Ways to Save
The Ways to Save widget presents a selection of energy saving tips for businesses. A business customer can browse through the available tips to view detailed information on how to save energy.
On this page:
Requirements
Utility Requirements
Same as listed in the product-wide requirements.
Customer Requirements
|
Category |
Description |
|---|---|
|
Billing Frequency |
Monthly, bi-monthly, and quarterly. |
|
Data Delivery Frequency |
Not applicable. |
|
Data Requirements |
Business classification data is required. This data can be sent through the Account data specification or the Legacy Billing data specification. Your Delivery Team will work with you to identify the required fields. |
|
Data History |
Not applicable. |
|
Data Coverage |
Not applicable. |
|
Supported Fuels |
Electricity, gas, and dual fuel. |
User Experience
The Ways to Save widget presents a selection of energy tips that businesses can follow to lower their usage and save money. These tips are selected based on a business customer's attributes and how likely the customer is to follow the tip. Tips are organized into tip guides that provide tips based on factors such as fuel type and season of the year.
Tip Guides
A tip guide is a collection of tips organized in behavior-oriented, seasonal, and end-use categories that provide businesses with relevant cost-saving recommendations. A tip guide is only shown if tips are included in the guide after tip filtering is applied. Business customers can view applicable tips by browsing the provided tips guides or by selecting filters to identify all available tips that meet the filter criteria.
Order of Tip Guides: The default order is to show a promoted seasonal guide first (if applicable), followed by a list of guides defined during the setup and configuration process.
List of Tips in a Guide: Business customers can select a tip guide to view the list of tips included in that guide. From this list of tips, customers can review high-level information about each tip, and select a tip to view additional details. Information available for a tip from this list includes the following:
- An illustration allows customers to quickly recognize the concept or purpose of a tip.
- A short title that describes the tip.
- The number of business customers who have completed the tip.
Business customers can select a tip in the list to view additional details about the tip, or mark a tip with an applicable tip action.
Tip Details
Business customers can select a tip to view reasons why they should complete a tip. An option to Read More about the tip displays all available information for the tip. This can include the following information.
- The tip title is displayed at the top, along with the tip illustration.
- A list of financial incentives related to the tip, such as rebates or tax incentives. By default, a maximum of three of the available financial benefits are displayed. If more than three financial benefits are available for the tip, a link is displayed to show or hide the additional financial benefits.
- Links to utility programs and incentives, if applicable.
- Why a business would perform the tip.
- Information on what actions a tip includes or how to complete a tip can be provided. This optional information is commonly provided for tips that are not as straightforward as simple tips.
- Business customers can save a tip to a list of tips to review later, or mark a tip as something they have completed.
Tip Filtering
Tips are automatically filtered for business customers based on their known characteristics. These characteristics may include the building type, the heating system and type (for electric systems), and the type of air conditioning. Business customers can view applicable tips by browsing the provided tips guides or by selecting filters to identify all available tips that meet the filter criteria.
Tip Actions
Tip actions allow business customers to save a tip or mark a tip as completed. Customers can view all saved tips and all completed tips in separate tip guides. The number of other businesses that have completed the tip is displayed to encourage the customer to also complete the tip.
User Experience Variations
Locale
If the customer lives in a non-US locale, the Ways to Save feature will display locale-appropriate language and units of measure. In addition, the tip library will likely vary based on the heating and cooling types available, the common appliances used in the locale, and so on.
Multiple Accounts and Service Points
If a customer has multiple accounts, then the customer can view tips for a different account by clicking an account selector hosted on the utility website. All widgets are then reloaded with data for the specified account.
If a customer has one service point for electricity and one for gas associated with their account, then tips are prioritized based on the customer's account or premise rather than individual service points. The user interface does not display a menu for switching between service points.