The market is evolving; Customer demands are changing across all industries. The struggle to establish and maintain relevance to your customers is more important now than ever.
For energy companies, customer engagement was simple. Consumer expectations of their energy companies used to be simple – keep the lights on and the house comfortable at a fair cost. Innovative ideas have morphed into ubiquitous offerings and strategic roadmaps have been determined to be built and executed in the near future. Technology has pushed the market to provide customers more of what they need, expect and can shop for. Research has proven that energy companies are positioned to leverage their role as trusted advisors to expand and strengthen their roles to “own the home”.
Historically disparate solutions, energy management and smart home, are converging by taking advantage of new technology platforms that can support both and do so via third party platform services. These solutions provide 3 key benefits that directly increase relevancy to your customers:
- COMPELLING SOLUTIONS: Combining Energy Management with Smart Home into a single customer-facing application makes the customer experience more compelling. Our data points suggest very frequent customer interaction with Smart Home mobile apps, energy management would be more relevant/impactful if presented within that context rather than stand alone.
- PERSONAL AND DIGITAL ACCESS: Customer Experience that aggregates Energy Management with Smart Home through a smart phone application enhances satisfaction, retention and revenue. This also permits stronger, more regular and more relevant direct marketing and communication to your customers and a more interactive and actionable experience for them to become immersed.
- STRONG VALUE / HIGH DEMAND: While very impactful, most attention so far has been limited to the thermostat, while too little attention has been paid to the remaining 40% of energy usage. After HVAC, the marginal effort to manage energy increases as the impact falls. The real question is how to efficiently drive incremental energy savings with DECREASING effort through greater solution intelligence. Research shows that the market, in terms of what customers will pay for, is minuscule for stand-alone energy management experiences (services, apps, etc.). We have developed portfolios of solutions for our clients, building smart home and energy management roadmaps that link directly to revenue increases and growth opportunities combined with the support of standing up new businesses and proving success through execution.
Customer value propositions are changing with every new advance in technology. It is far more dangerous to wait to strike gold than it is to determine where your company can sit in this convergence and make a difference.
Sprosty Network is excited to partner with Parks Associates as a sponsor of their key 2020 events. We look forward to sharing more about our perspectives and insights on the convergence of Energy Management and the Smart Home at the Connections Summit at CES on January 7th. We hope to see you there.
For more information, please be in touch.