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Two iphones show UI design from the Entergy mobile app

Entergy

Providing utility customers with an engaging, accessible mobile app experience

Background

Entergy Corporation is an integrated energy company engaged in electric power production, transmission and retail distribution operations. Entergy delivers electricity to 3 million utility customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.

Entergy owns and operates one of the cleanest large-scale U.S. power-generating fleets with approximately 30,000 megawatts of electric generating capacity, including 8,000 megawatts of nuclear power.

As customer expectations evolve and disruption within the industry accelerates, Entergy wanted to provide its customers with a mobile app solution that would scale to meet changing demands. Mindgrub designed, developed and delivered a native iOS and Android application, enhancing the customer experience.

Our Services

  • Cloud Support
  • Design
  • Mobile Apps
  • Quality Assurance
  • Support & Maintenance Services
  • System Integration
  • UX/UI Design

The Opportunity

Entergy is building the premier utility and is continuously striving to create a more sustainable future for their customers, communities, and the world.

With the belief that all companies should be good corporate citizens, it was important to Entergy that its mobile app meet the needs of its diverse customer segments and offer tools to make it easier for customers to pay bills, report outages, interact with the outage map, and more.

Two iphones show UI design from the Entergy mobile app

Our Approach

As always, we begin with in-depth research.

As part of our “Sprint 0” discovery process, we conducted a comprehensive review of all branding materials and competitors’ applications, and performed an API audit and technical assessment.

We used information gathered from 150 ethnographic interviews conducted by Entergy’s market research group to better understand their unique customer base and establish the necessary functional requirements to meet and exceed customer expectations.

To identify all possible user types, we defined and documented user personas and user stories. Once we finalized the layout of the app screens, workflows, and functionality, we used Entergy’s style guide to design each element of the app to be cohesive with established branding.

“Bold visual design, custom software development, and strategic systems integrations are fundamental to creating an engaging digital experience.”

Powerful Self-Service Functionality

After we designed and built the following key features, we employed a rigorous quality assurance testing process including integration, system, load/volume, and user acceptance testing to ensure a high level of performance and scalability.

Multiple Ways to Login

The login process for any app needs to be as frictionless as possible.

Users expect an easy way to gain access to their accounts, and for Entergy, it was imperative that they exceed those expectations with multiple common-sense login options, such as:

  • Account credentials
  • Fingerprint identification
  • Face identification
  • The “forgot username/password” option
Sign in UI component from the entergy mobile app

Payment Options

When it comes to paying bills, offering flexibility is key.

Users are regular people who need care and understanding when it comes to paying their bills.

Offering customers multiple avenues to either easily pay a bill in a single swipe, request a payment extension, or defer payment is both a necessary regulatory feature and part of a seamless user experience.

Payment options screen from the entergy mobile app

Account Details

Users want to know where they stand with their utilities.

Providing a view into their energy usage, bills, and payment history empowers them to make different choices and gain a greater perspective on their utility history.

Other simple and necessary features include the ability to edit their personal profile information and preferred payment methods.

Usage screen from the entergy mobile app

Outages

Perhaps one of the most important pieces of any utility app is informing and empowering customers when an outage occurs.

We built features that make it seamless to:

  • Report an outage
  • Vew outage status
  • Access the Storm Center for the latest outage event information
  • Interact with the outage map
Outage UI component from the entergy mobile app

Resources

Users expect more from their utilities and from their mobile experiences.

This is why Entergy wanted easy-to-find resources that would both empower their customers with knowledge and capitalize on their news and brochure content.

Here, users can access any of the latest updates, improvements, or peruse energy-saving tips and other valuable assets.

Resources UI component from the entergy mobile app

Property Management

One of Entergy’s wider audiences is property managers, who require unique tooling to make their experience as seamless as possible.

By creating features specifically for this audience, property managers will now be able to manage their notification preferences and all their account information for multiple premises, all from one access point.

Property management screen from the entergy mobile app

Contact Us

Giving users the power to provide feedback is an integral and important part of Entergy’s mobile app strategy.

Hearing directly from customers is a valuable asset, and making it simple and user-friendly is imperative.

To accommodate this philosophy, we engineered a way for users to send mobile feedback or tap a phone number to connect directly with support.

Contact Us screen from the entergy mobile app

A Harmoniously Integrated Ecosystem

We developed a custom API layer between Entergy’s existing backend architecture and the mobile app. This allows us to collect the data provided by Entergy’s various systems and format it into a parsable structure to be consumed by the applications. Managing this portion of the process has increased our ability to monitor performance and provide Entergy with additional support.

Facilitated by Amazon Web Services (e.g., AWS Lambda, AWS S3, AWS CloudFormation, and AWS CloudWatch), here are just some of the systems that work in concert to create a seamless and secure app experience.

  • TIBCO Middleware

    Provides a single point of communication with the mobile app and Entergy’s backend, allowing the app to easily communicate with third-party systems

  • Advanced Metering

    Allows eligible users to view daily and monthly usage data, and non-advanced meter users to view their monthly usage

  • Salesforce

    Controls account sign-in, manages preferences, and notifications

  • DataCapable

    Tracks real-time outages throughout Entergy territory using data insights and the outage map

A graph illustrating the systems architecture

Accessible by Design

Our cross-functional team leveraged a deep understanding of digital accessibility best practices to ensure that the application meets 508/ADA compliance standards.

  • Screen readers and text-to-speech features (VoiceOver in iOS and Standard Text to Speech API in Android)

  • User interface enhancements (e.g., touchscreen input)

  • Textual metadata for all image controls

  • Color inversions, high contrast, and grayscale color options

  • Zoom functionality and large font size support

Results that Matter

Within just two weeks, the app was downloaded (or updated from the previous version) over 1 million times and received more than 6,000 five-star ratings in the in-app rating system.

Two months after release, app store scores doubled for iOS to 3.4 and increased to 4.0 for Android, and they continue to trend in a positive direction. Entergy’s Mobile App Net Promoter Score also increased by more than 25 points.

By offering customers a more convenient way to access self-service tools, Entergy was able to deliver an enhanced customer experience and remain at the forefront of innovation in their region.

Since relaunching the app, Entergy has been awarded a Silver Digital Experience Award from Chartwell, Inc., a Communicator Award of Distinction for Mobile App User Experience, two Silver w3 Awards for Mobile UX and UI, and a PRNEWS Digital Award in the Campaigns & Products category.

1M+

downloads within 2 weeks after launch

6k+

5-star in-app ratings within 2 weeks after launch

25pt

increase in Mobile App Net Promoter Score

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