Getting it right so that we can empower people to make planet positive decisions

Thermly is an independent new green tech company. We help householders make their homes more energy efficient by supporting them in making informed decisions about whether, when and how to install a heat pump.

The energy industry can be bewildering. We know we operate in a confused, fragmented and, dare we say it, dry industry. Thermly doesn’t want to be any of these things. The tools people have available to research heat pumps and other sustainable energy solutions are laborious, complex and often baffling. Our digital platform is here to fix that – and before we launched into our first region (in Somerset - read about it here) we undertook a series of customer trials to ensure the website and platform worked in the intuitive way people would expect. Our aim? To provide a platform that supported customers in areas they really care about when it comes to switching to more sustainable heating solutions.

Learning from our customers

Working in a closed research environment is no substitute for the direct exposure you get from speaking to customers and the diversity of opinions and personal circumstances that you discover in the process. Our programme of face-to-face, structured customer discussions was led by an independent third party and has provided some incredibly valuable insights.

Our top two?

1. Industry concerns are not the same as customer questions. By and large of course – there are technically minded customers out there. But whilst the industry is concerned with questions of SCOP ratings, interoperability, network capacity, smart tariffs and accuracy of heat pump calculations, the general public largely wants to know how heat pumps work, if they’re noisy and will upset the neighbours, and how they can access Government grants. Sounds simple, but it’s extremely important to acknowledge this, because it could be the difference between homeowners switching to sustainable energy sources – or not.
2. These customer questions are overwhelmingly coming from a positive place. What we have seen first-hand is a marked difference in the tone struck in relation to heat pumps by large sections of the media and what customers are actually thinking. They know that a heat pump is a significant investment, but they are not hostile to that prospect – they intuitively understand the environmental case for making a change and just want a trusted and comprehensive source of information to give them the facts, tailored to their own homes.

We love customer trials – it’s impossible to overstate how much we learn from them. These are examples of just two of the lessons we learnt over the months-long set of trials. It’s important that we can cut through the industry terminology and the media doom mongering and be laser focused on what homeowners really care about.

Thermly undertook some important changes in light of our customer trial. These changes aren’t fundamental to the core of what Thermly promises – real, honest advice about heat pumps – they are more about the usability of the platform. Platform updates - made through this and future customer trials - will further enable us to give homeowners the real insights that they are after. By doing that, we will arm them with the real knowledge they need when it comes to making informed decisions about whether, when and how to install a heat pump.

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