Re-energise your onboarding processes: How the utilities sector can optimise onboarding in 3 simple steps

In the wake of many energy companies folding in the past year, utilities providers are looking for ways to quickly and effectively onboard new customers. User experience is now firmly in the spotlight and has never been so important for energy companies looking to regain market share. 

We’ve identified the 3 top tips that utilities can leverage to help optimise onboarding and keep up with changing energy landscape.   

Simplify 

By nature, onboarding new customers in the utilities sector can be a long and tedious process. As an electric, gas or water provider, there is a substantial amount of information you need to gather around current bills and consumption leading to a series of complex questions. However, research from Baymard shows that a too long or complicated process is one of the top reasons for users giving up and heading elsewhere.

One way of optimising the journey is to break up your questions into manageable chunks using multi-step forms. You should also include a progress bar to clearly indicate just how long the process is actually going to take them.  

Reduce form friction  

The utilities sector notoriously has one of the highest abandonment rates. One way to tackle this is by implementing a smart address validation tool that allows the user to search any part of an address and predict the address they are searching for, bringing up accurate matches, even when typos are entered. Not only will this help to speed up the process, but you’re assured you’re capturing only accurate and up-to-date data, thereby avoiding issues further down the line.  

You can also use tools to append additional data in the background, such as MPAN (Meter Point Administration Number) and Smart Meter data from the Utilities Register. This reduces the number of fields and makes the process for your users even quicker. Why trouble your users with questions you don’t even need to ask? 

Level up your marketing  

After you’ve provided your users with a quote, it’s extremely likely they will leave your site for a competitor to look for the best deal. Use an on-site message to give the users to lock in their quote and receive an email or SMS remarketing message. Capturing the correct details here is also a great way to keep customers engaged with personalised recommendations and upsell additional products. Utilising an email and phone validation tool will help verify whether the customer’s details are correct, giving you greater reach and efficiency of these campaigns. These tools are also critical for ensuring your organisation is TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act) compliant. 

A few small tweaks to your onboarding process will not only help increase customer satisfaction but concurrently improve retention, business efficiency, and reduce downstream costs.

Discover more about how Loqate can help your Utilities organisation