Attractive and personalised energy bills

Three suggestions for more innovative billing designs

1. Opower

As one of several features to engage end users on a personal level, Opower has developed so-called ‘Home Energy Reports’. The reports offer the end users easy-to-understand information on their personal household consumption as well as comparing them with similar households in their neighbourhood. See an example ‘Home Energy Report’, developed for the public utility in Pasadena in a pilot program aimed at reducing home energy use.

Here, customers were compared to similar households with average consumption (100 homes of similar size in the area) as well as efficient households. Apart from information on their current consumption, end users also received feedback on their consumption history and their neighbour’s consumption during the last twelve months. Additionally, end users were ranked within their reference group of a 100 neighbours.
 

2. Information is beautiful - ideas, issues, knowledge, data - visualized!

Information is beautiful is a company that was founded by the data journalist and information designer David McCandless. He and his team have made it their mission to transform data into beautiful visualisations, infographics and diagrams. Those visualisations are sold as posters and collected in books. If one considers offering end users a bill including an easy to understand and attractive feedback on their consumption data, this is a good source to seek inspiration!
 
Watch below, a video of David McCandless explaining the beauty of data visualization:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Zg-C8AAIGg
  

 3. Idomoo

The company idomoo offers personalised videos as a service. The videos are created by integrating personalised and segmented customer data into a master video.
Contacting end users via a video feature has several advantages. It’s innovative, attractive, and easy to understand and requires minimum effort from the end user (one click). In combination with the personalised address, it can be an effective tool to reach out to end users.

Video bills are among the services of Idomoo. Also, the company has worked together with a Dutch utility to develop an annual utility statement in the video format that was rolled out in a marketing campaign.
Watch the example video presenting a personalised Telecom video bill below:
 

 


© THE S3C CONSORTIUM 2013