A customer who joined us for a low price will leave for a lower one. A customer who understood every bill we sent, including the difficult ones, usually gives us a second hearing. I would rather spend marketing money on that understanding than on a promotion that hides what the winter will cost.
Selected works
Decisions in context.
I
Raising advance payments before the winter bill could do it for us
Late in August 2022, wholesale gas and electricity prices in Belgium stood at several times their level a year earlier, and 212,000 of our contracts were on variable prices.
Telephoning 23,400 households before their social tariff ended
During the pandemic and the price crisis that followed, the federal government temporarily widened the social tariff to households receiving increased reimbursement of healthcare costs.
I measure an energy brand by how few of its customers are surprised by their own bills, and I spend the marketing budget accordingly.
I am chief marketing officer of Ambrevelle, a Brussels-based supplier of electricity and gas to households and small businesses in Wallonia, Brussels and Flanders. We hold about 455,000 supply contracts, 281,000 for electricity and 174,000 for gas, and recorded €640 million of revenue in 2025. Our founding managers own a third of the company and a European infrastructure investor the rest. I lead 46 people across brand, acquisition, retention, the partner-installer channel and customer research, with an annual budget of €14.5 million. Pricing and hedging belong to the trading and finance teams. I am accountable for what we promise customers and how we explain it.
My first employer measured customer opinion on behalf of others. I spent four years designing surveys at a Brussels research agency, then nearly six building retention programmes at a mobile operator, where I learnt that an unexpected bill predicts a departure better than any satisfaction score. I joined Ambrevelle in 2008, soon after household supply opened to competition in Wallonia and Brussels. I left for five years to run marketing for a network of solar installers and came back in 2018.
The price crisis of 2022 turned those habits into decisions with costs attached. We raised advance payments early and stopped selling fixed contracts we could not price. We removed a green claim that competitors went on using. We telephoned, one by one, households about to lose a social tariff. Each choice cost revenue, conversion or budget in the year it was made. I describe them on this site with those costs left in, because a board considering me should see how I weigh a customer's understanding against a quarter's sales.
Advances raised before the winter bill
In autumn 2022 we proposed higher monthly advances to 212,000 variable-price contracts. Households that accepted received an average settlement bill of €210 the following year; those that declined averaged €1,140.
A green claim withdrawn ahead of the rules
We stopped calling our standard tariff '100 per cent green' in 2023 and published the country and technology behind every certificate we cancelled. Online green-tariff conversion fell from 31 to 22 per cent for six months.
Social-tariff exits handled by telephone
When a temporary widening of the social tariff ended in 2023, advisers called 23,400 affected households. Arrears beyond sixty days in that group reached 8.4 per cent, against the 13 per cent our collections team had projected.
Installer referrals paid on surviving contracts
Since 2024 we pay partner installers for supply contracts still active after six months, not for signatures. Referral volume fell by about a third, and cancellations within six months dropped from 17 to 6 per cent.
Current focus
I am preparing our advertising and contracts for the European consumer rules on environmental claims that apply from September 2026, and testing whether customers on our hourly-priced electricity tariff understand those prices well enough to benefit from them.
Conversations I welcome
I would consider a first non-executive appointment at a consumer-facing regulated business outside energy supply, with about eighteen days a year available, subject to my chief executive's consent and a review of commercial relationships.
The leadership record
Trusted with consequential decisions.
Formation
Master of business engineeringMosanvelle School of Management · 1998
Laurent came to the executive committee in September 2022 with a letter that would cost us customers and a calculation of what not sending it would cost. He was right about the second figure and too hopeful about the first, and he was the one who pointed that out.
I would consider a first non-executive appointment at a consumer-facing regulated business outside energy supply, with about eighteen days a year available, subject to my chief executive's consent and a review of commercial relationships.
