In the fast-paced world of energy services, SSE Airtricity and UK Power Networks are leading the charge in setting up customers with green home upgrades faster. At the recent Vynners’ Community event, they shared insights on how they’ve accelerated their quotes process and improved their customer experience.
Generating a quote in 72 hours: a game-changer for SSE Airtricity
Stuart Hobbs, Director of Energy Services at SSE Airtricity, shared, “Our key ambition is to retrofit 40,000 homes.” He outlined the challenge faced by SSE Airtricity: the need to rethink customer journeys and their data capture process, previously reliant on paper-based surveys. In a market facing labour and contracting constraints, “you need to be as attractive to contracting partners as you are to customers. Previously we had wasted journeys due to unforeseen changes on the job.”
“With Vyn, we’ve stopped 85% wasted journeys. From a safety perspective, we aren’t sending contractors out blindly. They know what equipment they need ahead of time, and we can see any potential hazards and avoid last-minute job cancellations due to unforeseen risks.”
Stuart Hobbs, Director of Energy Services, SSE Airtricity
Stuart also highlighted how Vyn enables Airtricity to streamline their quoting process remarkably. Imagine getting all the data required to generate a quote in a single site visit, cutting the quote time down to as little as 72 hours. This efficiency is a game-changer for contractors, suppliers and customers alike.
Top tips from Stuart Hobbs:
- Be consistently agile, adaptable and open to change. Don’t be afraid to get it wrong. You don’t have all the answers and that’s okay.
- Recognise that constant change is hard on your teams. Set expectations so you don’t lose people along the way. Think about when you need to pause.
- Make sure you focus on what is getting done. Celebrate small, incremental changes to build momentum.
How UK Power Networks boosted their right-first-time rate to 75%
Ben Elmy, Product Manager for Low Carbon Readiness at UK Power Networks, shared their success story. The challenge was scaling up the quotation process without making multiple visits to customers’ homes.
“One of the key values is time efficiency. We can have a member in the office review far more applications with a video, which shows where the cable starts on the road all the way up to the customer’s home. We removed the waiting time for customers to get their low carbon technology installed, this is a real, tangible customer benefit.”
Ben Elmy, Product Manager for Low Carbon Readiness, UK Power Networks
Top tips from Ben Elmy:
- Change is difficult but don’t be afraid to leap. It’s all too common to soft launch a technology. “We had the option to soft launch Vyn, but decided to build it into our self-survey portal. 75% of customers opted to do a video survey with Vyn. This is a great response rate that scales up financial and time savings.”
- Engage with users during the development phase. Make sure they feel heard and are involved in the process, this will ensure enthusiasm to see the change go live.
- Innovative solutions are different, therefore, can be launched differently. Be agile. Accept a non-perfect solution from the start as long as it’s better than what you had before
By embracing change and focusing on efficiency, SSE Airtricity and UK Power Networks have set a new standard in the energy sector. Watch the event recording here to learn how you can accelerate your quote processes and improve customer experience.
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Watch the full playback of the event.
