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UTILITY WEEK | DECEMBER 2020 | 29 Customers meet the needs of the 93 per cent of UK households who have internet access and the 20 per cent of UK citizens who have a disability. Like my 95-year-old gran, who lives in sheltered accommodation and uses a cheap Android tablet to stay in touch. Her poor eyesight and Parkinson's means she can't use most incumbents' websites, and her hearing and speech difficulties make telephony difficult. For those who don't have internet access, Octopus doesn't have call-handling targets – if a customer needs to stay on the phone for an hour, that's fine. If our team thinks they need additional help, they'll offer it there and then. The same technology that reduces cost gives our people the time and tools to provide better support to customers when they need it. This grounding in outstanding service means we speak with some authority about enabling customers to benefit as we transi- tion to green energy. And as challengers, our relentless focus on driving costs down means we think about the whole system. EVs for the many, not the few When it comes to EVs, it's a myth that low- income households will suffer from dynamic tariffs. Octopus's data shows that our low- income and Warm Home Discount custom- ers would actually be slightly better off, on average, on our Agile tariff. Even without behaviour change. The current energy system is rigged against low-income households – the idea of switching annually makes sense to those who work in bureaucratic jobs but a predicted saving on a 12-month contract is less appealing to those who need savings now. Low-income households are bargain- hunters in other markets – making the most of mobile minutes, 99p stores, etc. Dynamic or time-of-use pricing allows them to find bargains in energy too. No-one is saying that everyone needs to be on dynamic or time-of-use tariffs but we do need them to be attractive to customers if we are going to make a renewables-based system work at lowest cost. Grasping the opportunity they offer will pave the way for the affordable mass electrification of heating and transport. Does the energy industry really want to be the 21st century equivalent of the lobby- ists behind Palmerston's Red Flag, or does it want to be at the vanguard of the most important societal revolution since the inter- net? This is the opportunity to drive costs down for everyone, while addressing the climate emergency and creating hundreds of thousands of jobs in a green recovery. CS1: Control group & did not switch 33% 31% 33% 63% CS1: Intervention group & did not switch * The sample in this group is too small to generalise to the population about their behaviour CS1: Control group & switched CS1: Intervention group & switched Analysis Switching campaign had lasting effect Once people are persuaded of switching, the behaviour sticks, according to follow-up research of a 2018 Ofgem campaign. Adam John reports. C ustomers who were re-prompted to change energy tariff following a collective switch (CS) trial by Ofgem were almost twice as likely to do so again, the regulator has found. Ofgem assessed whether the CS interventions as part of a trial held in March and April 2018 had a lasting or sustained impact on switching in the following 17 months. In total 55,000 customers were involved in the initial CS trial. Of these, 50,000 were split into two groups, one of which received letters from their supplier and another which received letters from Ofgem. A control group received no letters at all. The CS letters included an option for customers to move on to an exclu- sive "collective switch tariff " and information about price comparison site Energyhelpline (EHL) where they could either choose the exclusive tariff or another supplier. Switching rates among these cus- tomers increased, with 27 per cent of those who received letters from their supplier swapping, compared with 15 per cent of those who received the Ofgem-branded letter. The control group saw a 2.6 per cent increase. Following the first CS trial, Ofgem conducted a "sustained engage- ment" investigation, which analysed the switching behaviours of around 49,000 customers from the initial trial over a 17-month period. Overall, the subsequent switching rate of those who changed tariff during the trial (63 per cent) was 30 percent- age points greater than those who did not (33 per cent). The subsequent switching rate of those in the control group who switched (31 per cent), and those in the intervention group who did not (33 per cent) was no higher than the 33 per cent in the control group who did not change tariff during the CS trial. Ofgem says this implies there was something about the intervention that encouraged people to move in the fol- lowing 17 months, but only if they had switched during the initial trial. In total 79 per cent of switchers in the intervention group used EHL. Ofgem believes the fact that cus- tomers were substantially more likely to switch again than those moving directly to a supplier (69 per cent) was down to the effectiveness of EHL's communications as all customers were prompted at the end of their tariff. Of those who used EHL to switch during the CS trial, three-quarters signed up to receiving continuous marketing from the comparison ser- vice. In addition, those switchers who agreed to marketing received a phone call and received marketing aer their tariff end date. The trial found that those who agreed to EHL marketing were 14 per- centage points (73 per cent compared to 59 per cent) more likely to subse- quently switch – although more than half of those who did not agree to EHL marketing still subsequently switched. Adam John, reporter Source: Ofgem