White Space helps British Gas to make best of digital custom
White Space worked closely with British Gas to draw up the innovative online-services platform Local Heroes, which launched in 2016.
As markets across the world continue to witness increasing digitalisation across all fields, with customer service innovation in particular becoming increasingly essential to hanging on to tech-savvy consumers, the consulting industry has become a key ally to businesses looking to modernise their strategies in the digital era. While small and medium sized enterprises have been reluctant to access this pool of expertise, a broad coalition of large industries including the banking and energy sectors stand to benefit from accessing the professional services industry.
Local Heroes, a recent British Gas venture, provides customers with access to on-demand home services from trusted local tradesmen. The new wing of the energy provider’s operations was built and launched in order to seize a growing consumer trend towards online booking for instant service provision. Local Heroes provides customers with a web-based reservation interface, recommending nearby tradespeople with a transparent price – while further backing trust in its partners by offering users a 12 month British Gas guarantee.
Market analysis supported by White Space
White Space, a strategy and management consulting firm was central in the development of the Local Heroes project, in the build up to its 2016 launch. Becoming involved at the start of the project’s nine month gestation the organisation were asked by British Gas to examine on-demand market statistics and use the data to help devise an effective proposition and strategy for the development of new digital interfaces.
The subsequent market analysis from the professional services firm allowed British Gas to begin piloting the Local Heroes concept, and while the project has only been running for nine months, feedback from customers has been largely positive, with the test-run recording a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 65. Currently the service is available across 16% of the UK, with plans to ramp up the nationwide roll-out over the next 6 months.
Most recently in May, Local Heroes launched across the Glasgow area, a key locale as Scottish Gas, British Gas’ devolved brand north of the border, emulating other successful roll-outs in areas such as the West-Midlands, along with now-established services in Leeds, Brighton and Croydon – where the scheme recorded its very first repair after last year’s launch.
Commenting on the collaboration with White Space, Commercial Head of British Gas Mat Moakes said they had found the analysis by the consulting firm fundamental in their decision-making process. He stated, “White Space were able to help us analyse the on-demand market, and how we could make the existing business better. Once you drilled down into the detail we thought it would be much easier to start again and create something completely different and build it around the dynamics of the customers in the market. That’s exactly what we did, and Local Heroes was born!”
White Space has also supported the growth of over 100 major companies, meanwhile, with the Oxford-based consulting firm helping its clients achieve combined revenues of over £650 billion.
In each case, the firm boasts a custom evaluation process, tailoring strategies by gaining a deep understanding of issues through data analysis, along with considering challenges and dilemmas clients have faced, before utilising the collected intelligence to identify the best courses of action.
