Product venture studio. We design and build conequential products at the edge of technology.
SMART METERS ENHANCED
The innovation department of a French utility behemoth came to us with a question: why are French people still antagonized by the deployment of a fleet of smart meters in their homes?
We designed and tested a compelling value proposition for a new digital service associated with the smart meter. This service would:
1. Provide alerts and advice when customers’ energy consumption is not aligned with their pattern, before their bills arrive, and provide financial solutions to ease the pain of a massive bill.
2. Comparison. Provide ways for a customer to evaluate their consumption with similar households in their neighbourhood.
3. Progressive value proposition. Nudge customers into disclosing more about their households to provide them with accurate recommendations on energy efficiency.
FAST PROTOTYPING TO INITIATE THE RIGHT CONVERSATION
A key element of this project was the lack of actual value proposition of the smart meter deployment. No services were attached to the smart meters, while they were seen as an intrusion into people's intimacy.
We defined a suite of services that spoke directly to the energy consumers, raising strategic questions for our client: how to better support their customers when in financial difficulty? How to anticipate exceptional energy consumption? How to provide more accurate advice on energy consumption?
Going fast into a live prototype allowed us to materialize this value proposition and showed that it could be created with minimal effort, moving the conversation from "can we do it?" to "how fast can we release it?"