AEP Energy lights up personalized experiences with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

With this solution, AEP Energy can create unified customer profiles for consumers and businesses by bringing together siloed data from all sources, including customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. In addition to transactional data, AEP Energy can bring in behavioral data in the form of actual product usage and third-party credit information for a truly 360-degree view of the customer. Because Customer Insights is a preassembled solution that connects seamlessly to other applications, data and insights are easily shared between Customer Insights and AEP Energy’s existing solutions, including Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, and Microsoft Power BI.

AEP Energy is looking to derive value from the huge volumes of customer data. Comprehensive unified profiles, when combined with AI, will reveal insights such as which prospects have high propensity to become customers, which existing accounts will most likely buy a new energy product, or which accounts are at risk of leaving. “We have a lot of customers. We have a lot of data. We have a lot of data about our customers. Customer Insights is going to help us match up what offering makes sense for what segment,” says Evan Howell, Director of Sales Initiatives and Market Analytics at AEP Energy.

Empowered with insights from Customer Insights, the marketing, sales, and service teams at AEP Energy will deliver consistent and personalized experiences in order to attract and retain customers. “Customer Insights can change how we interact with our customers in a variety of ways. We’re going to make better decisions when it comes to helping our customers understand the different products and services we have to offer. Our sales and customer service teams will have the tools at our fingertips to provide better consultative services,” says Tim Noce, Product Owner and Manager, Customer Relationship Manager at AEP Energy. 

Sales teams can sell smarter by understanding and anticipating the customer’s energy needs and preferences. Instead of trial and error and searching through multiple systems for customer data, sales teams can focus on the right customer and propose the right solution the first time around, significantly shortening sales cycles. “In the past, to get a full picture of a customer, a salesperson would have to pull up the CRM system as well as legacy systems like ERP. Now with the information at their fingertips, salespeople can provide the right services and the right products,” says Noce.

Marketing can better target customers with AI-driven segmentation, identifying the prospects and accounts that are most likely to buy a new product or service and then engaging with relevant and tailored content to nurture the customers. With a comprehensive view of the customer, marketing can also accurately identify customers at risk of leaving and engage them through win-back campaigns. 

With Customer Insights, customer service agents can quickly resolve issues and identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities with a comprehensive view of the customer. Before Customer Insights, agents needed to search different systems to answer questions about billing or products. Now agents will be able to close out issues quickly as well as engage in consultative discussions that result in new opportunities and revenue. 

“Customer Insights is a way for us to be able to handle all the touch points we have with customers, and it’ll help us get more customers, keep the customers we have, and keep them more satisfied,” says James Petersen, Chief Operating Officer and President of Retail Services at AEP Energy. “Customer Insights will impact our metrics in multiple ways, including increasing customer satisfaction with more personalized experiences.”