AWARDS FINALIST: Contact
Contact has gained more than 30,000 customer connections since March 2023 on the back of new plans designed to shift usage into off-peak periods.
The company, which last year also widened its product suite to include mobile phones, says about one in four of its residential customers is now on one of its time-of-use ‘Good Plans.’
The Good Plans offer free or discount power during off-peak periods to promote energy-saving habits.
Good Nights started in 2021 – offering free power between 9pm and midnight – and has continued to help customers save money, reduce load on the national grid, and reduce the need for thermal back-up generation.
Good Charge – offering half-price electricity overnight for EV owners – followed in November 2022. Good Weekends – which offers free daytime power use on Saturday and Sunday – launched in November 2023.
Contact says the weekend plan is its fastest growing with just over 20,000 households opting for the plan as of May. In total, more than 100,000 customers are now on Good Plans.
Hot water
In April, the company added the Hot Water Sorter plan – in which it uses usage data to pick the best time to turn off customers’ hot water cylinders to avoid peak demand periods.
More than 5000 customers have already opted for the plan and Contact expected to have more than 10,000 households signed up by June. That would give it about 10 MW of load to shift, making it one of the first and largest retailer-led hot water control programmes in the country.
Contact says that, at the time of the awards entry, customers on its Good Plans had received more than 118 million hours of free electricity.
Contact says its goal is to help kiwis keep their homes warm, connected, and safe. That also means keeping essential services like energy and internet as affordable as possible.
It started offering broadband in 2017 and now has more than 97,000 customers for the service, about 11,000 more than a year earlier.
Last August it started offering mobile plans, using the One NZ network. All plans are open term with unlimited calls and texts in New Zealand and Australia, and the company has so far gained more than 4,500 customers for the service.
Well-being
Contact says a key aspect of its approach is to try and tailor a holistic package for customer energy wellbeing.
The company has an 11-strong Energy Wellbeing team, which helps customers manage energy hardship with robust wrap-around support.
In July 2023, the firm started a Hand Up plan, in which customers making an effort to get on top of bills are offered discounted energy rates.
Customers can only be on the plan for 12 months, but Contact says most using that support get their debts to manageable levels well before then.
Contact says technology and innovation remain critical to keeping a lid on energy prices and offering products that really differentiate the company within the retail market.
It is offering more self-service options, reducing demand on its call centres, and helping keep the firm’s cost-to-serve the lowest among the major generator-retailers, Contact says.
The Energy Retailer of the Year award category is sponsored by EDMI.