Fichtner Digital Customer

Knowing and understanding customer needs better

The energy sector is undergoing a radical transition. Utilities face a volatile market environment characterized by fundamental changes, new market players and increasing competition. What were purely consumers in the energy system are rapidly becoming stakeholders – and this applies to private end customers as well as industrial ones. Umpteen questions are waiting to be answered: Which customer needs will I have to address in the future? With which products and services? What will my sustainable business model be?

One answer will certainly lie in a stronger customer focus, in an improved approach to meeting their expectations and needs. Other sectors are already showing the way. “Always, everything, immediately, conveniently, at low cost” is the motto of the customer journey in the digital world. Energy utilities will also have to measure themselves against this.

Challenges facing your company                                                                      

For a municipal utility, every attempt to move a step closer to its customers means first having to deal with numerous disruptive factors that have to be overcome along the way.

The digital interface with your customers

An internet-based platform as a digital customer interface is a great opportunity for energy providers to handle the increasing complexity, rising data volumes and growing customer expectations. And that with the joint aims of becoming more competitive and attaining greater customer satisfaction.

Two years ago, we at Fichtner set ourselves the strategic objective of developing for our customers effective solutions to this host of new problems. This is why we have invested in developing and upgrading existing digital CRM portal solutions. We are working to help enterprises in the energy industry improve their communication, increase customer satisfaction and generate additional value for themselves and their customers by utilizing new technologies.

The e-portal

We’re developing the digital home for your customers. This includes a whole range of services to tie them to your company. Among other things, an e-shop, chatbot functions, payment systems and credit information. From the evaluation of digital customer communication, you glean valuable usage data that helps you to optimize your offerings and realize cross-over sales.

This also includes a public consultation model. Sustainability is an issue rapidly gaining in importance: More and more people want to do their bit and help shape the future of their own regional energy system. Public consultation is the means to achieve this. It gives municipalities, municipal utilities and citizens an opportunity to participate in and benefit from the restructuring of the energy supply system.

The workshop

An e-portal solution from Fichtner is as unique as your requirements. That's why each of our e-portal projects kicks off with its own customer workshop. This enables us to sit down with you and analyze your distinctive requirement profile. In relation to both B2C private customers and B2B business customers. This results in your own personal roadmap through the digital transformation. With individually defined development steps and procedures. For more efficient customer communication and ‘smoother’, more stable customer relationships.

The technology

We have chosen a modular Microsoft Dynamics architecture for our platform development work. Firstly, because we wanted to combine stability and agility. Secondly, to offer our customers the ability to integrate Fichtner’s modules into their systems as they see fit and progressively, depending on their own specific requirements and preferences. In addition, this technology enables us to introduce innovations such as process efficiency through optimized interfaces, machine learning and other analytical functions.