Do you speak Client? REX on ENGIE’s Digital Morning Meeting

Do you speak client, or: is the client still king in the digital age? A central subject for ENGIE, as highlighted by Céline Regnault, Director of Customer Experience at ENGIE BtoC France.

In France, a customer changes energy or boiler contracts every 7 to 10 years on average. Our objective is therefore to offer the best possible experience in an increasingly competitive market. To do so, digital tools are used to listen to customers and understand how to make their daily lives easier, but also to empower them. Our goal is for them to be able to say: "With ENGIE, it's simple, it's effective and I can take action!”

To be there to answer questions at all times, we launched a bot called "ENGIE at your service" on Facebook Messenger and voice services on Google Assistant and Google Home. 

To identify areas for improvement, we analyze the data of Internet users (more than two million of them) who visit our site each month, the 500,000 comments sent to us every year regarding our service offerings and the terms on search engines. We can see when people intend to move to a different house based on what they say on the internet, which allows us to contact these users and facilitate their daily lives by offering them an energy contract before they have even had to think about it. 

All sorts of new technologies are integrated – digital tools, data, artificial intelligence – to continuously improve our clients' experience, including their interactions with advisors. Because while we know that the quality of the interaction, whether on the phone or digital, is essential, implementing it becomes more complex as the number of participants increases. Whether it’s regarding contracts, contact persons, advice, technical visits, quotes, etc., our platforms give our advisors a 360° vision of our customers in order to simplify and enrich the experience. 

Taking the customer experience into account is a powerful catalyst for business transformation but also for increased economic performance 

For Eric Dadian, President of the AFRC (French Customers Relations Association), customer experience is an economic indicator: he cites an analysis by Forrester according to which the top 20% most successful brands in terms of customer experience have better stock prices; companies that invest in the employee experience are four times more profitable and generate 2.8 times more revenue per employee. And for 64% of consumers, the customer experience is more important than the price of a product in the purchasing decision. 

Happiness as an economic concept... Erik Orsenna's economic and philosophical conclusions 

I am passionate about customer relationship issues! And I would like to share some personal experiences I have had as a reporter, investor, writer and economist. 

As a reporter, I reported on France Telecom's transformation into Orange. And I remember a boss saying to his troops, "You're going to discover a new persona, the customer, that you've never seen before!”

And when, still as a reporter, I was tasked with telling the story of the final two years of the creation of the A380 airplane, I could see both the pride of those who created the most beautiful aircraft in the world, the satisfaction of customers and the non-existence of the market. 

As an investor 

Jacques Attali and I launched the first electronic reader, Cytale. As I was (and am) a reader, I was asked to be vice-president. We had superb engineers who developed a machine they were very proud of, but which didn't match the obsessive kind of reader that I am.  There were so many other reasons, of course, but we went bankrupt.  

As a writer 

Since winning the Goncourt Prize thirty-one years ago, I have observed that nine out of ten of the winners have disappeared from the literary landscape. I haven’t. Why? Because I am a brand and I manage it, because I manage both to meet requests and to surprise. I am often told "we thought you were an artist" but not at all. I'm a salesman! This is not contradictory. 

As an economist  

We are witnessing an incredible upheaval in all the concepts I have learned during my studies and taught with conviction for years, namely the relationship between supply and demand. This supply/demand relationship, where the customer is only there to absorb the offer, is no longer relevant, exactly the same way that life is lived differently now. As I say at every Digital Wake Up Call, there is a model that dates back 4,500 million years: it’s called life! It is a tried-and-true startup that doesn’t work in terms of supply and demand.  

Back to human 

Earlier, you mentioned that when a robot does not know how to answer, you can always switch over to speaking to an advisor: you go back to the human. And that's exactly what happens in medicine, especially in surgery. Consider the hypothetical example of an amazing robot that uses the data from five million case studies to replace your left kneecap better than a human being could. Even if had it operated on 2000 patients, if things start going wrong, you still want to go back to the doctor! It’s not about bad news – "we will off the profession of being a surgeon" – but rather "we’re freeing up time for the human core that no machine will ever be able to replace." The counsellor who relieves your distress, the doctor who repairs what the robot wasn’t able to do because of interactions unforeseen by the algorithms.  

Happiness as an economic category 

If I had to do a thesis again, instead of the stupid one I did on money, I would do it about "happiness as an economic category". When I go into a company, I can immediately sense if people are happy. And if they're not happy, and if I had money to invest, I wouldn't invest.  

I’ll conclude by putting back on novelist and creator hat: what I like is the moment when I surprise people. When we go beyond what the customer – the reader – expects and make them discover in themselves – and in oneself, through the process of writing – the human aspect they had forgotten.