Electrifying the future
OK's quest for customer-centric EV solutions
We partnered up with OK to uncover valuable customer insights and strategic opportunities in the EV sector. Discover how this knowledge fuels OK's efforts in shaping the future of sustainable transportation and empowering customers with the best charging solutions.
The electric vehicle revolution is here
The future of mobility is changing – and it’s changing fast. Drivers are adopting electric vehicles in droves. In 2022, nearly 40% of new vehicle sales in Denmark were battery-powered or hybrid plugins (one of the highest rates in the world!). By 2030, the Danish government predicts there’ll be at least 775.000 EVs on the road.
But one element of the e-mobility transition is getting overlooked: with more EV sales comes the need for more EV charging.
So, how are drivers choosing a charging solution for their EVs?
That’s the question IMPACT Commerce and OK a.m.b.a, the largest player in the Danish fuel market, with 670 petrol stations across the country, partnered up to answer.
The power of insights
Knowing exactly what it is that makes an EV charger provider stand out from the crowd is must-have knowledge. With these insights in hand, OK can make EV drivers’ lives easier by delivering EV charging solutions that add value, convenience and trust to their customers’ charging experiences.
That includes providing EV charging at the very same place they would normally charge up a fossil fuel-powered car, as well as EV charging boxes for home use. The latter is the focus area for this project.
Before OK could answer that question, it needed to understand how its target customers thought about its brand, their attitudes towards EVs, and what really makes a person choose one home EV charger provider over another.
It couldn’t achieve this with guesswork alone. That’s where IMPACT’s Experience Team comes into the story.
The main challenge
OK has traditionally been a giant in the traditional fuel retail market. Now, it’s futureproofing its business model and better serving its loyal customers by bringing its fuel expertise into the e-mobility market. In the years to come, OK expects EVs to become its primary revenue driver. Part of that strategy involves creating one of the best home EV charging boxes on the market and delivering an outstanding customer experience to go along with it!
The road ahead was clear. But one thing was missing: this is a developing sector, which means the company saw a great opportunity in gaining fresh knowledge and insights about customer motivations and behaviour – especially when it came to selecting a home EV charging solution.
So, together, IMPACT and OK embarked on a mission to define key insights and strategic opportunities with the purpose of guiding OK’s decision-making and framing the development of future business initiatives.
This consisted of a large-scale data-driven masterplan focusing on:
Customer type identification: Zeroing in on each customer type’s typical behaviours, values, pain points and EV charging barriers.
Customer journeys: Mapping each customer types’ touchpoints and their experiences at each step of the buying journey.
Insights are the foundation of knowledge that enable us to make the right decisions, to prioritise carefully and to secure successful outcomes. Analysing the customer journey touchpoints and channels sharpens your ability to tailor initiatives that create greater and more measurable impact. And that’s exactly what our collaboration with OK has achieved
So, what was the procedure?
First up, we segmented the market based on where individuals were in the customer journey:
- Group 1: EV drivers who already use OK as their EV charger provider
- Group 2: EV drivers who’re currently using a competitor’s chargers
- Group 3: Prospects in the market for buying an EV and were debating which EV charger to use
Group 1 and 2 were in the post-decision-making phase, and Group 3, before a decision had been made about their home EV charger provider.
Following the customer type segmentation, we carried out an illuminating mix of customer research, first-hand observations at dealerships, questionnaires with hundreds of participants and interviews, which helped us to identify specific customer types.
Insights procured, we crunched and analysed every piece of quantitative and qualitative knowledge we’d gathered over the months.
From those insights came profound wisdom into EV customers:
- How they actually use EV chargers in real-life
- What they really want from an EV charger provider
- How they are educating themselves on EV charging solutions
- How they feel about the costs of charging their EVs
- How they perceive OK’s competitors
Spotting the opportunities
Last, but not least, we identified the opportunities presented by these core insights that OK would benefit the most from delving into and shared them in a workshop with OK’s key project stakeholders.
For example, our research revealed that choosing a charging solution is considered unnecessarily crowded and complex by many customers. In fact, 60% of decisions about which home EV charging box to select was made when the buyer purchased their EV, right there at the car dealership.
That knowledge allows OK to target its resources more heavily at dealerships. Surprisingly, some loyal customers weren’t even aware that OK offers home charging solutions, or were misunderstanding its pricing and packaging, even though they’d prefer to use OK to its competitors.
Now, OK knows which target groups it should focus on to avoid wasting resources on customers who aren’t a great fit for their brand; and how to deliver the messaging that will resonate most with them, resulting in more targeted and effective product and service offerings. On top of that, it has many promising opportunity spaces to explore.
Worth highlighting
One especially important element for us is data transparency and timelessness. It was essential for us that OK didn’t just receive a beautiful, packaged customer journey document.
Instead, they would have full control of every piece of data to inform their future business decisions beyond the scope of the project – and we ensured it’s stored in tools that the OK team was already familiar with.
That means timeless and practical information for OK’s ongoing use, whether that’s creating new customer personas, or updating their customer journeys.
The collaboration between OK and the IMPACT team is more of a colleague-level relationship than a traditional customer-client relationship. We held frequent check-ins with OK’s stakeholders to align on our goals and progress, and workshops to share our knowledge.
Armed with these evidence-based insights, data and customer maps, OK is well-positioned to deliver exceptional home EV charging experiences to Denmark’s growing number of EV users and retain its leadership in the fuel sector.
Do you want to know more about
the project?
Reach out to Christina. She’ll tell you all about it!
