A great day with The Digital DRA and much of the Utilities industry talking all things engagement and digital at Eon’s offices. A lot of fun with some great ideas.
Some notes from the session below.
Key Take Aways
- Debt in the utilities sector remains structurally elevated despite improvements in wholesale prices; arrears and numbers on and off plans are still increasing.
- Engagement is the principal operating constraint — customers often do not engage even when support (payments or write-offs) is offered.
- Digital self-serve channels (web portal, WhatsApp, two-way SMS) deliver materially higher conversion where journeys are end-to-end and personalised.
- Co-branding between suppliers and a resolution provider reduces “who are you?” friction and increases trust at handover.
- Data enrichment at placement (VRS/PSR flags, insolvency indicators) prevents wasted contact and improves routing and outcomes.
- Behavioural design (plain English, template rotation, attention-capturing creative) materially increases open and click rates versus traditional letters.
- AI is being used prudently: sentiment scoring and suggested agent replies augment agent capability but do not replace human oversight.
- New payment rails (Open Banking, digital wallets) have high customer take-up; Open Banking is particularly popular for payments.
- SME debt presents distinct operational and fairness challenges compared with residential customers; litigation risk can destroy small businesses.
- Operating model and incentives must be realigned to measure sustainable resolution outcomes (not short-term cash only).
- Cultural change — retraining agents to focus on outcomes and comfort with “uncomfortable” conversations — improves customer experience and NPS in collections.
- Small, measurable pilots (prepay-by-default trials, white-label integrations, app pilots) are the pragmatic route to scale innovation while maintaining regulatory evidence.
Innovatation
- Co-branded handover communications and client portal access to reduce trust friction at first contact.
- Dynamic, vulnerability-aware portals that change the customer experience based on flags (e.g. domestic violence signposting).
- High-conversion self-serve journeys with strong UX focus.
- White-label integrations that allow clients to keep inbound calling while using a specialist digital resolution front end.
- Automated pre-placement enrichment using APIs to flag insolvency/vulnerability and route accounts automatically.
- AI-assisted agent tooling: sentiment scoring, inbox highlighting and suggested compliant responses based on previous QA/responses.
- Prepay-by-default on change of tenancy (trial) to force contact and re-establish liability where tenant data is unknown.
- Use of Open Banking as a payment method within payment-plan flows to improve conversion and trust.
Key Statistics
- Estimate cited: 12 million people in fuel poverty in the UK (slide referenced in the discussion).
- Portal engagement: ~55% of customers logging in (statement: “we’ve got 55% of all of them logging in”).
- Conversion: 54% of portal logins result in a measurable financial outcome (payment, plan or scheduled payment).
- Scale: the provider reported servicing ~700,000 live customers and nearing nearly 1 million customers at any time.
- Velocity: the provider reported ~30,000–40,000 new placements per month.
- Client count: provider working with 38 clients (stated).
- Segment estimate: within the most difficult cohort an approximate 40% / 60% split was described (40% ‘can pay’ / 60% genuine financial stress).
- Operational hit rate example: historical short-term lending hit rate referenced at ~15% in a particular placement context (discussed in examples).
- Operational improvement cited from a vulnerability routing change: engagement uplift ~70% (when vulnerable customers were routed differently and given breathing space).
Key Discussion Points
- Why arrears remain stubborn despite easing wholesale prices and a possible 60-day lag in price effects.
- The persistent trust problem: customers suspect scams and may not engage even when money is being offered.
- Segmentation: distinguishing “can pay / won’t pay” from “cannot pay” and the implications for collections strategy.
- Vulnerability identification and the operational value of integrating VRS / PSR data at day-zero.
- Channel strategy: when to use digital self-serve, WhatsApp and two-way SMS versus human contact.
- Payment mechanics: Open Banking, PayPal and CPA trade-offs (conversion vs cost/trust).
- Cultural and incentive change: moving away from cash-focused targets to outcome and customer wellbeing metrics.
- The regulator and policy environment: pro-consumer political pressures, off-gem/Ofgem data implications and winter support interventions.
- Operational friction in utilities (unknown occupiers, tenant turnover, water isolation hurdles) versus other sectors.
- The role of AI — augmentation for sentiment and QA versus the risk of adding AI on weak process foundations.
- Commercial models for partnerships (white-label, co-brand, client portal integrations) and how to evidence benefit to clients.
- Practical experimentation approach: small pilots, measurement, and scaling (examples: prepay trials; DD reset and DD recovery campaigns).
Description
A practitioner round-table hosted by The Digital DRA at E.ON bringing together energy, water and collections professionals to review industry trends, share operational experience and examine a practical digital debt-resolution case study. The session combined an executive overview (BFY slides), peer discussion on macro and customer trends (arrears, vulnerability, SME risk), demonstrations of a digital, co-branded resolution platform (portal UX, payment rails, data enrichment and AI augmentation), and practical debate on deploying innovation within regulated operating models.
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