Companies in the energy sector are undergoing significant changes due to the energy crisis, digitization, and legislation affecting the industry. This necessitates rapid adaptation and changes in processes and operations for companies in the field. Alongside these changes, the importance of customer experience has grown, shifting from merely selling electricity to providing sustainable solutions to make daily life easier. Oomi is at the forefront of innovation in the industry, utilizing new models and practices. In addition to electricity, Oomi offers solar energy solutions, charging services, company bikes, and other services to facilitate everyday life for consumer and business customers.
"The competition in the industry is fierce. Therefore, we need to consider how to serve the customer in the best possible way. Customer experience and efficient processes play a crucial role in the energy sector. While the industry used to be highly technical and focused solely on selling electricity, nowadays, and even more so in the future, it's essential to understand customer needs and preferences regarding services," says Eero Pyhäranta, Oomi's Head of Development.
To enhance the overall customer experience, Oomi invested in future technology. HubSpot was chosen as the CRM system for its efficiency and usability.
"HubSpot evolves as a platform, and its existing solutions are functional. From our perspective, it's particularly interesting to see how HubSpot will develop and what role it will play in customer experience in the future," says Pyhäranta.
They sought an experienced yet agile partner capable of handling complex integrations and unafraid to develop new solutions for the demanding processes in the energy sector. Within these requirements, Kaksio Labs' team demonstrated the right expertise and attitude.
At the project's outset, led by Kaksio, Oomi assessed the current state and need for change in its sales and service processes. However, improving customer experience in the industry is not straightforward. The processes are complex, and industry operations are heavily regulated.
"Processes typically involve a large volume and are largely about actions related to fulfilling our legal obligations," explains Pyhäranta.
Specifically, improving customer experience in Oomi's project meant ensuring timely, smooth, and efficient communication throughout the customer journey. Processes were automated as much as possible to support both customer and Oomi team needs in B2B business.
"On the B2B side alone, we handle thousands of accounts. We have teams all over Finland; in Oulu, Pori, Rauma, Tampere, and Vantaa. Therefore, data centralization and uniform operating methods are vital for systematic and efficient operations," notes Paula Ujala-Neuvonen, Oomi's B2B Sales Director.
The development of customer experience began with careful planning of the customer journey, approached by Kaksio using established service design practices. The customer journey was built from start to finish so that HubSpot's various functionalities supported and automated the path, enhancing user experience and process smoothness. According to Pyhäranta, HubSpot's core features and custom functions created by Kaksio, such as various integrations bringing user data easily and quickly to HubSpot for specific teams to review, best serve Oomi's processes.
"HubSpot's strength lies in getting customer communication to a specific place, and we have the opportunity to develop customer communication and integrate our processes into it better. We have utilized HubSpot's features by integrating the necessary systems, but especially, we leverage HubSpot's core functions, such as sales and marketing tools. With Kaksio's help, the system has been tailored to serve our needs and processes as effectively as possible," says Pyhäranta.
Pyhäranta highlights that HubSpot works well, especially in supporting Oomi's communication and marketing. Customization and efficient use of data have facilitated timely communication.
"In addition to basic processes, we use HubSpot for communication and marketing. We aim to extract all possible benefits from the tool to support customer communication and related processes. We bring data into different stages of HubSpot's pipelines so that we can contact our customers at the right time regarding contract matters."
After the project, the most significant impact on daily work has been centralizing data in HubSpot. All of Oomi's data is now in one place, providing teams across Finland with a unified view of customer relationships in real-time.
"The impact has been significant: sales forecasting is easier. Above all, standardized operating methods bring consistency, systematicity, and active use of the HubSpot platform," says Ujala-Neuvonen.
HubSpot has improved information flow not only in sales teams but also at the organizational level. Ujala-Neuvonen emphasizes the ease of information flow and the functionality of HubSpot in a complex, tightly regulated industry.
"Integrating business from five electricity retail companies into one brought redundancy. HubSpot has enabled avoiding redundancies. We have a single common interface, and the information flow about customer relationships is effortless. Initially, I was skeptical about whether HubSpot could meet our needs in this complex industry, but now I can say that HubSpot is clearly ahead of its competitors."
Oomi is very satisfied with Kaksio's work. In addition to the comprehensive HubSpot implementation, Kaksio has demonstrated expertise in customizing the platform to best meet the needs of the electricity retail company.
"Even though the industry is complex, Kaksio has solved problems easily and customized HubSpot to work for us. All development work and integrations have been handled agilely. I am also pleasantly surprised by HubSpot's excellent functionality with interfaces," summarizes Ujala-Neuvonen.
Currently, Kaksio and Oomi are working closely together. In month-long sprints, they develop both existing services and processes and create new ones. With Oomi's product categories evolving, Kaksio's support has been crucial. HubSpot as a platform has enabled the integration of new systems and the scaling of the product family.