SSE

Digital transformation and customer-centred organisation change.

Sectors: Energy and Utilities. Year: 2024

We worked with SSE Energy Solutions, which supplies gas and electricity to 400,000 businesses across Great Britain, to make them a more customer-centric business.

In doing so, we helped them create better digital services for energy quoting, purchasing, and account management.

And we created a research-based strategy, keeping every delivery team working towards solving customer needs.

Outcomes

  • Culture change: Every digital service now goes through user testing.
  • Better experiences: Key tasks are completed with 50% fewer page loads.
  • Less cost: Our work identified a potential 30% reduction in call centre traffic.
  • More efficient delivery: We halved the time it takes to release experiences to customers

The problem to solve

Our relationship with SSE began with their ‘Energy Solutions’ division, which supplies gas and electricity to businesses.

They also help businesses reduce their emissions with different services, including installation of smart meters, and on-site energy infrastructure such as solar panels.

But it was hard for business customers to interact with SSE digitally, involving lots of manual processes. Customers would receive quotes by email, or they’d have to phone to get a statement. This also created internal costs.

Additionally, customer research wasn’t typically involved when designing new solutions.

So, SSE needed to deliver new digital services. But they also needed to become more customer centric.

What we did

We worked with SSE to design a set of digital services. In parallel, we embedded new processes and structures to help SSE improve customer centricity.

Our approach.

Delivering digital services

We began by forming a design studio within SSE. This team designed a range of new digital services:

  • A new Energy Solutions website – simplifying five existing websites into one.
  • An online quote-and-buy journey. Before this, business users would have to work with confusing lists of tariffs, or use an intermediary.
  • A ‘Manage my account’ area for businesses, including functionality like sending meter readings
  • Help and support. Our research identified which tasks that would work better online (rather than over email or the phone), e.g. checking a bill balance.
The new Energy Solutions website.
A new online ‘quote-and-buy’ journey.
The new ‘manage my account’ area.
A new tool for businesses to submit meter readings.

Customer research helped stakeholders make better decisions. For example, the original plan for ‘Manage my account’ was to provide the same experience to both large and small businesses. Our research showed stakeholders this wouldn’t work. Making small, single-site businesses wade through navigation needed for large, multi-site businesses was overwhelming. Instead, we provided different experiences for different businesses.

Larger businesses needed to manage multiple sites (but we simplified this for smaller businesses).

Increasing customer centricity

At the same time as designing digital services, we made changes to embed customer-centricity at SSE:

  • We created a customer-centred process for running projects, from receiving briefs, to holding retrospectives. We coached product managers, solutions architects, and others, in how to use it.
  • We built a design system, making design work quicker and more consistent.
  • We set up a research panel of SSE customers. It’s now quicker to recruit people, meaning more frequent research.
  • We set up a library of research insights, making it easier for more teams to access research.
  • We set up a ‘customer experience strategy’ group – a group of around 60 leaders across the business. We ran show-and-tells for them, encouraging customer-focussed decisions.
  • We mapped out existing customer journeys, helping SSE choose specific customer and staff problems to fix.
  • We grew the design studio within SSE. We shaped the team structure, role descriptions and reasons to work at SSE. This enabled SSE to hire their current Head of UX.
A page from the new Design System.
A user interface showing a grid of text boxes, which have been blurred out for confidentiality.
The insights library we set up.

Customer centred strategy

Next, SSE needed a customer-centred strategy.

We created a vision for the experience customers want and the technology to support it, all based on our research.

We created a set of roadmaps. Each included Objectives and Key Results, for example, increasing online conversion rate.

A zoomed in screenshot of a roadmap. It shows a grid of text boxes categorised into 'Now', 'Next', and 'Later'. The text boxes have been blurred out for confidentiality.
A roadmap for one of SSE’s focus areas.

Now, every delivery team now has a ‘north star’ to work towards, and measurable objectives, grounded in customer needs.

Outcomes

We have changed how SSE operates. Today, every digital service that SSE releases goes through user testing.

It’s paid off. Digital experiences on the energy solutions site are easier for customers. For instance, meter readings have risen three-fold, and are completed with half the page loads.

The work has also helped SSE save costs. We found better self-serve could lead to a 30% drop in calls.

And our work to improve SSE’s ways of working has enabled SSE to deliver work quicker. Our website for SSE Energy Solutions took half the time expected to release to customers.

How can we do the best thing for the customers now and evolve the solution as technology improves?

Alan Robb CIO, SSE

½ Number of steps to complete key tasks

½ Time to release experiences to customers

69% Reduction in calls to submit meter readings

68% Increase in account creation for customer portal

Learn more about SSE

Alix Vaughan

Reach out to Alix Vaughan

Sales Director