Learnings

Outcomes

An overview has been provided below on the outcomes delivered for each of the three project phases to date:  
 
Phase 1: Designing and developing a foundational tool 
 
The ‘Home Energy Saver’ website, was scoped, developed, tested and is now available for customers to use. The website provides:  
A personalised energy saving plan to help keep their homes warmer, save money and decarbonise. 
A benefits and grants checker. 
An appliance calculator to help customers understand which appliances are costing the most money to use, and tips on how to use them more efficiently.  
Options for all budgets, from simple, free changes to longer term solutions with higher investments, such as LCTs.  
The website remains in a trial phase while we make continuous improvements and increase the volume of customers engaging with the website. The volumes of customers engaging with the website and customer satisfaction score are tracked on a weekly basis to measure success of the website. Currently a total of ~60 customers have completed plans over a four month period. Volumes will be gradually increased.  
 
This supports UK Power Networks’ larger objective to support 500,000 customers across the RIIO-ED2 period. An NPV model has also been developed to understand and measure the social impact of the website.  
 
The TRL of the website has been increased from TRL 5 to 7. A prototype system has been built and is being demonstrated in an operational environment, but further iteration is being completed to drive target volumes and customer satisfaction.  
 
 
Phase 2: Conduct research to understand the value of additional key innovative elements 
 
Potential enhancements to the website were longlisted, evaluated and prioritised, to select two top concepts – a behaviour change game and an augmented reality (AR) visualisation tool. Mini-tenders were completed for both. A concept for the behaviour change game was selected to be scoped further as part of the next stage of the project, while the decision was made to not progress the AR tool further at this time.  
 
The concept for the behaviour change game includes:  
An informative introductory video to explain simple measures customers could use to improve energy efficiency in their home and save money. 
An engaging game that helps users to understand simple energy efficiency and cost saving measures, highlighting the different opportunities and approaches available to home occupiers.  
Information and next steps to help users action and implement the measures of interest to them.  
The concept will be further developed as part of this project.  
 
Phase 3: Develop and integrate the chosen innovative elements to create an enhanced tool  
Phase 3 outcomes will be developed over the remaining project period, as website enhancements are scoped, developed, tested and implemented.  

Lessons Learnt

There are a number of lessons that have been learnt from running the project so far:  
Importance of customer testing  
There have been ~six rounds of customer testing completed for the development of the website, from concepting through to continual improvement. Enhancement concepts will also be tested in this manner.  
Each round of testing has significantly shaped the final design, content and customer journey of the Home Energy Saver website. This approach has greatly improved customer satisfaction with the website, when comparing the live website to early iterations.  
 
Impact of a digital tool on the customer journey 
Through customer engagement, it has become clear that the typical approach to customer journey needs to be adjusted when providing a digital tool. When using a digital tool, the customer typically does not engage with a person at any point along the customer journey, making high customer satisfaction less likely.  
To mitigate this, a number of approaches have been taken: 
Following accessibility principles, ensuring language is always kept as simple as possible and industry-specific terms/schemes are explained, to remove barriers to using the tool.  
The scope of the digital tool developed is a personalised home energy plan. Through personalising the service offered, customers feel better served and report improved satisfaction.  
We are still in the process of continuing to improve customer satisfaction with the tool, by implementing continuous improvements informed by ongoing customer feedback and developing further enhancements.  
 
Marketing tools as a DNO 
Given our role in the energy ecosystem, DNOs are typically not well known by consumers. As such, raising awareness/ marketing is just as important as developing the tool. A few approaches are being taken to address this for Greener Home:   
Engaging a marketing agency with experience in raising awareness of public schemes for vulnerable customers. Multiple channels are being trialled to understand the best way to increase engagement with the website.  
Engaging customers via existing successful campaigns/ approaches led by UK Power Networks.  
Improve website searchability/ visibility   
Setting up a redirect URL to simplify the URL on marketing materials 
Including the Home Energy Saver website as a subdomain of UK Power Networks  
Setting up Search Engine Optimisation 
For future work (including the Greener Home enhancements), learnings should be applied by including website searchability as a key design principle and building the marketing plan into the core development proposal.  
Analytics and tracking metrics should be similarly scoped from the inception of the tool, being incorporated into the customer journey and as a key design principle. This will ensure key success metrics can be easily assessed, and an iterative continuous improvement approach can be easily implemented. This was not the case for the Home Energy Saver website, which resulted in initial delays in accessing insights useful to further improve the website.