a large energy supplier, which shifted NPS by +34, leadership capability by 60%, and employee engagement by 170%.
Customer Experience
Applying real-world experience and expertise
Leveraging our operational experience at the largest energy and utility suppliers, we help organisations to tackle key challenges across the customer experience spectrum, driven by regulatory pressures from Ofgem and Ofwat. This includes improving service quality, clarity of external communications, operational efficiency, and customer engagement.
Common challenges include low customer satisfaction, gaps in servicing channel capabilities, balancing AI with a human touch, customer service inefficiencies, and fostering a customer-centric workforce with a key focus on improving leadership capability.
Our solutions address these challenges through:
- Process reviews to improve service delivery and operational efficiency
- Improving leadership capability through fundamental improvement programmes tailored to business need
- Data-driven personalisation to segment customers and offer tailored solutions, boosting loyalty and engagement
- Improving complaint handling processes to reduce costs and the risk of reputational damage
- Designing target operating models that streamline operations, reduce hand-offs, and improve first contact resolution
Customer Experience
Meet the Team
Jonathan Paton
Senior Manager
Jon specialises in Customer Operations leadership, customer contact, and operational service delivery transformation/improvement.
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Lauren McCullough
Senior Manager
Lauren leads our clients through Operational Excellence, Lean Transformations and Continuous Improvement activity.
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Jon Vincent
Senior Manager
Jon helps clients resolve problems with billing, settlements, and customer service.
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Kev Brown
Senior Manager
Kev leads continuous improvement and lean transformation projects with our clients, supporting customer operations to deliver our Leadership and People Excellence programme.
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Amber Morton
Manager
Amber partners with our clients to deliver transformation and performance improvement in collections and recoveries, service delivery and customer experience.
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Louise Willumsen
Manager
Louise helps clients to achieve Operational Excellence, and specialises in driving continuous improvement through sales and retention performance, and process efficiency.
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FREE WHITE PAPER
Getting ahead of the competition in a complex Utilities sector
Ofgem and Ofwat have made it clear that today’s service standards aren’t acceptable in energy and utilities. Achieving the uplift required can’t happen overnight, and the suppliers who act fastest can lead the way for the sector, while making significant cost savings and efficiencies.
Our white paper shows how this can be achieved, looking at:
- Optimising processes and communication channels, through a better understanding of customer needs and internal performance
- Leveraging technology and AI to simplify customer communication, while easing workflow and capacity
- Empowering teams to achieve leadership excellence and establish a winning servicing culture, that gets ahead of the competition
Customer Experience
Our Insights
Differentiating the customer journey in energy’s era of ‘similar servicing’
Market share gain and great customer service are becoming increasingly linked in Energy. But as suppliers invest in new operating systems, with many opting for the same or similar providers, how will suppliers differentiate their servicing offering to create a competitive advantage?
Realising Ofgem's vision for a leading customer-centric Energy sector
Ofgem's customer service ambition makes it clear that today's service standards aren't deemed acceptable, with rising bills and record debt levels only amplifying these calls for change. It represents a new opportunity for suppliers to build a leading culture for customer-centricity, as we show here.
E.ON Next wins award for leadership development programme with BFY
We're proud to share that E.ON Next were winners at the Northern Contact Centre Forum Awards, receiving recognition for their leadership development programme, in partnership with BFY Group.