Entrepreneur Behind Energy Wheel: How Can Energy Providers Create a Trustful Relationship with Customers? Laura Karssen
Rokas Raudonius
University of Amsterdam
International School of Law and
Lord Kelvinstraat 2 II,
Business, Vilnius
Amsterdam
Pilenu g. 2-12, Akademija,
laurakarssen@hotmail.nl
Lithuania. rrokasr@gmail.com
Thierry Karsemeijer Rotterdam University of Applied
Antonia Varga
Sciences
Amsterdam University of Applied
Voorstraat 27A, Woerden
Sciences Thierry_karsemeijer@hotmail.com Kritzingerstraat 39, 2021SG Haarlem vargantonia93@gmail.com
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Abstract In this research the goal was to find out how energy providers can improve their relationship with their customers, in particular entrepreneurs. The reason they want to improve the relationship is because they see a transition in society from buying energy to producing it themselves. Energy providers need to change their business model by providing customers with advice about energy and treat it as a service, not commodity. But, the problem is that customers do not trust their energy companies as a reliable advisor in using less energy. Thus, this research focusses on how energy providers can create a trustful relationship with purpose driven community leaders to help them to be more sustainable.
Author Keywords Human-Centered Design; User Experience Design; User Interface Design; Loyalty; Trust.
ACM Classification Keywords Design; Experimentation; Human Factors; Reliability.
Introduction In the Netherlands there are currently three major energy providers; Essent, Nuon and Eneco. From all three of them, Eneco is the leading company in sustainable solutions and innovations1. This new way of doing business was developed because of the recent changes in the energy market: first, risen popularity in sustainability due to the climate change and secondly, customers’ increased ability to produce its own energy. To keep up with the changes it is not enough for companies to add new sustainable functionalities or services: they have to change the whole communication altogether. Right now companies focus on providing commodities to masses, but there is a noticeable demand from the customers to be provided with more personalised sustainable solutions that focus more on knowledge and expertise, rather than one-fitsall solutions. One of the most valuable target groups for Eneco from business perspective is the purpose driven community leaders. They are not only early-adopters but also thought-changers and the biggest influencers of their peers. To make use of that target group a company has to be a leader, an expert, itself. Because an energy company has to have an almost equal relationship with the purpose driven community leaders. They have to feel that it is a collaboration, instead of just a business transaction. And this is where the problem lies, because now Eneco has a conflict of interest. The current business model is based on selling as much energy as they can, but the business model they are striving for is to provide a service that monetizes from helping the target group to save energy. A paradox, to say the least. Therefore, this research is focused on finding out how energy providers can create a trustful relationship with purpose driven community leaders and promote sustainability. To convince this target group and establish a mutually beneficial collaboration with their energy company, new types of communication strategies based on human-centered design must be
developed. By working in an interdisciplinary, international group of designers and researchers (with the help of the SCRUM method) there has been found a solution for this problem. The solution was based on desk and field research within the topics of design for unpleasant tasks, loyalty, trust and gamification.
Purpose Driven Community Leaders The purpose driven community leader, or PDCL in short, can be described as a freelancer or as a CEO of a small company. What differs the PDCL from other companies’ CEO’s is that they have a different value system. The PDCL always seeks to improve and do better, even though he or she is already ahead of the group. Its major trait is eagerness to network and build communities. It results in strong influential relationships with other like-minded companies that enables mutually beneficial opportunities to be able to grow. Because they are the new generation of entrepreneurs, they are not afraid of new technology. They are innovative and independent, but still a collective. The PDCL wants to organise their business digitally and is always online. He or she is flexible, and needs flexibility from the service provider. Furthermore, they expect transparency because it is a key building block in the creation of trustful business collaborations. The main communication point in the usage phase between an energy company and a PDCL is the invoice. Right now the transparency was being created by providing all the information that was possible, without considering its relevance. But this created an overload of irrelevant data that resulted in confusion and mistrust. These pain points are clearly expressed by Eneco customers in the following quotes: “Why do I have to pay this much?” or “Why do I have to pay this amount?”, and “How does Eneco come up with these estimations?” By solving these specific problems we aimed to find a solution for a more universal communication problem in services. But first we had to understand the needs, wants and values of the target
group to effectively create a relevant and beneficial invoice.
The methods used in this research were mostly borrowed from design fields and done with the help of MediaLAB Amsterdam. The whole process was an agile process: there were six sprints of three weeks, which consisted of research, concepting, and prototyping phases. In total there were thirteen respondents that were interviewed over the span of the whole project, all of them were purpose driven community leaders. The interviews were focussed on sustainability, control and prototype testing. Desk research was conducted to strengthen the concept. The main topics of research were UX-design, UI-design and design for unpleasant tasks.
and without adding any difficulties. Research showed that a complex topic such as energy usage is easier to understand when it is broken into manageable steps: present an overview that eases users into complex information by presenting a simplified view first before they dive into the details. It is important as well to minimize the need to read: keep the content concise and make it easily scannable by adding headings, using bullet points, and formatting text to emphasize important information. Remove unnecessary features, distractions, questions and interruptions, so users can focus on their tasks. And everything that is added, needs to add value. Additionally, what is added, needs to be done with great care. The communication tone needs to be neutral or perhaps mildly encouraging at most, it should always remain professional. Finally, there should be options provided for different audiences, novice and experienced users.
Research
Designing for loyalty
After finding the main problems, the research into solving those problems began. First, it was suggested that a relationship can be improved by creating more engagement. It has been shown that successful gamified systems increase engagement because they are created for ease of use and are a fun experience. Furthermore, research states that there are four main categories of fun: Easy, Challenging, Creative and People. By making the experience more natural, add accomplishments, make it personal and provide them with a platform for a community, there can be created a lot more engagement. Unfortunately, reading into energy use and trying to understand the usage is considered to be an unpleasant task. Thus, design decisions need to be made about how to convince people to do something they are reluctant to do. Research states that a positive user experience can help minimize the pain, but it can not completely take the pain away.2 It is better to help people get through their unpleasant tasks smoothly,
In order for Eneco to become an advisor of a constantly changing user group, customer loyalty has to be achieved. Right now Eneco customers are priceloyal. It means, that they only interact and use Eneco services because the price of those services are lower that any of the competitors. In creating a solution for this problem, a research in designing for loyalty have been done. According to Dr. Phil Hendrix, there are four main criteria that enhance loyalty.3 First is transparency. Providing customers with information on the specific data a company is collecting, the manner in which it’s collecting it, and how it will use it has a positive effect for building customers’ loyalty. What is more, the language and access must be in a consumer-friendly and easily understandable format. Second, added value must be created. Customers must feel that they’re getting fair value in exchange for their data. Whether that value comes in the form of loyalty programme rewards, partner
Method
benefits, exclusive experiences, or other rewards, this exchange must be made explicit. Third, customers have to have sense of control. It is important to give customers control over the data they have provided by telling them with whom you’re sharing it, and giving them the ability to opt out of data collection at any time. Fourth, trust is essential in building customers loyalty. Consumers should feel confidence in the security of their data. Trust results from using personal data only in the manner in which company promises to use it and share it only with partners it have named up front. Company must collect only the data it needs, and use the data collected to build consumer value.
Interaction design To provide customers with a fluent user journey, all interactions must be thought out and designed with customer in mind. By optimizing daily interactions, capturing attention and delivering meaning, a created design brings added value to customers. It is also important to empower and enable people not only to express themselves, but also allow them to connect with other like-minded people. It can be done by re-imagining an existing service or product, creating new behaviours with it and changing perception about that service or product completely.
Gamification The research that was based upon easy and fun showed that gamification can be a solution to let people engage more.4 Gamification is the use of game elements in a non-game context. A few examples of gamification are: quests, levels, characters, leaderboards, point systems and badge systems. Nowadays, gamification is an often used approach to increase productivity and engagement.
Field Research Throughout the whole research there have been interviews and feedback sessions with PDCL’s to find out what kind of tips would be suitable for the target group, how the live-usage would add value for them, what their most important aspects were and how we had to visualise the ‘growth’. The research states that the PDCL does not feel empowered enough with their current bill to be able to do something about their usage. It was found that the target group needed two graphs in their live-usage: one just made for understandability on the first glance and the second that had a lot of possibilities with filters. Filters are selected through buttons that would give an option to layer different kinds of information in one graph. Respondents expressed a want to be able to choose the following filters: temperature, day vs. night tariff, grey vs. green energy, insight per device, a comparison with the usage of the previous year, a comparison with the average that other comparable buildings use and a comparison between their actual and estimated usage. According to the TG, the insight and tips page should have personalised bite-sized solutions for the following expressed questions: “What is it going to cost me?”, “When is the break-even point?” and “How profitable is it going to be?”. Also, there needs to be a direct link between the live-usage (information) and the insight and tips (knowledge): a call to action. The PDCL not only wants to know the information, he or she wants to know what it is what they can do about it. This is where the energy provider should show its expertise in a pro-active way regarding energy use. Furthermore, a leaderboard was introduced. They saw the potential of the leaderboard page, but were very skeptic. The badges are dangerous because it can easily be perceived as reward-stickers that you get in kindergarten. So it is better to talk about them as ‘achievements’.
Proposed solutions The proposed solution is a digital platform that replaces a current invoice and helps build trust and loyalty. All decisions are aimed to solve the needs of the TG that were stated in the previous chapter. The concept for this prototype was based on three levels; digital interaction with the entrepreneur, abstract presentation of complex matter and the offer of service and products. Additionally, the whole journey was being viewed as a story to go through. The first screen that is being shown is the liveusage page, this is where the user gets the ‘information’ about its energy usage. In the right upper corner is a status bar which shows the energy usage that is being depicted on the first screen in a smaller way. Live-usage reachable and seeable on every page by re-visualising it into a status bar. The status bar shows the monthly budget with how much electricity and gas usage there has been that month, and how much money there is left that month (in euros). Furthermore, it shows when the bill is coming, in other words; when the end of the month is. And, it provides information of how much money the user has to pay or gets back at the end of the year. With the information, the graphs, there is a call to action towards the insight and tips page. For example: Someone’s gas usage is higher than average, so there is a button that provides you with that information and then guides you towards the insight and tips page. On this page there is an explanation of a knowledge tip and of a investment tip. These are personalised tips that explain very shortly how to change the overuse of energy. Furthermore, it depicts how the usage is going to look like when the user is going to fulfill the tip. When ‘solving’ a knowledge tip or doing an investment the user is being directed towards the my growth page. Here the break-even point is being shown by visualising the actual savings that are being done by the investment in combination with the visualising of the amount of money that has been invested. Next to that, the ‘growth’ in general is being
shown as well: their usage how it would look with and without the investment. The gamification elements have already been introduced in these pages. The user can earn badges by fulfilling knowledge or investment tips. These are being referred to as ‘achievements’ because badges are easily to confuse with the stickers that people get in kindergarden. The achievements work comparable to the star-system campings, hotels and restaurants use. By creating a leaderboard where all the companies that are comparable to the same kind of building are being depicted, PDCL’s are being influenced to be more sustainable. Because, the more achievements a company has, the more green leaves it receives and takes a higher position in the leaderboard. At this page there is the possibility to reach out to other companies to ask questions about certain investments. In addition, a separate concept, called “public screen” was developed. It is an extension of a digital platform, shown on public screens in public office spaces. Public screen not only shows live usage information in multiple screens throughout office, but also extends a responsibility of energy usage from entrepreneur to everyone, who is using energy in the office space.
Conclusion This research seeked for a solution regarding the lack of a relationship between energy providers and purpose driven community leaders. The problem is that Eneco, as an energy provider, sells energy as a commodity but is trying to shift to a service based business model. Eneco wants to provide its customers with advice concerning using less energy. To solve this paradox the human-centered design approach was used. The main findings were that there was a need for a clear, more relevant, communication platform concerning the invoice. The digital platform that was created based on designing for loyalty and trust, replaces the old invoice. Thus, it changes the relationship between the energy
provider and the purpose driven community leader and makes them more sustainable.
Acknowledgements We thank all our partners from “MediaLAB Amsterdam” and “Eneco” for full support and guidance, respondents and volunteers that participated in complex but interesting design thinking process.
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Phil Hendrix. 2013. Raising the Bar – How Leading Companies are Using Mobile and PEERSM Strategies to Boost Customer Loyalty. Retrieved May 8,, 2016 from http://www.immr.org/raising-the-bar-mobileand-loyalty.pdf
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