Economic benefits of a well-designed TPV platform for Energy & Utility Companies

Good design is good business. Monetary benefits of good design in product, service, and organization are comprehensively captured in this study by McKinsey. Analysis of data from 300 publicly listed companies over five years proved that companies that inculcated good design experienced 32 percentage points higher revenue growth and 56 percentage points TRS (total return to shareholder) growth than industry counterparts.

A deregulated energy and utility sector is not insulated from the effect design can have on its revenues. Since the release of this study in 2019, customers have increasingly experienced personalization from brands in the retail sector. They are accustomed to relevant, contextual communications from companies, a seamless buyer journey, and convenient experiences. Small bumps in the journey make a big difference in the overall experience. Consumers have many choices, and they will go for companies offering the best experience.

In the energy & utility sector, chances of interacting with the customer are few. A majority of times, it is during purchase, termination of services, and bill payments. Companies can maximize these moments with personalized marketing, an uninterrupted buyer experience, and seamless customer support. It requires good, compliant design across all levels of the product, service & organization.

We understand that demographic profiles of energy customers cover a vast spectrum. Sales and after-sales services must cater to all age groups above 18 years old, illiterate, highly educated, and people belonging to different ethnicities. In this challenging sales cycle, a customer’s conversion often hits dead ends with third-party verification (TPV) services. Tedious processes, improper verification, change of heart, loss of connectivity are some of the reasons we lose sales at this stage.

Making the TPV process as smooth as the sales process is essential to successfully convert new customers and avoid incurring the cost of frustration with bad design.

TPV360 is intricate in its user experience because we thought of everything. It is also highly customizable to suit specific requirements.

While there are many features for different needs, let’s dive into a few ‘out-of-the-box’ features that make TPV360 a profitable choice for energy and utility companies.

A boon for touchless, safe-distance D2D sales

A lot of energy users are not comfortable purchasing products and services on digital channels. They require face-to-face interaction to understand the plans, pricing, qualifying requirements, etc. Restrictions due to Covid-19 have made it challenging to have these interactions safely. The consumer journey needs to be visualized in detail to repurpose the old technique and service new needs. For example, touchless e-signatures is a feature that allows salespeople to take signatures of customers on contracts without going close to them or sharing contaminated devices to touch. Customers are also sent the link to submit their signatures over sms or email for increased convenience of the process.

Travel light and save costs

Companies spend thousands of dollars providing hardware to sales associates. The cost of damage and retrievals eats into the profit margins. A secure, cloud-based TPV application eliminates costs and increases profit margins. The sales associate downloads the application, available for iOS and Android platforms, on their personal mobile or tablet. It reduces the number of devices to carry and saves thousands in overhead expenditure.

Customized scripts, compliant & efficient phone verifications

While the consumer may only have yes and no for an answer, verification scripts are complex and lengthy for the agents. To meet compliance, they have to be read verbatim to the consumer and be understood by the consumer. Efficiently managing the time taken up by this process can save considerable amounts of money. Dynamic, customized script uploads and streamlined process for clear verifications is a feature that a good TPV platform exhibits.

Automated, self-serve processes are preferred

During this pandemic, the use of self-serve options became popular. Digitally savvy consumers expect to complete purchases without ever speaking with a human being. Self-verification features inculcated into TPV platforms via web-form sent over SMS or email is a seamless way to engage and onboard these customers. Welcome packages with signed terms of agreement shared over email is par for the course with this generation of consumers.

Intuitive integration, formatting, and visualization of data

Management teams should not have to deal with endless reels of data spread across formats and files. A competent TPV platform gathers, sorts, structures, and visualizes data with minimal human intervention. It requires management teams to simply log in and listen to the story of their data. Some nifty features that make usage convenient are:

• In-app productivity metrics for sales agents.
• Real-time geo-location tracking of sales agents.
• Customizable & visual dashboards of data from customer and sales records.
• Automatic appending of call records to consumer records for easy retrieval.

Features like these make it easy to identify inefficiencies, alter the approach, manage sales teams, and celebrate successes.

Swift response to fraudulent activity

With geo-location tracking, in-app clock-in, clock-out features, and other enhancements, TPV360 allows users to identify and alert management of fraudulent activities in sales automatically. Furthermore, a suspicious agent’s activity can be stopped in its tracks at the click of a button until further investigation.

Third-party verification is the last mile in a buyer’s journey. It deserves as much attention to detail as the start of that journey to successfully convert sales and increase revenue.