When leading energy equipment supplier and retailer ZEN Energy wanted a solution to digitally engage their customers and improve the working environment for their employees, they knew exactly the platform they were after – and they knew exactly the partner they needed to handle the implementation.
Founded in South Australia in 2004, ZEN Energy began its life as a renewable energy system supplier to homes and businesses. From those beginnings, the business has now installed more than 30,000 energy systems across Australia.
Today the company is also an energy retailer, counting renewable energy leaders like the CSIRO and the South Australian Government as clients. ZEN Energy has partnered with many large-scale renewable energy projects to supply these customers, and they continue to seek new opportunities as renewable energy requirements increase.
The team from ZEN Energy recently undertook a large-scale project to develop a Customer Engagement Platform (which is essentially a CRM, marketing automation, customer service management and customer self-service portal all in one single system). The aim of the platform, which was built on the Salesforce Experience Cloud and integrated with external systems using MuleSoft, was to allow government and commercial customers to ‘self-serve’ their energy data from ZEN. This data includes electricity bills, interval and consumption data.
ZEN Energy’s focus for this project was to build a scalable solution utilising the latest technologies to ensure they ended up with best-in-class cost to acquire and cost to serve capability within their industry.
And according to the team at ZEN Energy, implementing the Customer Engagement Platform has been a win-win for both ZEN and its customers.
“Having a self-service capability for our customers has significantly reduced our staff workload and enabled our customers to have access to their data whenever they want it without having to request it and wait,” said Glynn Jones, Marketing Manager for ZEN Energy.
The Customer Engagement Platform has a simple, unfussed interface that is clean and slick, and makes it extremely easy for customers to get the information they need.
According to Glynn, ZEN Energy customers are generally very protective of their data, and they really value accuracy and timeliness when it comes to data around their energy usage.
“By building systems that are centralised on the customer journey and experience, we provide customer outcomes more efficiently, in a more tailored manner without increasing the cost and complexity for ZEN,” said Glynn.
“Everyone wins.”
This has been reflected in positive responses to the new platform from both employees and customers.
The first customer the project was rolled out to was a Commonwealth Government customer. According to Glynn, they were thrilled that the solution was delivered on time, and importantly, the technical outcome was exactly what they wanted.
“The customer is now keen and ready for us to build even more features,” said Glynn.
Likewise, the ZEN Energy team is pleased with the outcome and looking forward to further enhancements to make their daily working lives even easier.
To that end, ZEN Energy is now embarking on a 24-month journey of investment into Salesforce, which will further increase automation of their systems and processes, in particular the end-to-end automation of their customer onboarding process and also implementing Salesforce Marketing Cloud.
Partners in delivery
The key to the successful implementation of a Salesforce project of this size and scale is an implementation partner who understands the needs of the client and their ultimate end goal, with the experience to be able to deliver efficiently and effectively.
For this project, ZEN Energy worked with ProQuest Consulting, an Australian Salesforce implementation partner with more than a decade of experience working with energy, local government, manufacturing, construction and health industry clients.
“We have been working with ProQuest Consulting since 2019 when we first implemented Salesforce as our CRM platform,” said Glynn.
“ProQuest Consulting has come on the journey with ZEN as we build up our Salesforce capabilities including implementing Pardot, Service Cloud, Field Service, MuleSoft and Experience Cloud.
“ProQuest brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the table. They have onshore resources we utilise, which is important for ZEN due to the nature of our customer data, and the team knows the ZEN business intimately, significantly improving the efficiency of project design and delivery.”
The work ProQuest has undertaken for ZEN Energy has not only been highly commended by ZEN, it’s also been recognised within the Salesforce ecosystem, with the company receiving the 2021 global Salesforce Partner Innovation Award in Manufacturing & Energy for showcasing exceptional leadership.
Salesforce Executive Vice President, Alliances & Channels, Tyler Prince, said, “Salesforce Partner Innovation Award winners such as ProQuest Consulting work relentlessly to enable their customers’ success.
“ProQuest Consulting’s initiative and ability to deliver results illustrates how Salesforce partners are integral to creating value and enabling digital transformation in our new work-from-anywhere world.”
This sponsored editorial was brought to you by ProQuest Consulting. To learn more about the benefits your organisation can see through digital services, please contact [email protected]
