Schneider Electric, a global specialist in energy management, wants to elevate its customer engagement offerings.
As a result, it entered into an agreement with PlanetEcosystems, a customer engagement solutions provider, to provide an integrated suite of software as a service (SaaS) customer-management offerings to utility service providers called Efficiency Advisor. Combining Schneider Electric’s Wiser Home Management system with PlanetEcosystems’ P-ECOSYS customer engagement platform, Efficiency Advisor will increase the scope of value utilities offer their customers, boosting customer satisfaction, reducing costs and enhancing energy efficiency program performance.
Yann Kulp, VP of Residential Energy Solutions for Schneider Electric, participated in a Q&A with Loyalty360 to discuss his company’s new partnership.
What prompted Schneider Electric to enter into this partnership, and how will it impact customer engagement, customer experience and customer loyalty?
The Residential Energy Management team at Schneider Electric realized that to engage American consumers in an ongoing energy conversation, we needed to enrich our Wiser Air platform with relevant and personal information and recommendations. And to reduce friction to action through a marketplace where consumers can select, buy and pay for energy and efficiency solutions. In other words, customized data enhances engagement, an "easy to do" marketplace improves the experience, and utilities boost the loyalty of their customers.
What will customers receive due to this partnership that they currently don’t receive?
Utility customers get a complete and scalable Residential Energy Management platform. It starts with Efficiency Advisor, a digital energy and efficiency system that can be deployed to 100% of their customers (across all incomes and housing types) in a valuable and cost-effective way. On top of that, they can enrich the experience for their customers with a world-class smart thermostat and app—Wiser Air—to become even more efficient on air-conditioning and heating costs, participate in demand-response programs (peak load shedding) and have the convenience of remote HVAC control. Finally, Schneider Electric provides a Demand-Response Management System (DRMS) that enables the utility to collect participation data, analyze the results and use that to make better programs that provide more value to homeowners.
What does customer experience mean to Schneider Electric?
Schneider Electric is traditionally a B2B company, with customers who are contractors, distributors, OEMs, universities, data centers, hospitals, utilities, industry, etc. In that context, customer experience focuses, for example, on real-time access of technical information, pricing and project management, tech support, etc. But in this case, we’re adding incredible new features for homeowners. In other words, people like all of us, our friends, families and neighbors all across the U.S. In that case, customer experience means trustworthy information accessible 24/7, customized to personal needs, actionable when the customer can make decisions, and with practical and quick ways to do something. Whether a fantastic new thermostat, or access to information on an app, or directly buy efficiency products from Home Depot, Amazon or local certified contractors. In short: A seamless solution with real information, relevant to my home, with ideas to save money and ways to go do what’s needed easily and quickly.