Opower redesigns Home Energy Report with new insights, behavioral science factors
Home Energy Reports (HERs) coming out of Oracle Utilities Opower have been dramatically changed through a mix of new designs, energy insights, and applied behavioral science techniques meant to aid energy efficiency savings, increase digital engagement, and boost customer satisfaction.
The new reports focus on achieving broad demand side management and engagement outcomes for utilities. Personalization is the name of the game, with each report built on behavioral science, artificial intelligence, and appliance-level disaggregation.
Insights and icons can now be adjusted and resituated to suit visual appeal. The reports are more flexible to better address customer engagement, which has brought HERs 12 times the average click-through rates to standard digital reports. Utilities can still use paper reports for hard-to-reach customers, but the goal of these HERs is to lead customers to digital reports over time.
“FirstEnergy serves multiple states, all with different customer needs, efficiency goals, and regulatory structures, so it’s important that we design and scale programs to achieve those many goals,” said Nicole Williams, manager, energy efficiency, residential programs, FirstEnergy. “The new Opower Home Energy Reports—with their highly individualized insights, flexible design, and continuous learning model—will help engage customers and deliver all the results we need throughout our service territories.”
Behavioral science also plays a significant role. These techniques, meant to sustain engagement over time, include comparing customers’ energy use to target zones, only charting customers’ relative level of efficiency, and openly congratulating customers for taking action.
“Our ability to make every report a new experience for all types of customers not only delivers industry-leading results, but it also creates a testbed for trying new behavioral techniques and engagement strategies,” Scott Neuman, GVP of Oracle Utilities Opower, said. “Our reimagined HER is a major leap forward that allows utilities to execute successful programs and help build our clean energy future right now.”
The new style of reports will be widely available beginning this summer.
