Essent is the largest energy supplier in The Netherlands. With over three million clients it is important to provide them with information about their costs, expected costs, their energy contract and possible changes. Essent provides this information for clients via a personal application.
Current situation
The usage insights feature is outdated and does not really add in-depth value for Essent customers. People can see what they spend but it is unclear if they are on track with their current billing amount based on a one time forecast. This often results in an additional bill at the end of the calendar year, as the estimated monthly billing amount was too low. That means unhappy clients, and avoidable pressures for customer support employees.
Discover & Define
While I was doing my deep dive on the insights feature, I analysed the possibilities with the development teams about which data points we can provide for clients. I worked closely together with Essent’s research department to get to know the different target groups and how I can combine their research to create a solution.
Ideation: Giving insights & preventing a bill shock
After I understood the different target groups and their obstacles, it became clear they all share one main goal: to not pay a certain amount extra at the end of the year. The difficulties were that their values differed vastly, and most of the people do not have a true understanding of how the costing of their energy bill works. I started working on a solution for the insights feature. After multiple ideations and continuous interviews to test if I’m on the right path with my assumptions I had my first concept ready for validation with actual clients.
Conducting the survey and validating the prototype
We arranged a remote test for our client panel. The results of 13 participants helped us with our first deep dive on the most important feature of the application. Because this was the first time their research department worked together with a UX designer on a test, it gave them confidence in doing more research combined with prototyping. Details of the test are undisclosed.
What the client says
“Hakim is structural and very social. He often challenges the ‘question behind the question: the why’, which is very pleasant for me as a PO to work with.”