Uplight

Rate Journey & Coach

Role: Team Designer & Researcher

Overview

Uplight is becoming a market leader in rates solution products. Now with a suite of standalone products in the works, and some already designed and launched, our task was to find ways to validate and test them both individually and as a connected customer journey.

My work involved designing and launching several standalone products as well as modules in suites of larger products while testing and iterating, and steering collective vision and brainstorming. Together this was a full team effort that has and will continue to unify and create a singular customer experience from product to product within rates and beyond.

  • Education

    The first products in the suite are focused on educating customers on their existing rate and available rates. We help them model and predict what they'll pay based on usage data and various user inputs.

  • Enrollment

    The next stop in the suite is focused on providing simple to use tools that speed up and build trust in the enrollment process. These tools allow users to compare rates and play with different inputs and scenarios.

  • Coaching

    And last but not least, once a user has opted into a rate we then built an array of products and modules on web, mobile and print and email that would inform the user of how they were performing on their new rate and what else they can do.

Using rates to unlock more

demand management

A key objective was to understand and prove how our rates products could be the gateway to more demand management potential.

It was shown that our products could not only increase passive load reduction but also serve to bring customers to enroll in other programs and purchase devices that could be controlled by those programs.

We also began with journey mapping and complex logic scenarios in order to determine feasibility early in designing some of our products and interactions.

Educating and

enrolling users

With Rate Education Reports and other print and email touch points, we drove users to a Rate Advisor platform that could assist with all the finer details and scenarios.

Here, users would be able to fine tune their rate and input data and preferences that we could use to model and update estimated pricing based on their usage data.

From there, users would be able to navigate to our utility partner’s website and enroll in the rate that was best for them. This resulted in massive improvements in CSAT, reduced call volume, and much greater user satisfaction and confidence in the utility and the rate.

Coaching users

after enrollment

One of the more valuable offerings in the suite became the Rate Coach solutions, which were a series of web, email and print communications and portals designed to keep users informed on their progress along the way.

These products gave users detailed information on how and when they were using energy, and provided connections to other products and offerings that could help them save.

We also focused on educational content to help them on their energy efficiency journey.

Users in research and post-launch surveys frequently reported that this was the most useful information they could receive. Engagement and CSAT were greatly boosted when these products were implemented.

Discovery and research

Throughout this multi-year process, countless user studies and sprints were conducted to collect internal and external feedback. This allowed our team to hone our process and iterate and design rapidly.

This is my favorite part of our work. Discovering baseline problems and testing them down the road with real people. We learned innumerable paint points and lessons, challenged so many assumptions, and busted a plethora of hypotheses.

And in the end, we discovered new pain points and developed early education and awareness campaigns and products to introduce to our lineup.

Testing and learning

Many rounds of user testing and synthesis were done to sort out all of the finer details of our designs and to answer big and unknown questions. Quantitative and qualitative tests were run to test modules, components and whole product to product experiences.

Along the way we captured pain points and identified crucial areas of improvement, simplification, and were able to cut or remove ideas tasks or flows that simply weren’t productive.

This was immensely valuable for all teams and products and steered collective product direction. Moving forward, all products have clearer vision and many new opportunities for exploration and enhancment!