Online customer portal for Company X

This thesis project was commissioned by the person in charge of customer retention at an electrical energy company, Company X. The purpose of the project was to determine the reasons why customers do not stay with the company when moving home. The aim was to identify the factors that affect customers’ choice of energy provider and plan on how to make the customers stay with the company during change of address. The theoretical framework focuses firstly on how the electricity market works in Finland, such as production and pricing. Secondly there is relevant information about customer relationship management, which is very relevant when thinking on customer loyalty. As for research methods former customers of Company X were sent a text message survey where they had different answers options on why they chose to leave the company and lastly an option to leave open comments. This means that in the thesis there were both quantitative and qualitative research methods used. Before the survey result analyzing there is a short market analysis of Company X, which examines the company, its competitors and customers. The market analysis concludes to a SWOT analysis stating the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats based on the data the company provided. The focus of the survey was on examining the customers’ reasons for not continuing with the company, and whether certain responses could be linked to the participants’ gender, age, contract type or yearly consumption. Open comments were analyzed to find out if there are some deeper for choosing a certain response option and whether these could lead to any development ideas. The overall result and analysis concluded in a SWOT analysis. The development plan, an online customer portal, was planned based on the issues identified in the open comments. It could prevent customers from not continuing with the company when moving house by raising customer satisfaction