Making a statement
How redesigning an energy bill turned confusion into clarity — and customers into advocates.
Impact
74%
“I’d just like to congratulate you on the clarity and simplicity of the statement. It’s a great leap forward from any I’ve seen before with other suppliers. Thanks!”
– Victoria Roskill, Octopus Energy customer
Best customer experience
UKCX Awards
Winner
Problem
Energy bills were broken.
Complicated payments, estimated charges and unclear balances led to customers getting in touch on a regular basis just to understand a simple bill.
With heavy industry regulation requiring specific wording and even specific placement of information, the solution was not an obvious one.
Questioning assumptions.
The ask
Our CEO Greg Jackson sent me an example explainer from a competitor and asked me to mock up something similar.
My response?
“How about we just design a bill that people can understand?”
After discussion we decided to solve the root cause of the issue, rather than plastering over the problem.
Goal:
Effectively communicate changes to customers' accounts.
Key metric:
Reduce bill clarification contact on an ‘average’ account.
Research
Reading regulations.
By taking customer service calls directly I was able to build a picture of the challenges users were facing with their bills.
But with heavy regulation around billing information I had to dive into the energy supply licence to understand what I could and couldn’t do.
Solution: Take 1
Simplifying the mental model.
I identified that the traditional ‘bill’ metaphor was misaligned with how energy usage and payments actually worked.
Customers spoke of energy bills but in reality what they have is an energy account.
I proposed a shift from the bill / statement mental model to that of an account.
This allowed me to simplify the transactions and create a simple follow along sum in the right hand column. No more confusing bills or statements terminology, just a simple sum.
Starting with an opening balance you could follow each operation below and see exactly how you end up with your new balance at the bottom.
Creating a simple sum enabled users to see exactly what was happening on their account at glance.
Review
Success & improvements.
Customers found the new PDF design a lot more digestible and this led to significantly reduced number of user queries.
However, there were still areas to improve:
Estimates caused nervousness and fed distrust.
PDFs were not the most accessible format.
Solving these problems would require pushing beyond the regulations and our current systems abilities.
Iterate
A new system.
Restricted by our underlying systems, generating anything other than a PDF was not viable.
However, we were developing our own industry operating system, Kraken which swung the doors wide open for new user experiences.
Collaborating with our CTO James Eddison we were able to scope a solution that Kraken could help move to a more accessible bill format as well as removing estimated charges from bills, all in one move.
Solution: Take 2
In the palm of their hand.
Kraken allowed us to move from a timed monthly update to sending users an update on demand when they submitted a meter reading. Therefore eliminating estimated charges!
I created a new bill design optimised for email that followed regulation and was able to give customers accurate account info directly to their inboxes.
By combining the design insights from the PDF updates and the new system abilities of Kraken we were able to create an industry leading solution for users.
Impact
Customers found the new account design so much easier to understand it reduced contact about normal bill clarification by 74%.
This meant our customer service team had more time to help customers who had more difficult problems, creating a better service for those who really needed it.
Once we had fully rolled out Kraken to our users these designs were being used millions of times a year and are now being used millions of times per month.
Best customer experience
UKCX Awards
Winner
“I’d just like to congratulate you on the clarity and simplicity of the statement. It’s a great leap forward from any I’ve seen before with other suppliers. Thanks!”
— Victoria Roskill, Octopus Energy customer
“I love how easy it is to respond with monthly readings and the ease with which I understand statements.”
— Irene Wilson, Octopus Energy customer
