Twenty-eight years of explaining a price before it arrives

Mandate

Hold the customer base through a price crisis, rebuild trust in the brand and prepare acquisition for solar, heat-pump and hourly-tariff households.

Outcomes

• Proposed higher advances to 212,000 variable-price contracts in 2022; 64 per cent accepted
• Withdrew the '100 per cent green' claim and built a Belgian-origin product to 41,000 contracts by 2025
• Reached 71 per cent of 23,400 households leaving the widened social tariff by telephone
• Reduced annual household switching-away from 19.1 per cent in 2023 to 12.6 per cent in 2025

Decisions in context

I took over marketing a few weeks before the price crisis changed what marketing was for. Through 2022 and 2023 my team spent less effort attracting customers and far more explaining bills, advances, federal discounts and contract changes to the ones we already had. I sit on the executive committee with the chief executive and the heads of trading, finance, operations and people, and I present our customer and brand plans to the board each year. I also report to its audit and risk committee on complaints, ombudsman referrals and the treatment of customers in difficulty. Pricing and hedging decisions are not mine; I influence them with customer evidence. Since 2024 my attention has moved to the installer channel, our hourly-priced electricity tariff and preparing every claim we make for the European environmental-marketing rules that apply from September 2026.

Reason for the move

Current appointment; seeking a first non-executive seat compatible with it.

Mandate

Rebuild customer research, extend household marketing into Flanders and open a channel to solar households.

Outcomes

• Grew supply contracts from 330,000 to 452,000
• Introduced a monthly bill-surprise measure drawn from contact reasons and complaints
• Launched the partner-installer channel with 45 installers in 2020
• Reached 61,000 Flemish household contracts through a Dutch-language campaign

Decisions in context

Coming back to Ambrevelle after five years among installers, I found a company that knew a great deal about its prices and little about its customers. I rebuilt the research team, moved our tracking away from awareness towards what customers experienced, and created the bill-surprise measure we still use. It counts settlements well above what a household had been paying in advances and links them to the communications that customer received. The 2019 change of ownership brought an investor who wanted growth in Flanders, so I led our first Dutch-language household campaign, written in Flanders rather than translated from Brussels. I also opened the partner-installer channel with 45 firms, using what Soléverne had taught me about referral fees. I reported to the commercial director and presented marketing plans to the executive committee, but did not yet sit on it.

Reason for the move

Appointed chief marketing officer when the role was created on the executive committee.

Mandate

Restore customer confidence after the cut in solar support and broaden the network beyond panels.

Outcomes

• Replaced installers' own savings claims with a single published calculation method
• Raised heat pumps, batteries and maintenance from 8 to 37 per cent of network sales
• Cut complaints per hundred installations from 6.2 to 2.4
• Set up a complaints panel that removed nine firms from the network

Decisions in context

I joined when the Walloon solar market had shrunk after a generous support scheme was reduced, and many households who had bought panels on payback promises felt misled. The partner firms were small businesses, often a founder and a few technicians, and their marketing consisted of savings figures nobody had checked. I introduced one published calculation for every estimate and gave installers the tool to produce it. Some lost sales because their old figures had been more attractive, and several complained to our founder. I also built a complaints panel with two installers and an outside adviser, which removed nine firms over four years. Broadening the offer to heat pumps, batteries and maintenance gave partners steadier work as panel sales fell. The role taught me how a fee structure decides what a customer is told.

Reason for the move

Returned to Ambrevelle to lead marketing and build a supply channel for solar and heat-pump households.

Mandate

Build a household customer base after the 2007 opening of the Walloon and Brussels markets.

Outcomes

• Grew household contracts from 95,000 to 210,000
• Ended door-to-door sales agencies in 2011 after their contracts were cancelled three times as often as online sign-ups
• Built the first online sign-up journey, which reached 44 per cent of new contracts by 2013

Decisions in context

Ambrevelle had supplied businesses since 2006 and wanted households once the Walloon and Brussels markets opened. Most Belgians had never chosen an energy supplier, and many did not know they could. My job was to make the choice understandable and to win enough customers to justify the investment. Agencies selling at the door produced volume quickly, and for three years they were our largest channel. When I matched their contracts against cancellations and complaints, the pattern was clear: customers often had not understood what they signed. I proposed ending the agencies in 2011. The commercial director accepted, with reservations, and our growth slowed for a year while we built online sign-up and comparison-site partnerships instead. Those channels proved cheaper per surviving contract, though we had not known that when we made the decision.

Reason for the move

Left to lead commercial work at an installer network, to understand households the supply market was starting to reach through solar.

Mandate

Explain why contract customers left at renewal and reduce avoidable departures.

Outcomes

• Linked departures to billing events such as roaming charges and renewal price changes
• Reduced monthly contract churn from 2.3 to 1.6 per cent
• Introduced alerts warning customers of unusual roaming usage before the bill

Decisions in context

I arrived as an analyst with a research habit and a hypothesis: that customers left for reasons we could find in our own billing records. Matching departures to account histories confirmed it. A large roaming bill after a summer holiday, a price change at renewal or a complaint with no reply each raised the chance of leaving far more than a competitor's lower tariff did. I proposed alerts that warned customers of unusual roaming usage before the bill arrived. Finance objected because roaming was profitable, and the alerts did reduce that revenue, but fewer customers left over it. Promoted to manager in 2005, I led eleven people and the renewal programme. The work gave me the conviction behind most of my later decisions: an unexpected bill does more damage than a high one the customer has understood.

Reason for the move

Joined an energy supplier entering newly opened household markets.

Mandate

Design and report customer studies for utility, insurance and telecommunications clients.

Outcomes

• Designed satisfaction and bill-reaction studies for a municipal water utility
• Ran the churn study that led Telvaroche to recruit me
• Made follow-up surveys after billing a standard agency method

Decisions in context

Calmerot gave me a professional discipline before it gave me an industry. I wrote questionnaires, analysed responses and presented findings to clients who sometimes wanted a different answer. The research director made me rewrite any question that suggested its own reply, and insisted that a report state what the sample could not show. The water-utility study that opens my biography came in my first year. Satisfaction measured before the annual reconciliation said very little about how customers felt once it arrived, so I persuaded the agency to repeat surveys after billing for utility clients, and it became a standard method. By 2000 I was leading small project teams. The mobile-operator churn study was my last large project, and the client's marketing head offered me a job at the final presentation, which I accepted after finishing the fieldwork report.

Reason for the move

Recruited by a mobile-operator client to build its retention analysis.