Benefits of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software in the Energy Sector

Without its customers, an energy supply company is nothing but an idea. In today’s increasingly competitive landscape, acquisition of customers is key. However, once acquired, it becomes absolutely essential to retain those customers and increase customer engagement too. Customer relationship management software can help energy suppliers do just that.

Having well formed relationships with customers is key for any energy supplier. The partnerships that you forge with the people you serve will determine the success of your business. As with any type of relationship, the better you know one another, the more fruitful and valuable that relationship becomes.

On the customer side, getting to know you is usually relatively easy. After all, you invest in marketing, promotion, website content and other forms of putting your company out there, so that it’s easy for customers to get to know your brand. On the other side, getting to know your customers in any level of detail can be trickier.

In modern times, it’s easier than ever to gather information about your customers. Whether it's from the ‘likes’ on your Facebook page, clicks on your ads or information you collect about those who are already converted, there’s a wealth of data to be harvested that can give you the inside track.

However, harvesting that data is only the first step. Next, you need a way to keep, access and translate that data into meaningful information for your business. Having someone do that for you would be a full time job and more; not to mention one that is fraught with the potential to make mistakes. CRM software is the neat solution to this problem, which will enable collection, storage, retrieval and analysis of all sorts of customer related information.

Armed with this, your business can become a more informed, more proactive endeavour. Customers who feel well known by companies feel more cared about, and that makes them want to do more business with you. Added to this are numerous other benefits of CRM systems to energy companies. Let’s take a look at some of them.

Using a CRM not only makes your business a much more informed operation, it can also enhance your productivity in a number of other ways. For example:

When you start collecting data about your customers with an energy CRM solution , you can start making smart decisions about how to reach them too. Targeting social marketing and online ads at more defined groups will reduce your marketing cost and will make you more likely to connect with the right people. Using CRM software, all the interactions from these efforts will be logged too, so you can follow up on the interactions you do receive, letting you start to build relationships with new, interested parties.

Finding new customers can be many times more expensive than the cost of working to keep the ones you already have; between five and 25 times more expensive, according to research. By consolidating your customer data into a CRM database, you can start to understand how your customers behave, keep track of who’s coming to the end of a contract, and inform your sales and marketing efforts to better reach the right people at the right time.

Sure, your core business is selling gas or electricity to your customers, but that doesn’t mean you have to stop there. Knowing more about what your customers need and want will enable you to offer additional services, whether that’s referrals for insulation work, boiler servicing contracts or simply downloadable guides on energy efficiency. By adding value for your customers, you become more important to them, and could even identify new revenue opportunities for the business too.

By knowing where customers are in their journey with you, your business can become more proactive in offering assistance. For example, a customer who is nearing the end of their contract term is ripe for a good offer for a new fixed deal. Similarly, if you have information that a customer has installed a new technology, switched a fuel type or bought an electric car, for example, you’ll be able to take the lead in offering them products and services that better match their needs.

For your existing customers, nothing is worse than having to explain the same thing many times over. By keeping records of all your contact with them on a CRM, you can ensure all representatives are always up to speed with the latest news on that customer. Being able to cut the time it takes to resolve queries and to handle customers in a more professional way will ensure you always get five stars of satisfaction from your customer.

CRM systems are about more than just collecting and analysing data. They can also serve as a business management tool which helps to increase operational efficiency. A solid energy CRM enables all departments and individuals to communicate, cooperate and deliver an outstanding service with less time and hassle involved. Every employee will be able to work as a team with others in the business, by having a centrally held source of information and resources at their fingertips at all times.

Related: Learn more about the benefits of SaaS in the energy sector.

With the smart meter rollout ploughing ahead, the potential for collecting and using data about our customers has never been greater. By taking advantage of all the benefits of CRM, energy suppliers can harness the power of this information and use it to serve their customers better.

Further Reading

How a CRM makes Energy Billing easy for Energy Suppliers

Add your Customers to the Priority Service Register with Dyball’s CRM

How a CRM makes change of tenancy energy bills easy to manage

Dyball Associates are proud to help new supply businesses successfully launch in the UK market.

Through our energy market consultancy services, and the software we've developed, we're supporting new UK electricity and gas suppliers get set up and start supplying.



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