Helping a Major Ontario Utility Engage Customers in the Energy Transition
About the Client
One of Ontario’s largest electric utilities, serving large number of residential as well as business customers.
The Challenge
With the growing pace of electrification in transportation, heating, and cooling, the utility needed clearer insights into customer sentiment—specifically their interest, outlook, and readiness for energy transition opportunities.
However, engaging utility customers is traditionally difficult. Aside from paying bills or receiving outage updates, most customers have limited interaction with their utility and often remain disengaged.
Our Mandate
Luta was engaged to design and pilot a digital education and engagement tool aimed at reaching a broad group of traditionally unengaged customers. The goal was to raise awareness around the energy transition and gather insight into customer knowledge and interest.
The utility also sought to pilot new features built using Green Button data to explore emerging opportunities for customer-authorized data within digital engagement platforms.
Customization & Deployment
The Luta platform was adapted to reflect the specific behaviours and needs of utility customers.
- New features leveraging Green Button data were integrated into the pilot, enabling the utility to test early concepts and evaluate how customer-authorized data could support future engagement solutions.
- A structured beta testing phase was conducted to gather customer feedback, refine user experience elements, and validate the app’s direction.
- After refinements, the app was launched broadly, with Luta supporting the utility’s marketing team throughout the campaign to grow the user base and maintain engagement.
Behavioural-Science-Driven Engagement
The platform’s gamification features—rooted in behavioural science principles such as micro-rewards, progress cues, and positive reinforcement—helped encourage steady participation. These tools offered customers a simple and motivating way to interact with the platform while helping the utility better understand customer perspectives on the energy transition.
Outcomes
The pilot generated several encouraging results:
- Customer understanding and engagement improved, with customers showing higher awareness of key energy-transition topics.
- Green Button data was effectively integrated to test early-stage, customer-focused features, validating the potential for future data-driven engagement tools.
- Participants frequently engaged with the app’s gamification elements, noting that it made connecting with their utility more approachable.
- The utility gained meaningful insights into customer attitudes, interest levels, and readiness related to the energy transition.
- The initiative received positive feedback from both customers and the Ontario Energy Board, supporting the utility’s position as forward-looking and committed to environmental and community priorities.
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