Research and testing for a better customer experience with Contact Energy
Using qualitative research, behaviour design, and summative testing to unlock customer behaviour for an energy provider.
Achievements
- 01Used contextual interviews and prototype testing to model customer behaviour
- 02Created insight reports that directly led to more effective design decision making
- 03Conducted multiple usability tests helping to refine customer facing experiences
My agency Lushai has provided research and usability testing services to Contact Energy for many years. In one of our favourite projects Contact Energy needed help identifying the different behaviours people exhibited when choosing plans, and strategies for how to structure and present those plans to accommodate those behaviours.
Approach
I combined contextual interviews with prototype testing, comparing people's past experiences choosing plans for different types of utilities (power, phone, internet, etc.) with their reactions to prototypes of different designs for presenting plans being considered by Contact.
Insights
Along with my colleague Akriti Rana I looked for the processes people used when deciding which plan to select, looking for why some people did extensive research and why some did none. We discovered some large differences in behaviour when selecting a plan for power compared to selecting a plan for other utilities. This gave us important insights into how power plans needed to be presented for different segments of the public.