We set out to disrupt our industry and it’s sad but true that creating customer engagement is a revolution and a disruption for the energy business.
We are an industry that was designed and built by engineers, bastardised by economists and muddled by marketers. We continue to operate one of the most complex consumer confusion programmes of all time.
First impressions count, so we launched marketing material that was designed to get a reaction. We chose to be topical and controversial, we aimed to get a laugh – and sometimes people didn’t like it. The point is, we got a reaction. If there is no reaction, there is no customer engagement.
Our ethos was established around giving power to our consumers – literally and metaphorically. But we also wanted more than that. We set ourselves what might be considered the unrealistic challenge of becoming a power company that our customers loved. So we built our business around people. The traditional energy retail model is not built around people. It is built around industry rules and regulations and this is not a good recipe for a positive customer experience.
Love is all about emotion. You won’t build love by chucking graphs at customers. You’ve got to think, not just about what they want from a functional, rational perspective, but also what they want from an emotional perspective. That’s probably the most neglected part of the electricity customer’s experience around the world.
So we worked hard to deliver emotional benefits out of a feeling of satisfaction and control. Transforming the customer experience into one of control is about taking the massive amounts of data that we have as an industry, turning that into insight and allowing customers to act on it. We’ve moved from a model where customers get regular demands for payment – you call them bills – to one where they actively log in 64 times a year – more than once a week.
Customers actually want to check their balances and transact with us because when they log on they can get a positive experience – they can look for a discount.
Unlike a traditional retailer, we don’t bill our customers once every month or couple of months. Our customers log in and buy packages of power called “power packs” – this gives customers the flexibility to buy when they like and how much they like.
In addition, these packages give us the option to customise products for different customer types. We have green products, so our environmentally conscious customers can buy power packs that have carbon offsets attached. Other products are scaled for consumption – for instance for large families.
It is perfectly possible to build a power company that customers love, but you won’t do it with the same crappy PC systems you’ve always had; you won’t do it with people who don’t care; and you won’t do it if you treat your customers badly.
Power Shop is a New Zealand-based energy supplier with 55,000 customers in New Zealand and 25,000 in Australia, a market it launched into less than a year ago.
Ari Sargent, chief executive, Power Shop