Published on the 26/03/2015 | Written by Clare Coulson
The New Zealand energy company is taking a technology and customer-centric approach to staying ahead in the cut-throat energy market…
A new digital service released by Meridian Energy earlier this month will not cannibalise the company’s profits, says Meridian’s head of digital strategy Melanie Lynn.
The service, called My Energy Use, combines smart metering with real-time alerts that automatically warn Meridian’s residential energy customers when their electricity usage spikes. The aim is to help customers reduce energy usage and cut down their power bills. The service is believed to be one of the first of its kind in New Zealand.
Lynn said the company had already made energy consumption details available to customers in the form of online graphs and spreadsheets and had seen that customers who were engaged with online access to information were less likely to get into arrears and more likely to have a favourable view of Meridian. When Meridian checked, however, only a small proportion of customers was looking at the retrospective data.
To combat this Lynn said: “We wanted to create a tool that was accessible enough to encourage more than just early adopters to use it.”
Although the aim of the service is to help customers reduce their electricity spend, Meridian does not see it as a potential risk to the company’s long-term profits. “In the long run, if a customer has an engaging and positive relationship with Meridian, they will be with us for the long term. Customer competition and churn is fierce in the electricity industry. Our preference is to retain happy customers rather than spend time and money acquiring them,” said Lynn.
The project was built in collaboration with Jade Software and completed in less than four months, using an agile development framework.
John Ascroft, Jade’s chief innovation officer said: “We involved customers throughout the project, rather than just bring them in for testing.
The clearest lesson is that customers love good design. They want the system to tell them when something needs attention, rather than poll it continuously themselves.”
Meridian and Jade are working together to expand the My Energy Use service based on customer feedback and specific feature requirements by industry sectors. Small-to-medium businesses and agricultural customers are next in line to receive the service.
Asked by iStart what other opportunities the ubiquity of smartphones and sensors is presenting the utilities industry, Meridian’s answer was rather bland, stating simply that it is reviewing all customer feedback and working with its design team to see how it can build on the success of My Energy Use.
Jade’s Ascroft, however, said: “Smartphones are increasingly being used as control devices for all sorts of home automation. For example, I can control my ducted air conditioning system at home through my smart phone app, allowing me to turn the appliance on and off and adjust the temperature. As we add intelligence to the home power infrastructure then smartphones will dominate the way we interact with our appliances. This is especially the case when we start looking at solar and other forms of home generation.”
