1. Process Excellence Awards 2014
Best Customer-Experience
Improvement Initiative of
the Year Award
Synergy’s submission
June 2014
The Customer Focus Program (CFP), launched in August 2012, aims to
align the organisation to become a customer focused contemporary
retailer that is adaptable to a constantly changing landscape by being
responsive to customer’s needs and having a workforce and culture that
is driven to deliver improved customer experiences.

2. Describe the scope of your Customer Experience initiative (one team or department or division etc.) and
outline how it has improved service levels and impacted the wider business. Please provide supporting
data.
In previous years, Synergy had been focused on resolving operational (hygiene-related) issues. With the
successful stabilisation of core systems, Synergy embarked on a program to direct its focus towards the
customer in August 2012.
Synergy recognised that customer expectations and needs were constantly changing and that in order for
Synergy to remain a trusted, relevant and respected organisation, it needed to place a greater focus on
understanding its customers, including how they wanted to interact with Synergy and the types of products and
services they expected us to provide.
Synergy initiated its Customer Focus Program (CFP) in August 2012 with the express purpose of making the
organisation a customer-focused, contemporary retailer that could adapt to a constantly changing landscape, in
which increased competition from energy retailers or the entry of non-traditional retailers were a real possibility.
This required Synergy to become more responsive to our customer’s needs and instilling a workforce culture
that was driven to deliver improved customer experiences.
The scope of the CFP is:
1. To drive a sustainable cultural change program across the organisation to enable Synergy to progress
towards its vision of becoming a customer-focused, competitive energy provider that meets community
expectations.
2. To engage employees and align them to a common strategy.
3. To strengthen the customer experience, build customer and employee satisfaction, and deliver business
results.
Led by the Change Leadership Team (see Appendix A, page 7) which comprises of senior leaders from across
the organisation, the program implemented changes across multiple business units, including: Customer
Experience, People and Culture, Systems and Technology and Business Management Processes.
Projects and initiatives under the CFP were aimed at aligning the organisation as a customer-focused,
contemporary retailer. The results below indicate that the organisation is making ongoing progress in achieving
this goal:
• Customer complaints have decreased by 67% in 2013/14, demonstrating that Synergy has improved the
delivery of its core services to meet the customer’s expectations
• First-call resolution has increased by nearly 10% from 2012/13, with the Contact Centre now exceeding
this target
• Customer advocacy, as represented by our residential and business Net Promoter Scores (NPS) (see
Appendix B, page 7), has increased by more than 40 percentage points for both residential and business
customer groups.
Synergy’s internal social media platform ‘Ideas Hub’ was designed as a platform for staff to share ideas on how
to improve the customer experience. Since its launch in April 2013, over 50% of staff have contributed in the
Customer Focus journey directly by posting ideas and comments or voting to see their favourite ideas
developed further.
The CFP conveyed its key messages via screen savers on computers throughout the organisation, a dedicated
page on the Synergy intranet, and internal communication campaigns. The ‘Connecting to our Customers’
campaign reinforced how all staff, even those who did not directly interact with customers, played a vital role in
terms of improved outcomes for the customer experience. The CFP logos (see Appendix A, page 7) and
footsteps with the tagline ‘Stepping in the right direction’, along with regular communications, helped engage
staff at the early stages of the program and build an awareness through the business of the importance of being
customer-focused.
The CFP has been a whole of business initiative involving more than 550 staff. A noticeable shift with our staff
culture has been achieved, indicated by a significant improvement in the staff engagement score in Synergy’s
‘bi- annual Operational Effectiveness Profile’ a benchmarked organisational survey tool used by many
corporations in Australia.
The program is still delivering key changes to Synergy’s core processes and systems that will benefit both
customers and staff, and we expect these positive results to continue to improve.
Best Customer-Experience Improvement Initiative of the Year Award—Synergy submission 2

3. Describe how you have been able to secure senior leadership buy-in to drive and own the deployment.
Please provide supporting data.
During the 2012 strategic planning process, Synergy’s executive team, led by then Chief Executive Officer
Trevor James, identified the need for a greater focus towards the customer, as competition in the market was
increasing while demand for electricity from the grid was decreasing. Customers were also voicing their need
for Synergy to provide its services via more contemporary channels, such as the Synergy website and social
media platforms.
The CFP is directed by a key member of the Retail Leadership Team, Colin Smith, which clearly demonstrates
the level of commitment Synergy has made to improve the customer experience, providing visible leadership
and passion.
As a strategic program, the CFP has the full support of Synergy’s executive team and this focus has been
incorporated into Senior Leadership programs to ensure continual support for the program from the ‘top down’.
The CFP Board consists of the whole executive team, to ensure the direction of the program is aligned to the
objectives of each and every department.
Corporate and team-based NPS customer key performance indicators have been built into remuneration
schemes and performance management reviews, while areas of the business that are customer facing have
been assigned individual team targets to achieve.
Synergy is in the process of reorganising its operational model to support new customer capabilities and
increase customer focus. Within the retail arm of the business, a new Customer Insights Team has been formed
to gather, analyse and interpret customer data and feedback to inform and prioritise key customer improvement
opportunities.
Best Customer-Experience Improvement Initiative of the Year Award—Synergy submission 3

4. Describe the Customer Experience initiative and how your organisation has/is implementing with
evidence of their successes. Please provide supporting data.
Significant work has been undertaken to better understand our customers through segmentation, developing
customer value propositions and updating Synergy’s brand promise to deliver that value. (See Appendix C,
page 8 for further information).
Synergy has developed customer journey maps to assist our staff see the business through our customers’
eyes.
Unlike regular process maps, which are often internally-focused, the customer journey maps demonstrate the
steps that our customers make to complete various transactions. This allows us to understand how we shape
their experience through each interaction. Created by using customer data and feedback - both quantifiable
and qualitative - they determine which interactions are causing our customers the greatest concern and
where we have the opportunity to make it right. These insights guide us in the planning of our processes,
systems and training around our customers’ needs.
The findings from the customer journey maps and other sources including Ideas Hub are reviewed through
the Customer Improvement Cycle (CIC) a governance model and decision-making framework to manage,
prioritise and improve the end-to-end customer experience.
Moving forward, Synergy will continue its commitment to prioritising its customers through the Customer
Focus Program and initiatives. Our channel strategy has now been developed to identify how our customers
would like to deal with us, and work is underway to enhance the digital and online experience. A new mobile
optimised transactional application will be launched later in the year, based on direct customer feedback
obtained through a pilot program conducted earlier this year
Process reviews, value stream mapping and articulating standard operating procedures has commenced with
more than 50 opportunities identified from the review of just one process, which will in turn reduce non-value
add/waste activities and introduce standardisation. There have been a number of ‘quick wins’ implemented
which has reduced the time taken to navigate the internal re-contracting process, which has historically been
a challenge for the organisation. This new process has resulted in a higher proportion of negotiated contracts
(25% improvement) being sent to customers prior to their contract expiry.
Increased understanding of our customers has also led to the development of a Business Customer
Experience (BCX) principles framework. The BCX are being used to keep the customer front of mind when
developing project documents and business processes, by assessing the level of impact on a particular
customer segment.
By embedding core customer capabilities and thinking in everything we do, Synergy’s Customer Focus
Program ensures that the impact and benefit to the customer is always the highest priority.
Best Customer-Experience Improvement Initiative of the Year Award—Synergy submission 4

5. Describe the benefits that you have delivered. Please provide supporting data.
Our customers have already started experiencing the benefits of Synergy’s customer-focused deliverables,
and will continue to do so in the future.
Based on feedback from our customers, we have improved our service delivery as well as provided our
customers with new online platforms offering relevant and practical information on a range of topics,
including how to save on energy costs in the home, how to pay bills online, and how the Western Australian
energy market now works, to name a few.
In early 2013, Synergy launched the first ever utilities customer loyalty scheme in Western Australia,
dedicated to small to medium business customers. Synergy GRID (Grants, Rewards, Information and Deals),
connects businesses with grants and funding opportunities, offers rewards that benefit businesses, provides
information on such things as cost saving and increasing energy efficiency, and tailors energy deals to suits
how the energy consumption of a particular business. The registration and benefits of GRID is free to
Synergy’s business customers.
Recognising the need to stay competitive in the market and offer value to customers, GRID is the platform
which provides this. Business customers have commented: ‘Any information that will help save money and
assist my business to become more energy efficient is a great idea’ and ‘They understand the energy market
and know how it relates to our business.’
The key measurement of benefit to consumers is the Net Promoter Score (NPS). The YTD NPS for Business
customers is +46.6, Residential customers is +56.5 which has continued to improve throughout the year.
(See Appendix D, page 8 for graph).
First call resolution has increased by nearly 10% from 2012/13, with the Contact Centre now exceeding target
and customers are noticing the improvement, making comments such as: ‘I was not on hold for long, they
communicated clearly and resolved my issues quickly’.
Improving Synergy’s NPS scores has been a collective effort by the business. In addition to targeting
improvement efforts on customer ‘hotspots’ as previously mentioned, Synergy’s NPS Champions (See
Appendix E, page 8) have been embedded within the business to assist us to achieve significant
improvements in Synergy’s NPS score. Each month, the 14 ‘champions’ meet to discuss the NPS results of
the past month, highlight the ‘hotspots’ from the journey maps and advocate future continuous customer
improvement opportunities. Weekly NPS updates and real-time reporting enables operational areas to identify
and address service issues as they occur, facilitating continuous improvements to the customer experience.
Customer complaints have been consistently trending down, with total complaints figures per financial year at
67% below that of FY2011/12. Specifically, the escalated complaints to reach the Energy Ombudsman
reduced by 47%.
Improvements in key internal process metrics that contributed to the reduction of customer complaints are
given below:
• Business Process Exception Management Tasks reduced by 59%
• Outstanding Tasks reduced by 90%
• Implausible Reads reduced by 99%
For the first time, Synergy has also achieved net positive churn in FY2012/13 and first call resolution has
increased since last financial year by nearly 10%.
Best Customer-Experience Improvement Initiative of the Year Award—Synergy submission 5

6. Describe how the Customer Experience initiative differs from other improvement projects and
programmes. Please provide supporting data.
Firstly, the CFP has focused on changing the organisational culture to ensure the customer is at the heart of
everything we do, as historically we had been focused on internal business processes. The impetus has been
to encourage and inspire our staff to remain customer-focused, and see their experience with Synergy from
the point of view of the customer.
Synergy’s vision recognises that, as a retailer, our future is inextricably tied to our relevance to our
customers. In order to ‘thrive rather than survive’ in the changing energy market, Synergy is committed to
being proactive and responsive to our customers’ needs.
The Customer Focus Program is dedicated to transforming how Synergy delivers value for customers, which
is critical in achieving the Synergy vision. The journey to becoming a contemporary energy retailer means
aligning Synergy’s processes, systems and capabilities across all areas of the business to meet our
customers’ needs.
The main supporting evidence of how the CFP initiative differs from other improvement projects are indicated
by Synergy’s customer journey maps, which were developed by using customer lenses, rather than being
process driven. This is a change from the usual inwardly-focused improvement processes and projects. The
theme of ‘walking in our customers’ shoes’ is now a part of Synergy’s ethos, and is embedded within our
documentation, processes and systems.
The program has also been the recipient of unprecedented level of support from the CEO and executives in
the form of resources and budgets invested in recent years for non-system driven initiative.
Best Customer-Experience Improvement Initiative of the Year Award—Synergy submission 6

7. Appendix
Appendix A: Submission images
CFP logo
Examples of logos and artwork around the Synergy office, including the lift. (Picture to the right).
Change Leadership Team
Appendix B: NPS
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is an internationally recognised
tool employed by customer-facing organisations to gauge customer loyalty and satisfaction. The score ranges
from -100 (every score is a detractor) to +100 (every score is a promoter). This information is derived by
asking the NPS question:
How likely you are to recommend Synergy to a friend or colleague on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being
extremely unlikely and 10 being extremely likely?
Results are then grouped into detractors (0-6), passives (7-8) and promoters (9-10).
NPS = % Promoters - % Detractors.
The NPS is calculated by taking the percentage of customers who are promoters (those who rate us 9-10/10)
and subtracting the percentage who are detractors (those who rate us 0-6/10). A positive score means that we
have more promoters than detractors.
NPS is measured across multiple channels, including the Synergy website and call centre, however all areas
of the business contribute to the customer experience. Synergy use this NPS information to regularly listen to
the voice of our customers so we can better meet their changing needs in order to sustain the organisation’s
status as a contemporary energy retailer.
Synergy currently collects NPS data from four different channels in business: the Synergy website, strategic
customer reviews.
The web survey is offered to customers via a pop-up window when leaving the Synergy website and pre-
recorded interactive voice response surveys are offered after inbound and outbound calls.
Best Customer-Experience Improvement Initiative of the Year Award—Synergy submission 7

8. Appendix C: Further information
Customer journey maps identify which interactions are hygiene, emotional or highly valuable to our
customers, for example, receiving a follow-up call from Synergy. An awareness of which experiences are
important to our customers helps us create a more positive experience for them where it matters most.
Synergy has recently enhanced needs-based segmentation models in both the business and residential
markets, providing us with a deeper understanding of our customer’s energy needs. Personas and Customer
Value Propositions (CVPs) were developed following a series of workshops, with representatives from across
the business, along with data analysis. After defining our ‘needs groups’, CVPs and personas were created in
order to put a ‘face’ to each customer segment.
Creating CVPs for each ‘customer needs segment’ helps to provide insights into what our customers need
and expect from us. They also provide clarity on how we can best service and meet different customer needs.
To test our customer needs-based segmentation, refine our CVPs, and deepen understanding of our
customers. Synergy recently conducted a customer research study which involved a series of focus groups
and in-depth interviews with residential and business customers. Research confirmed our approach, indicating
our CVPs and personas accurately reflect our customers’ needs.
Appendix D: NPS graph
• Both Residential and Business NPS scores have shown sustained improvement since 2011/12.
• Current Quarter scores are: Residential:+62.0 and Business: +55.3
(1) Residential scores include (a) Call Centre, (b) Credit Management, (c) Service Quality and (d) Web
(2) Business scores include (a) Call Centre, (b) Web, (c) Business Sales and Support & (d) Customer Experience and Credit
Management
Appendix E: NPS Champions
NPS Champions regularly collaborate on behalf of each
business unit across Synergy to discuss data results, the
implications of ‘hot spots’ and share insights obtained
from customer feedback. Outcomes from these
discussions are fed back to each business area on a
monthly basis.
NPS Champions regularly update the NPS posters in
each area (see photo), so all staff can see the NPS score
as well as customer promoter and detractor comments.
CFP launch
Best Customer-Experience Improvement Initiative of the Year Award—Synergy submission 8