The challenge

Energy suppliers in the UK are required to offer all customers Smart Meters by December 2021. Longer term, they are also expected to have Smart Meters physically installed by mid-2025. Our client needed help to meet these targets.

The solution

In order to support our client meet this target, Smart Meters are being promoted to customers (where eligible) during the course of every customer conversation that the Sigma team have on behalf of the client. Where an appointment is gained, these can be booked directly onto the client’s system.

Sigma delivered a detailed training programme to all its advisers to ensure they have the skills and understanding to promote the benefits of Smart Meters to the client’s customers. All experience gained during the calls was fed back into training programmes to ensure there was a continuous uplift of skills, knowledge and confidence. This improved the conversation between the client and the customer and ultimately led to more appointments being booked.

As well as promoting smart meters in all customer interactions we ran a series of outbound campaigns to pro-actively off smart meters.  The most successful of which was part of a ‘ring for reads’ campaign whilst at the same time as contacting the customer to obtain and up to date reading we also promoted the benefits of smart meters meaning that would avoid future calls like this and always receive an accurate bill.  The take up on this campaign was much higher as a result of the connection between the need for a reading and the benefits of smart meters.

The result

The benefits of the campaign have been significant, with measurable improvements across the board.

Sigma’s approach has resulted in a 20% of service calls achieving an installation appointment.

Sigma also outperformed the competition when offering smart meter appointments during a service call being a whole 7 percentage points better than another outsource partner who were doing the same activity.

On our bespoke campaign ‘Ring for Reads’ where we were contacting the customer specifically to obtain a meter reading we had a 90% conversion rate in booking a smart meter appointment.

Additionally, by offshoring the work to our operation in South Africa, the cost of the programme has been halved.