Problems
Trends show Australians are moving increasingly online to do tasks such as comparing energy plans, and GoSwitch did not have a way to allow customers to do this outside of their existing call centre setup.
We identified 3 main problems to tackle:
Customer access was constrained by call centre hours
Customers could only compare and sign up to plans during staffed call centre hours. This excluded users who preferred self-service or were unable to speak to an agent, despite increasing demand for online comparison across the industry.
All business logic for their internal tooling was hard-coded
This meant non-technical stakeholders were unable to review or update logic. There was also no single source of truth, as it was shared across different spreadsheets and code.
Complexity and risk due to regulations and retailer requirements
The nature of Australia’s energy industry meant that each energy plan had unique requirements based on retailer, industry regulations, and customer requirements.
Solutions
Two complementary web applications were scoped to address GoSwitch’s customer, operational, and compliance challenges.
Comparison and switching portal
A self-service portal was scoped to allow customers to complete the entire journey online, without call centre intervention. Customers could now compare energy plans plans and complete the switching process with the selected retailer.
This removed reliance on staffed call centre hours and aligned GoSwitch with industry expectations for online comparison.
Internal logic dashboard & documentation
A backend dashboard was scoped to give GoSwitch's staff full control over plan logic and signup requirements, without relying on developers.
Staff could now define signup logic in a single, centralised system. This included conditional logic at a per-field level, and display context-specific messaging to customers.
This approach replaced hard-coded logic and fragmented spreadsheets with a single source of truth that non-technical stakeholders could understand and maintain.
Risk and compliance safeguards
Given the complex regulatory requirements of Australia’s energy market, we incorporated safeguards to reduce compliance risk, such as:
- Address checks and meter number lookups – to make sure customers were signing up the correct property and only shown plans they were eligible for.
- Conditional flagging of higher-risk signups – for manual review by staff before submission to retailers
- A full snapshot of all content shown to the customer – providing an auditable record for compliance purposes
Challenges
Accurate meter identification from address data
A major technical challenge was reliably identifying the correct meter (NMI/MIRN) from a customer’s address. In cases where address data could not be confidently resolved via external services, automation was deliberately limited.
Rather than risking incorrect signups, these cases were flagged for manual review by GoSwitch staff. This ensured accuracy and compliance, while still allowing customers to continue through the signup process.
Balancing compliance and usability
Mapping the end-to-end customer journey was complex due to the number of conditions that affect plan eligibility and retailer requirements. The flow needed to ensure the right information, fields, and messaging were shown at the right time based on a wide range of conditions.
Presenting energy rates and plan details required trade-offs. Some retailers mandated specific information be shown at particular points in the journey, which limited design flexibility and prioritised compliance over design.