Innovation in the shadow of COVID-19.
The pandemic has disrupted everyone’s lives in almost every imaginable way. We have all been challenged to accept and adapt during these unprecedented times. While finding solace individually in the new pace of life by staying home, we are building our communities through collective action by staying home. We are individually re-evaluating what is most important to us, our families and our community, and that is being reflected in the daily decisions we make. We have and continue to change our habits for the sake of our personal well-being and for the sake of our communities and beyond.
The need to make decisions and implement new processes with immediacy has positioned many to act with certainty at an uncomfortable pace. As we focus on and accept our evolving lifestyles, there is a similar pressure put upon companies across most industries, globally. The call to “Stay Home” is accelerating a shift in consumers’ relationship with energy and, therefore, the role energy companies must take to provide dependability during a time of crisis.
These past weeks have tested businesses to act quickly with the best intentions for customers. Focusing on an empathetic approach to the customer experience has positioned energy companies to offer compassion and reliability during a time when so much of “what’s next” is unknown.
Fighting change has never proven successful: Embrace a pragmatic approach to drive innovation and use this time to prepare for the future
The pandemic and the ensuing crisis is an inevitable surprise – there have been warnings for decades, but the immensity is difficult to comprehend. While a novel virus has been called overdue, our gut tells us that no one saw this coming. Even the most successful, established industry leaders did not anticipate the scope and scale the of this pandemic’s impact. And yet, every day – for years, decades – businesses have invested in building out roadmaps for their future, innovation at the helm, new business lines to propel them as leaders and to dominate industries. Until they halted.
It has been interesting to watch businesses make calculated decisions about the modification of business practices and the allocation of capital as the uncertainty surrounding the effects of the COVID crisis continue to unleash. Little is certain as this crisis unfolds.
One critical consideration is how to be best positioned to reemerge post-COVID as the leaders and innovators you were once positioned to be….one month ago. It could be far more dangerous to abandon the focus and diligence around “future-proofed”, innovative ideas that have been spoken about in theory for so many years, now positioned for execution and scale.
While COVID presents clear challenges for management, it must also be a wake up call to the critical importance of innovation and strategic execution to forge ahead. Forward-thinking utilities will likely see the coronavirus as a wake-up call to accelerate innovation.
Energy companies, typically narrow and risk averse, in many cases have been putting customer needs at the heart of critically important solutions and offers as uncertainty and cost consciousness grow. While seemingly unnatural, energy companies have repositioned themselves and strengthened their role as a trusted advisor. Many are sharing ways for their residential and business customers to use less energy, educating customers to become smarter about how energy is being used.
Energy companies face a paradigm shift: Give customers the tools, not the tips, to become smarter about their relationship with energy
There has been a shift in mindset from developing and scaling Energy Management Platforms to identifying practical energy efficiency practices. Some energy saving practices may be disruptive, many may be mindful, but all can be maintained for the sake of establishing new and better habits that parallel the acute changes to our lifestyles. These new habits, like most, can be challenging to accept and adhere to, especially if forced, manual or require consumers’ attention.
Energy companies have been conscientious in their deliberate, reassuring messaging to customers that assures continuous service along with energy saving tips. Many tips promote awareness of the opportunities to reduce energy consumption in the use of lighting, heating and cooling, and appliances.
In-home energy efficiency and savings measures have been an important, but not always top-of-mind measure for residential customers. As the world shifts to a “work from home” reality, consumer intelligence about home energy consumption has more impact than ever.
It is so important and impactful for consumers to become smarter about energy consumption at home – and how to be smarter about that use is more important now than ever!
These simple tips have proven to make a positive and impactful difference to our environment. For example, replacing your home’s five most frequently used light fixtures or bulbs with ENERGY STAR models can save $75 per year* and unplugging powered off electronics can save up to $200 per year**. Making practical changes with regard to consumer relationships with energy use has had a profound impact. What energy companies lack is a way to provide customers the ability to directly benefit from these initial and other environmentally sound practices and to further promote clean energy awareness.
The opportunity is there: Provide data-driven, differentiated insights and drive customer satisfaction
For energy companies, providing insights to customers about relative energy use is ubiquitous, though arguably not meaningful. The race to provide differentiated, disaggregated insights is narrowing as the importance is demanded. Customers want to see how their shift in activity is yielding the savings. Now, more than ever, consumers are looking for their trusted advisors to be a partner in mindful, cost saving initiatives. The energy companies that build more meaningful customer relationships will do so in part by offering more enhanced, digital insights to customers. Our world has changed to trust and rely on remote and virtual platforms to inform behaviors and practices. Inviting these capabilities into standard practice positions energy companies to drive continued relevance across their customer base.
Digital, real-time insights position energy companies to be better stewards of grid management, customer relationships, and sustainability. Energy Management Platforms help drive carbon reduction efforts and shift focus to advanced, analytical products and services that customers find more informative, meaningful and actionable. Sharing disaggregated energy usage by appliance allows customers to become more actionable in their energy use choices; to not only hear about the impacts of energy savings but visualize individual impacts.
Help your customers build eco-friendly habits
Humans are often engaged through challenges and rewards. This concept has been extended to non-game purposes such as weight loss and fitness apps (like programs from Apple or Fitbit), retail incentive apps and in-store couponing (offered by big box retailers (Target / Walmart) and QSRs (Starbucks). This is known as gamification and it has been shown to shift customer behaviors and increase engagement. Using gamification to help consumers engage with and manage their energy usage can help drive permanent changes in customer behavior. Applications like ecoCRED give energy customers the opportunity to benefit from shifting behaviors. ecoCRED, an Exelon funded company, is an interactive customer-facing app that gamifies individual behaviors to drive awareness around carbon-reducing activities.
Katie Shrewsbury, Founder of ecoCRED shares that “ecoCRED helps energy customers build powerful, everyday habits that make a difference.” She goes on to say that “the impact of eco-friendly habits operates at the intersection of the environment, politics, economics and human rights. When individuals build eco-friendly habits, they take a stand to create a better world.”
A recent Deloitte study found that 67% of consumers are concerned about climate change and their personal carbon footprint. Further, Individual behaviors have an unprecedented impact on the environment driven by consumption patterns and activities of everyday life.
It can be confusing for consumers – even climate-conscious consumers – to understand their personal carbon footprint and how to act, but ecoCRED makes this fun, interesting and easy.
Why do energy consumers care?
Global warming is a real problem. Even naysayers will be forced to recognize the negative impact of carbon as cities, states and multi-national companies demand awareness and behavior changes, mandating a reduction in carbon emissions. There is fast-spreading consciousness around carbon and importance in establishing behaviors to ensure a low-carbon future.
Customer concerns and demands over climate change and carbon reduction are pushing real action:
- In 2020, NYC is implementing a carbon score for all buildings, mandating facility operations to become environmentally sound
- CA has already implemented carbon-cutting legislation with the passage of AB 32 requiring a reduction of carbon emissions
- Arizona’s largest utility has vowed to go carbon-free by 2050
- Companies are setting new sustainability goals, establishing mandates to become resource positive, reducing carbon emissions and redesigning business practices to operate in a more environmentally sustainable fashion (Starbucks, Microsoft, Nike, etc.)
Why do energy companies and utilities care?
The growing focus and direct behavior changes and mandates shifts the focus of utilities to offer and use increased amounts of renewable energy. Coal and gas plants will need to be replaced with clean energy generation alternatives. Capital dollars will need to quickly shift into increasing sources of renewables.
Demands of utilities will become real and force / impact a change that has been fought for years. Slow, small efforts over the past decade(s) will not be enough and will not be acceptable to the public. Consumer efforts and growing education, insight, change and impact will demand that utilities make significant changes to the way that energy is produced.
The bottom line
Fundamentally, consumers do not want to change their habits. This must be done over time. But with the shift in lifestyle that impacted people across the globe, the acute shift to efficiency and savings has become paramount. Customers are now more willing than ever to embrace new savings techniques but want to see the immediate impacts of their actions. This creates opportunity for energy companies to create deeper relevance to customers by showing the cost benefits of making energy efficient choices.
The race to net-zero carbon is on and increasingly companies are setting goals to achieve net zero by a future date. In the wake of COVID-19 and the “shutdown” of the world, smarter, cleaner and immediate shift to more digital and innovative lifestyles will emerge. With the right tools and the right support, incumbent energy providers will remain trusted energy advisors. But consumer sentiment is changing and the future iterations and new business shifts that have been considered for many years will be come expected on the other side of this crisis. No one anticipated the affects of COVID today, but many can prepare for the effects of a reemerged, smarter, digitally-connected and cleaner life tomorrow.
Sprosty Network works with energy and utility clients to ideate and commercialize new technologies to reinforce and refocus customer experience. From Idea to Execution: Sprosty Network helps businesses identify, develop and execute organic growth strategies. Our hands-on, pragmatic and entrepreneurial approach to innovation helps you deliver what’s next.
*Energy.gov: How Much Can You REALLY Save With Energy Efficient Improvements