Client EG.D

High call volumes and a complex website structure

Due to state regulations, energy distributors have limited opportunities to increase profits. They therefore often focus on reducing costs. For E.ON Distribuce, the call centre – the customer helpline – was a significant expense. The confusing website only drove call volumes even higher.

As we learned from the brief and confirmed through internal in-depth interviews, call centre staff very often served merely as website guides, directing clients to pages related to their requests. Instead of having time to address problems clients couldn’t solve on their own.

Through user research and testing, we established the rules for information architecture

To design a solution, we needed to understand user scenarios – the situations in which clients come to the website and the problems they encounter.

The client defined the target groups for creating the scenarios:

1. end consumers (households, businesses), who according to further research are the largest group,
2. electricity suppliers who have a contract with E.ON Distribuce and sell electricity to end consumers,
3. municipalities that consume electricity,
4. contractors, i.e. companies and contractual partners that provide services to E.ON Distribuce on demand, e.g. electrical work or construction modifications.

Understanding user scenarios

To uncover individual website journey scenarios, we conducted in-depth interviews with customers and employees. We needed to understand how certain parts of operations work, when and in what situations people from customer support or those dealing with faults, power cuts and planned outages interact with the website.

We supplemented the in-depth interviews with additional data:

• interaction analysis using Hotjar heat maps,
• Google Analytics data analysis,
• and an expert website review.

We identified a whole range of user scenarios. We linked them with call centre data and insights from a quantitative survey. The most common tasks customers perform on the website:

• looking up information about low electricity tariff times,
• checking information about faults and planned outages,
• wanting to set up a new connection for a home, cottage or business,
• needing a statement on the existence of utility networks on a plot for a building permit.

Uncovering website problems

Through interviews and analysis, we also uncovered a number of problems with the original website:

• incomprehensible to customers, who did not connect the overly complex page names of requests with the problems they were trying to solve,
• complex terminology that users did not know and searched for under different names, e.g. the website term Ripple Control (HDO) was referred to by customers as night rate or low electricity tariff,
• difficult-to-read content, roughly 80% of pages were too technical, with unstructured texts,
• unclear request process that users did not understand – they did not know how to submit a request or what would follow.

We adapted the website to user needs

Based on our findings, we designed changes that have a fundamental impact on the current website performance:

• navigation hubs with examples of typical situations linking the complex official names of requests with how customers refer to them,
• humanising the content and communication style to make texts less technical and closer to the everyday language of end customers,
• a unified format for target pages across the entire website, consisting of three parts:
  • what the request concerns, when it is needed and a list of documents the client will need to complete and submit the request,
  • a call to action to submit the request, most often an online form or PDF with information on where to submit the request in person,
  • a list of steps that follow after submitting the request, including time estimates.
• clear placement of sections and tools for other target groups who do not need to click through the website and are only looking for documents – for example, contractors search and filter documents in a dedicated Forms and Documents section.