SSE Airtricity
Online sales & payments
7× growth in online sales and a 70% reduction in payment costs.
Context
A large energy retailer with a mature call centre and a small, neglected digital sales channel. Placeholder copy — replace with the real narrative. Regulatory obligations shaped every step of the journey, from disclosure wording to cooling-off periods.
The problem
Online accounted for a fraction of new customer acquisition, and the payment mix was heavily weighted toward expensive card and cash channels. Drop-off concentrated in the middle of a nine-step sign-up flow.
What I did
- Rebuilt the sign-up journey around a three-step structure with progressive disclosure of regulated content.
- Ran a quarterly discovery cadence with customer service to surface the real objections behind abandonment.
- Introduced direct debit as the default payment method with a clear incentive framing.
- Set up funnel instrumentation so the team could argue from data rather than opinion.
Outcome
Online sales grew roughly sevenfold over the engagement, and the shift in payment mix cut cost-to-collect by about 70%. Complaint volume on the digital channel fell alongside it.
What I'd do differently
I would have invested in the analytics layer in month one rather than month four — several early experiments were unreadable because the events were wrong.