Everyone appears to be going green these days, so why not have a little fun while you are doing it?
Well thanks to Simple Energy – a company that relies on social game mechanics to change how people save energy and how utilities engage their customers –now people in Texas can sign up for a simple, social way to save energy with the Simple Energy Customer Engagement Platform, an online game that allows users to compete with friends and win prizes for increased energy efficiency.
Those living in Houston and Dallas metro areas (specifically, those in the Oncor and Centerpoint service territories) are eligible to join the application. Once they sign up, they can then discuss their energy savings on Facebook (News - Alert), form teams and view their actual energy usage online all through a mobile app that will soon be available. Prizes for saving energy include iTunes gift cards, iPads and more.
After Simple Energy implemented an energy efficiency program in California – and it succeeded in more than doubling energy savings among participating residential customers during a three-month period – the customer engagement company decided to tackle Texas.
"The amazing results from California clearly demonstrate that the Simple Energy approach to motivating people to save energy really works," said Yoav Lurie, CEO and co-founder of the company. "People are naturally social and they like competing to win points and prizes. By allowing them access to their energy usage data in a fun and simple way on platforms where they are already spending their time such as Facebook, we make saving energy into an easy and enjoyable experience."
According to Simple Energy, in creating this customer engagement platform the company was hoping to solve one very common problem – the fact that customers are unable to interact with their energy usage information data.
The Simple Energy platform not only bolsters customer interaction but also brings a fun component to energy efficiency as it normalizes energy usage across wide geographic areas, allowing participants to compete with their friends and neighbors – similar to a golf handicap. Moreover, players can buddy up and form teams in order to compete on behalf of a cause that they support, such as a school or community organization. Finally, the program follows strict privacy guidelines, simply comparing normalized scores among users without revealing any personalized, individual details about actual energy consumption, according to company officials.
In other industry news, recently TMCnet sat down with ACCENT Marketing Services – a performance marketing company for brands that are passionate about keeping and growing their customers –to discuss the thinking behind the company’s founding.
ACCENT provides companies guidance at every stage in the customer engagement cycle to help clients connect with their customers in the digital, social, interactive and real-time world. By consistently delivering personalized and engaging customer experiences, ACCENT has been able to transform clients like BJ’s Wholesale Club into a Forrester (News - Alert) Top 10 Customer Experience firm and help a Fortune 100 telecommunications client move from worst to first in customer service, according to company officials.
“Whether consumers are on the phone, online, or in the social cloud, ACCENT’s mission is to keep our clients in the conversation,” Tim Searcy, CEO of ACCENT, told TMCnet. “We understand consumer behavior and have developed solutions to help our clients actively engage their customers while transforming their customer service touchpoints into powerful brand and relationship building tools.”
Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO East 2012, taking place Jan. 31-Feb. 3 2012, in Miami, FL. ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. To register, click here.
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Carrie Schmelkin is a Web Editor for TMCnet. Previously, she worked as Assistant Editor at the New Canaan Advertiser, a 102-year-old weekly newspaper, covering news and enhancing the publication's social media initiatives. Carrie holds a bachelor's degree in journalism and a bachelor's degree in English from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by Jamie Epstein