Time of Use

I joined the 'Growth Studios' team, who pitch new ideas to the business and when confidence is high, these ideas are incubated and ready for handover to the 'Go To Market Team'.

The idea we were working on had 2 parts

1. Growing the customer base for one of the UK’s lowest off-peak tariffs for EV charging.
2. A dedicated mobile app (Next Drive Smart) that enables users to specify when they need their car charged for, and how much charge is needed - essential to get the cheapest rates.

Problem

Working at the cutting edge of energy tech, in the time of use tariff space. These tariffs only pay off if customers change behaviour: charging EVs when wholesale electricity is cheapest. But onboarding was so complex it flooded the phone lines, and that couldn't scale.

Goals

1. Onboard 1,000 customers to the 'Next Drive Smart' Tariff by July 2025.
2. Improve the conversion rate of the landing page.
3. Enable customers to troubleshoot whilst onboarding to the app, to reduce inbound calls.

My Role

• Evaluated the tariff landing page — explored usability and conversion/fallout data.
• Joined forces with energy experts (call centre) to understand customer issues whilst trying to onboard to the tariff.
• Used Qual/Quant insights to re-design the tariff landing page using the 'Go To Market' design system.
• Evaluated the Next Drive Smart app's EV onboarding experience and simplified the process including language used in the UI.
• Created research led FAQ content for the tariff and app.
• Prototyped and implemented new features such as push notifications.

The time of use tariff required a behaviour shift for the customer. Their EV effectively would need to be plugged in at home for the majority of the day to take advantage of cheaper charging rates.

A mockup to compare different tariff types.

Registration

If we failed to address friction in the registration journey, users would continue to have a negative experience. The outcome of this would have been:

• Loosing signups.
• Continued strain on customer support agents, which was not scalable at volume.
• Failing to meet the business goal.

The App

Customer onboarding, getting this right was crucial to the success of the product and continued funding from the business. If we were not able to get this right, we'd inevitably loose customers and project funding.

Collaboration, building empathy, data analysis and qualitative research were the essential ingredients to ensure we got it right for the customer, and ultimately to help the business achieve its goals.

Customer Acquisition.

The marketing page and customer acquisition funnel was mapped with conversion and fallout data, to see exactly at which steps, customers were being lost. I conducted a heuristic evaluation of the net experience, forming assumptions as to why we were loosing potential customers.

Forming key assumptions.

• Eligibility criteria was not clear from the outset.
• The journey had to be abandoned to supply information, which might not have been convenient within that session.
• EV compatibility was not obvious.
• Lengthy sign-up process.

Team alignment workshop.

I then asked our product team to form their own assumption as to why the journey was not performing as expected. We then shared our assumptions and ranked them in order from riskiest to least.

Flipping assumptions to Hypotheses.

1. Ensure customers can easily check if the tariff is available at the home address.
2. Give users a simple checklist that spells out exactly what is needed to complete registration.
3. Make it clear that a separate app is needed to use the tariff.
4. Provide FAQ content informed by customer conversations with energy specialists.

FAQ quality

Next drive smart app.

My Focus was on the onboarding experience and to resolve connectivity issues between the app and a the customers EV.

Error states

Making sure the unhappy paths had clear messaging and options to continue.

In app notifications using Flutter patterns

Kraken our technology partner

On site to test out connectivity

Fun with Figma

Component for different break points for a product marketing page.

Fun with the team