£18.7 billion. This was the amount by 2015 that UK consumers had overpaid to energy utility companies by not switching provider, in a market opened to competition in the 1990s.
The barrier to switching was not lack of awareness, but inertia. At Tandem, we had inertia on the brain. Utility switches were a way we could show up on customers’ side and help them save some cash, so long as we could make it an absolute no-brainer. What’s more, promoting a switching mindset could help if it came to proposing they switch banks.
To live-test our ideas in a single vertical, I led the end-to-end design of JustSwitch!, an iPhone app making energy switches quicker and easier (not to mention, verging on fun) than ever before. In less than five minutes, users could download the app, tap their way through a streamlined switch, and cut their bills by hundreds of pounds.
Released in July 2015 and piloted on Apple’s App Store for just one year, JustSwitch! successfully engaged hundreds of users to switch & save on their energy bills. On the strength of learnings, Tandem implemented bill switches within their banking app in 2018.
