Personalised communications to connect with energy consumers Reducing residential energy consumption is an important part of the wider goal of improving energy efficiency, but it’s not always easy to change long-established habits. We spoke to Thomas Mikkelsen about the NatConsumers project’s work in developing a methodology to communicate more effectively with consumers and reduce consumption A number of
different methods have been tried over recent years to interact and engage with energy consumers, with the wider goal of improving energy efficiency and sustainability. Previous efforts have been very much focused on price, as the key motivator to encourage people to change their energy consumption patterns, but now researchers in the NatConsumers project are taking a new approach. “We thought we needed to start a conversation with the end customer. It’s not about dictating to them and ordering people to do things, it’s about creating a conversation,” says Thomas Mikkelsen, a project partner. This will be a more effective way of engaging with consumers, believes Mikkelsen. “It’s about being relevant and understanding the situations where you can talk about energy, which are not always related just to money and potential cost savings,” he says. This could be something as simple as talking to end customers about how weather patterns affect their energy consumption. For example, if a consumer lives in an area which has been experienced a lot of rainfall, or a prolonged cold snap, then that
NATCONSUMERS NATCONSUMERS aims at raising consumer awareness on energy as part of everyday life and provoking direct actions by making consumption visible and by summarizing it into tailored daily tips. Grant Agreement 657672
Thomas Mikkelsen T: +45 23 21 01 19 E: thomas.mikkelsen@vaasaett.com W: http://natconsumers.eu/
Thomas Mikkelsen is a partner and director at VaasaETT, a leading international specialist research and advisory company. He is responsible for working with customers across a range of tasks, including providing strategic advice, customer profiling and segmentation models.
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will affect consumption patterns, and can provide a starting point for more effective, emotionally intelligent and relevant communication. “Do you know what that means for your energy consumption? Did you know you can do x to change y? Or a consumer may be getting married or having a child. Many things could trigger a
of the framework. “We’ve been trying to categorise communication in terms both of what is more static and what is more dynamic. But this is only a starting point – as the machine starts learning, we find that people respond more as we become better at understanding their specific priorities and circumstances,” he continues.
We thought we needed to start a conversation with the end customer. It’s not about dictating to them and ordering people to do things, it’s about creating a conversation. It’s about being relevant and understanding the situations where you can talk about energy discussion about their energy consumption,” outlines Mikkelsen. The starting point in terms of identifying these triggers is a usercentred framework, which the project is developing to segment consumers. “We develop communication by asking questions and getting feedback,” says Mikkelsen.
User-centred framework The goal is to build a kind of self-learning tool, that will constantly develop and evolve to reflect consumer priorities. Researchers gathered data from across Europe, and while energy consumption patterns of course vary significantly across different regions, Mikkelsen says there are similarities in terms of behaviour and communication preferences, which will inform the ongoing development
From these foundations, researchers can then look to communicate with consumers in a way that’s relevant to them, and also develop personalised actions aimed at reducing energy consumption. This information on consumer priorities could also be highly relevant for utility and energy companies, something which the project could explore in future. “What came out of this project is basically a process and by going through that process, you can identify the priorities of the customers that you are talking to,” says Mikkelsen. “We aim to take this research and the knowledge that we’ve gained in terms of understanding the kinds of messages that people respond to, and try to apply that to help reduce household energy consumption.”
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