Supporting sustainable energy startups to improve their service offerings
Project aims:
Energy Systems Catapult brought in Inclusively and Common to support a few sustainability startups that had received funding as part of the Net Zero Innovation Portfolio and Climate Innovation Platform initiatives.
The SMEs wanted help to improve their service offerings by reviewing their current service journeys with a user research, design and behavioural science lens and support carrying out user research with potential users.
The aims were to help better understand what people need to know about the product and how to help people make an informed decision around their sustainable energy products.
Our approach
Inclusively and Common worked together to support a few energy startups to help review, develop and test new service and product propositions with potential users before they launch and scale.
We conducted a behavioural science and design review of an SME’s website to identify opportunities to improve the user journey and likelihood of potential user contacting the SME for a chat.
We ran a series of 1-1 chats and workshops with home owners and heating engineers to understand people's home heating experiences and to explore how the new services could best meet users' needs.
We first explored what people were doing currently and what influenced their decisions. We then reviewed the new services with people to understand what people thought might work well for them and what could be improved.
We also ran a nationally representative survey with 2,000 UK homeowners to understand more about the future services perceived benefits, value and potential use case scenarios.
What we learned
We learned that many people do not feel confident about their heating systems and that when heating systems have faults or fail suddenly it can be very stressful.
We also learned that sometimes people would rather not know about problems until they have to, which can be a barrier to engaging with new heating products and services.
Impact and outcomes
We were able to help the start-ups understand what people's decision making journeys are like, what's most important to people, what worries they have and what they are most excited about with the new types of services and products. The research also highlighted some of the key barriers to adoption and how to overcome those.
The findings supported the product teams to make service journey and product improvements.
“We had a terrific experience working with Charley and Kat. They gave us straight to the point insights and practical suggestions on how we can improve the quality of our customer journeys - keeping them inclusive and engaging.”
- Adam Raw, Founder, Dwellow
Thank you:
Thank you to all the people who took part in the project and shared their stories about home heating. Thank you also to the recruitment team at Roots who helped us find the right people to take part.
Thank you to the SMEs and Catapult team for being brilliant to work with!
Team:
Charley Pothecary, Inclusively
Katherine Jennings, Common Collective
Tom Furlong, Energy Systems Catapult