This post was originally published on Simple Energy’s website. Simple Energy is now Uplight.
Simple Energy launched Marketplace as a friendly, easy-to-use e-commerce channel where customers can enroll in utility programs and rates as well as purchase products and services. With utility branding attached to each Marketplace, the utility can position itself as customers’ trusted source of energy-saving products and services. As Marketplace adoption expands across the US, we are excited to confirm that the platform is enjoying overwhelming success.
Greentech Media reports that Georgia Power, who partnered with Simple Energy to power their Marketplace in 2016, has reached a new level of customer engagement through the platform.
According to Jeff Smith, energy-efficiency strategy and implementation manager for Georgia Power, the Georgia Power Marketplace offers the utility’s customers “new products and services that take their experience with us to the next level.”
Marketplace allows utility customers to easily find the products or services that best fit their home energy needs, as well as instantly process rebates. As a result, utilities can quickly build their relationships with these customers.
“The intent of the marketplace is for us to grow in that trusted adviser role to our customers,” Smith adds. “If they grow and become more technologically savvy, we want to grow with them. We want to have multiple channels to interconnect with them and increase customer satisfaction.”
For Georgia Power, the results are very encouraging:
- More than 400,000 site visits
- Thousands of rebates redeemed
- Nearly $4 million in gross sales
- Customer satisfaction score above 90%
What’s Next?
The rise of the online marketplace is a trend poised to spread across the utility industry, according to Greentech Media. By offering a marketplace to customers, utilities can accelerate adoption of energy-efficiency programs, demand response and distributed energy resources.
Simple Energy has emerged as the leader of this evolution.
In fact, Simple Energy offers both project and product capabilities via Marketplace, which were identified by GTM as the two leading emerging categories. By carefully vetting the products and services we suggest for utilities, we also eliminate the complexity and uncertainty that utilities and their customers face when trying to make decisions.
Marketplace is just one possible step in the customer journey. Utilities that make an effort to initially engage customers and communicate the value of new programs can drive exponentially more transactions through their marketplace. Utilities who envision this process as end-to-end customer engagement will discover the most positive results in customer loyalty—as well as the best business results.
