ScottishPower is one of the ’big six’ suppliers in the UK’s retail energy market, providing energy to more than 5 million customers. In addition to keeping your home cozy, offering you competitive rates, and delivering a greener energy future, ScottishPower positions itself as an energy leader that you can rely on to make a difference.

““We use Alterian to more accurately recognize customers and then personalize their messaging in the moment using the fast data collected during the interaction to drive awareness towards channels that provide a better customer experience.”.

Craig Paterson, Head of Digital, ScottishPower

Adaptive Marketing at ScottishPower

According to Craig Paterson, Head of Digital at ScottishPower, adaptive marketing is customer service. ScottishPower wants their customers to always feel known and understood. Creating personalized experiences and convenient services for existing customers increases satisfaction leading to higher retention rates and increased lifetime value (LTV). Exceptional customer service also turns their existing customers into loyal brand ambassadors that help them organically acquire new customers through word of mouth which is significantly more cost effective than traditional customer acquisition efforts.

A Successful Adaptive Marketer™

A successful adaptive marketer at ScottishPower is one that puts the customer relationship first, and is constantly finding innovative ways to turn their customer experience into a unique identifier so that existing customers remain satisfied and ScottishPower maintains a competitive edge in the UK utilities marketplace.

Adaptive Marketer™ Challenge & Objective

After a certain period, ScottishPower will notify each customer that their automatic direct debit payment amount has been reassessed and will be changed based on their current usage. Customers who wanted to override the automatic adjustment would use the call center because it was perceived as a better customer experience, but it has a significantly higher cost to service customers compared to the web and mobile channels, and can take longer, resulting in a poorer customer experience. Scottish Power’s Adaptive Marketer™ challenge was to find a way to appropriately change where the direct debit engagements and conversions were happening by increasing awareness of the benefits of managing direct debit changes on self-service online channels.

Matts are high value customers who have recently had their direct debit payment reassessed. As an Adaptive Marketer™, I want to create an Adaptive Customer Experience™ for my Matts... ... by influencing their decision to manage their direct debit changes online instead of through the call center ... so that my business can increase engagement on lower cost channels ... and my customers can receive a quicker and more consistent customer experience and remain satisfied.

Previous Customer Experience

ScottishPower’s previous linear channel-centric campaigns did not allow them to fully adapt to Matt’s unpredictable behavior, resulting in missed opportunities to dynamically personalize content in-the-moment. Matt was not receiving the optimal frequency of awareness about the benefits of managing his direct debit online during his interactions across any channel.

Missed Opportunities

• No in-the-moment personalized awareness messaging shown
• If Matt logged in, he saw random non-targeted direct debit messaging
• If Matt logged in, he was not directed to the self-service process
• If Matt called, he sometimes spent more time than he would have online
• Matt was not being recognized and targeted before authenticating on known devices

Adaptive Customer Experience™

Using the ACX Platform, ScottishPower leveraged Insights, Campaign Manager, and our Dynamic Decision Engine (DDE) to upgrade their linear channel-centric trigger campaign to a dynamic customer-centric real-time campaign. They centralized all their customer data and centralized the decisioning logic so that the latest state of Matt’s relationship could be used to send consistent hypertargeted awareness messaging about the benefits of managing his direct debit account online.

New Opportunities

• Messaging is personalized in-the-moment using the latest state of his relationship, including his current and recommended rate
• If Matt updates his direct debit amount, he will immediately no longer be targeted across all channels
• If Matt neglected the direct debit notice, he would no longer be targeted after a specific time frame
• If Matt logs into his online account, he would be taken directly to the online direct debit process
• Matt is being recognized and targeted before authenticating on necessary channels

Opportunity Tree™

Matt's New Experience

ScottishPower’s main objective was to appropriately remind and influence Matt to manage direct debit changes online instead of calling the call center. They knew they could do more to drive awareness towards the benefits of managing accounts online; shifting the brand interaction volume so that conversions will happen online instead of the call center requires consistent and appropriate awareness no matter where Matt interacts with the brand.

ScottishPower designed an Opportunity Tree™ to outline their Adaptive Customer Experience™ for Matt’s unpredictable behavior. Opportunity Trees™ show the potential opportunities to align Matt’s needs with ScottishPower’s business objectives. The following is an example of how ScottishPower is maximizing every opportunity to increase LTV with Matt and creating the best possible customer experience while doing so.

11:00 AM – Matt receives a letter through the mail notifying him that his direct debit payment has been reassessed and will be automatically changed, but he does have the option to quickly and conveniently adjust it online..

11:05 AM – Matt visits the ScottishPower website where he sees messaging showing him the online self-service direct debit process. He clicks on the message and is taken to the login page where he continues to see awareness messaging for the online self-service process.

11:06 AM – Matt logs in to his ScottishPower account and is immediately shown a pre-populated action to lower his direct debit payment because his reassessment showed that his usage was less than what he was paying for. But, since Matt didn’t want to risk being in debt to ScottishPower at the end of the year, he decides to keep his rate the same. He knows that if he doesn’t act, then ScottishPower will automatically change his rate. He sees the online self-service process being marketed to him, which he quickly completes without needing to call the call center.

Market to the Opportunity™

Discover - Planned their strategy by prioritizing the business objective and confirming Matt’s persona.

Design - Centralized all their marketing (historical slow) data into their Insights Adaptive Marketer™ Data Environment and created the audience segment based on the full context of Matt’s relationship.

Define - Designed an Opportunity Tree™ during our ACX workshop to expose all the potential opportunities they have with Matt including the slow and fast data needed to drive more awareness..

Deploy -Created decisioning logic using both Matt’s slow data from the Adaptive Marketer™ Data Environment and the in-the-moment fast data from each channel, associated them to Matt’s campaign, and deployed using the platform.

Slow Data

• CRM profile data
• Current product data
• Number of times Matt previously interacted
• Customer allocated to control group

Fast Data

• Changes to DD payment from other channels
• Rate change amount
• Whether or not a new meter reading is needed
• Whether or not there is a refund amount available
• Number of times Matt has previously interacted
• Recency of the last change to suppress DD messaging

Results & Benefits

• 4 months to deploy, including initial integrations and testing
• Statistically significant uplift within 2 weeks of deployment
• 1 month to test/deploy Matt’s ACX
• 4 hours to deploy real-time rules across entire ecosystem