The Contact mobile app is dead... long live Contact's mobile app!

It's not easy to say goodbye to old friends, but that's what the digital and retail teams had to do last week when we rolled out the new-look Contact mobile app and online self-service.

Why, you ask!

Our old platform had served us well. In the five years since it'd been built, the self-service channel share increased from 29% of all customer interactions to just under 80%. We'd successfully integrated new products like broadband and time-of-use energy plans into the experience. And we helped our retail colleagues turbocharge customer growth without adding to their cost base, achieving a market leading cost-to-serve.

But this growth didn't come without challenges. When first built the platform was designed for energy-only customers, and the rapid increase of products and customer expectations made those high standards hard to maintain.

Our goals

With so much success in our transformation so far, the team was aiming high with the new self-service platform.

Experience-led - We designed our digital team and ways of working to focus on outcomes and experiences, putting the user at the heart of what we do. Our new platform was customer-led, designed based on input and feedback from real users to help solve real challenges.

Scalable - The new self-service journey needed to be able to scale with our business, allowing the seamless roll-out of new products and ramp-up in the number of users without adding additional complexity.

Better for customers AND employees - When our customers need some extra help, we have a wonderful team of customer service representatives ready to lend a hand. We wanted to offer our CSRs the same excellent experience we were building for our customers.

And how did it go?

The team delivered and delivered big! Initial customer feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, with lots of comments about the energy usage feature (our most popular), the new design, and faster speed.

For our employees, our new architecture and single code base will make new products and features a breeze to build and integrate. Not only that but we'll be able to more efficiently maintain the platform.

What comes next?

Just as exciting as what's been delivered so far is what the platform will enable the team to do next. The team has its sights set on some really exciting personalisation, making each customer's experience specific to their wants and needs. Customers will also have an enhanced view of their usage data, enabling and encouraging them to make sustainable energy choices while saving themselves money.

But most important, the people

It's fun to talk tech, features, and new releases, but there's a lot of hard work behind the magic. Contact is lucky to have a team of talented, professional, and passionate people dedicated to make these experiences come to life. Please join me in celebrating some of the many who make the magic happen: Lana Antonova Winnie Sowerby Roseanne Lee Sunando Basu Jim Li Victoria Zharkova Pavel Diatchenko Bhawna M. Jaswinder Sidhu Meghana Menon Nishant Thakur Matthew Doolan Jagveer Singh Ruben O. lu liu Nicole Wang Bruce Alecock Alan Bremner Steffen Troschke Frank Yelash

Contact Energy Ltd 's digital transformation journey continues at pace. Long live the Contact mobile app!