For over a century, a regional energy provider has reliably supplied the Ruhr region with electricity, natural gas, district heating, and energy-related services. The company partnered with Wavestone to help them systematically capture customer feedback along various customer journeys and develop targeted improvement measures aligned with its corporate strategy.
Discover how Wavestone developed a pragmatic “Voice of the Customer” (VoC) concept that became a powerful approach for sustainably enhancing the customer experience.
Voice of the Customer (VoC) refers to the opinions, expectations, and needs of customers regarding a company and its products or services. Through structured feedback methods – such as surveys, interviews, or data-driven analyses – companies can gain valuable insights to make targeted improvements and enhance customer satisfaction. VoC is not just passive feedback, but an active factor in product development as well as sales and service processes. In this way, the voice of the customer becomes the foundation for sustainable business decisions and an improved customer experience.
The regional energy provider recognized the importance of measurable customer satisfaction and developed a comprehensive overall strategy, defining customer satisfaction as one of the top objectives. Before the project began, customer satisfaction was only measured sporadically, and there was no central control or success measurement for potential optimization measures. To effectively implement this key goal, the energy provider wanted to establish a pragmatic, scalable “Voice of the Customer” (VoC) concept that would enhance both customer and employee satisfaction while promoting customer centricity across the organization. In this process, the company aimed to leverage existing strengths – such as clear management commitment, the openness of project members, and synergies with other CX projects – to efficiently address challenges like resource scarcity, siloed thinking, and parallel initiatives.
In this complex environment, Wavestone proved to be the ideal partner to support the company in its transformation – combining expertise, proven methodology, and years of experience in both the energy sector and CX projects.
As part of the project, structured workshops were conducted across the three project phases: “Explore,” “Design,” and “Execute” Each workshop consisted of an Insights segment (Best Practices & Methodology) and an Interaction segment (individual processing of the insights).
The Three Project Phases: Explore, Design, Execute
In the “Explore” phase, Wavestone analyzed the current VoC status quo of the company. Each VoC dimension was then assigned a maturity level, which was discussed with the client. Together, they established a realistic ambition level and developed an overarching vision for the top priority: “Customer Satisfaction.” For each dimension, specific actions were created to validate the current state, identify measures from the customers’ internal perspective, and integrate external best practices to achieve the defined ambition level. Additionally, potential implementation risks and challenges were identified.
In the “Design” phase, conceptual workshops were held to develop the broad measures for all VoC dimensions to reach the ambition level. Best practices and benchmarking results were taken into account. Synergies from the ongoing CJM project, as well as relevant VoC methodologies, were also integrated to consolidate CX initiatives and foster a customer-centric mindset.
The focus was on developing a “metrics tree” that identifies existing measurement criteria, channels, and data sources. Additionally, the design of questionnaires for collecting both quantitative and qualitative feedback was created, along with a guide for the systematic design of feedback surveys.
In this phase, the guide for the systematic design of feedback surveys was applied to the customer journeys, leveraging synergies with the ongoing CJM project. The focus was on the entire process of collecting, analyzing, and implementing feedback, as well as integrating the VoC approach into the company’s CX management within a comprehensive customer experience cycle.
In this workshop, internal cultural and communication measures along the developed customer experience cycle were critically examined. Furthermore, roles and responsibilities within the company were clarified, tool selection for feedback processes was discussed, and a long list of potential tool providers was compiled.
In the “Execute” phase, all developed actions were recorded in terms of their implementation status, prioritized, and aligned with an implementation roadmap for realization. Responsibilities were assigned to the project team members, and the actions were approved for implementation. Close coordination between stakeholders, along with clear assignment of responsibilities, ensured the efficient execution of the actions and the achievement of the desired outcomes.
“The success factors of this project, in my view, lie in the collaborative development and decision-making of all VoC artifacts (the interplay between insights and interaction), as well as in the balance between strategic, holistic thinking and pragmatically focused action. Together with the client, we succeeded in developing a sustainable VoC concept that aligns best practices and benchmarking for the company’s unique circumstances.“
As part of the project, a clear vision was developed for the top priority of customer satisfaction. The goal was to create a holistic, pragmatic, and flexibly scalable “Voice of the Customer” (VoC) concept tailored to the specific needs of the energy provider. In close collaboration, key areas such as defining direct and indirect customer satisfaction metrics for each channel, as well as identifying data sources and requirements for each metric, were worked out. Additionally, various tool scenarios were evaluated, and a longlist of potential tool providers was compiled.
A central component was the development of a guide for the systematic design of feedback surveys, applied to the customer journeys from a parallel project. Initial feedback surveys were also designed. A customer experience cycle was developed, covering all relevant activities, tools, and systems, and clearly defining both central and decentralized CX roles.
To foster a customer-centric mindset within the company, an interactive internal communication strategy was developed to support the entire CX management process. All actions were precisely aligned, and responsibilities were clearly defined. The CJM project was successfully integrated into the VoC concept, resulting in a sustainable end-to-end CX management process.
The project team was trained in key VoC methodologies, and essential assets, such as the guide for designing feedback surveys, were provided. The collaboration helped promote a customer-centric mindset and integrated the decentralized distribution of CX responsibilities while maintaining central coordination. This approach allowed for scaling internal customer centricity and alleviating the central roles – a long-term perspective for the company to achieve sustainable customer satisfaction.
