Superior service experiences by listening to the customers’ needs
Vantaa Energy wants to enable smooth everyday lives and be the primary energy partner to customers. The changing needs of consumers require constant development of services. Vantaa Energy is ready to meet this challenge.
Vantaa Energy wants to offer its customers a superior customer experience. These days, it is even more important than before because the customers’ expectations have changed and the competition in the sector is getting tougher.
– Responsibility is a growing trend, and property owners are now asking the service providers to offer a comprehensive service, says Matti Wallin who is responsible for Vantaa Energy’s Energy Service Business, as well as its strategy and new business activities.
The customers of the Energy Service Business, which was established in 2020, include just over 5,000 properties ranging from enterprises to customer-owned housing companies and public organisations. Delivery of environmentally friendly energy is no longer enough for them. Lately, many companies have emerged on the market, competing for traditional district heat customers with heating, cooling and energy-efficiency services. Unfortunately there is a hidden problem in the activities of many of these companies:
– Many operators optimise energy use from the property’s point of view and disregard the impacts on the entire energy system. As these providers do not have, for example, the possibility to operate the whole chain from the power plant to the customer, unfortunately they end up increasing the carbon footprint of the entire energy system, Wallin points out.
Vantaa Energy wants to be the partner of choice for consumers in all energy matters, and therefore it is essential to respond to competition. However, the focus must be on reducing the carbon footprint of the entire energy system.
– We can help our customers, for example, with various levels of energy renovations, which these days strongly involve remote controls, says Tomi Myller, Head of Vantaa Energy’s Sales & Customer Solutions team.
New strategy responds to the changing wishes of customers
A new strategy was created for the energy service business in connection with its establishment. In future, the objective is to invest even more in customer work and to build services and products that meet the changing customer needs. This requires increasing of customer understanding, and therefore in 2020 the business unit carried out a number of interviews to identify these needs.
In addition, customer satisfaction surveys also provide information that is useful for the development of operations. The customer satisfaction of the energy service business is measured each year with two different surveys. One of the surveys is aimed at those who have recently joined Vantaa Energy as customers, the other annual survey probes the overall experience of all customers. The results for 2020 were excellent: the average for those who have joined as customers was 9.5 (scale 4–10), and a record result, 4.22 was achieved in the survey for all customers (scale 1–5).
However, there is still room for improvement.
– During 2021, we will update our services for making it even easier for customers to join us, says Myller.
New choices as a result of phasing out fossil fuels
When considering customer needs, it is worth remembering the major development trends for Vantaa Energy as a whole. The company is currently working on the Fossil-free 2026 project with an objective of phasing out fossil fuels over the next five years.
– Our customers will soon be able to choose from diverse fossil-free energy forms and ensuring energy efficiency of properties as an effortless turnkey service. That will be an easy way for our customers to take part in resolving the climate crisis, says Wallin.
In the future, Vantaa Energy will be a diverse company that delivers heat and cooling for properties, adjusts energy efficiency to top form and ensures, for example, energy self-sufficiency with solar panels.
Matti Wallin, Business Director of Vantaa Energy’s Energy Service Business, is in charge, for example, for the increasing competition for our customers in the transition of the energy market.
Tomi Myller, head of the Sales & Customer Solutions team, is responsible for sales and the development of customer solutions. He wants to focus on customer-driven energy solutions that help make the everyday lives of our customers even smoother.