Twenty-nine years of pricing things people pay monthly

Mandate

Bring gas, electricity, solar-and-battery services and the household app into one product organisation that customers of every age can use.

Outcomes

• Launched a two-band time-of-use tariff now used by 33,400 households
• Redesigned power-saving rewards, raising older customers' participation from 9 to 31 per cent of those enrolled
• Introduced family access for relatives managing a parent's account
• Started a monthly bill-movement review ahead of each billing cycle

Decisions in context

The company created this role when our gas, electricity and solar teams were each designing their own customer journeys, apps and notices. A customer with all three products could receive four letters in a month that contradicted one another. I combined those teams under five managers and set a single test for every product: an older customer, a relative helping from a distance and a household without a smartphone must each be able to explain it. Prices remain with the president and supply and trading, and I have kept that boundary deliberately. The years since 2021 brought high wholesale prices, relief payments that came and went, and power-saving events on cold evenings. My cases on this site come from that period, and each records a colleague who argued against my recommendation with good reason. I attend board meetings to present papers, not to vote on them.

Reason for the move

Current appointment; seeking a first outside directorship compatible with it.

Mandate

Turn a newly launched electricity offer into products that existing gas customers would trust and keep.

Outcomes

• Grew household electricity contracts from 18,500 to 71,000
• Launched the first usage app built on half-hourly smart-meter data
• Introduced mid-month bill forecasts by post or text message
• Launched the post-feed-in-tariff surplus purchase and battery subscription offer

Decisions in context

Growth in these years came mostly from customers who already received our gas. That made the work less about winning attention and more about keeping a promise made by delivery staff over decades. I learnt more from home visits than from usage dashboards. Older customers compared each bill with the same month a year earlier and wanted an explanation when it differed. The mid-month forecast came directly from those visits. The period ended with our offer to solar owners whose feed-in tariff contracts had expired, where I argued with the sales team about what the comparison should show. My manager supported the net comparison, but she asked me to own the shortfall against the sales plan in front of the board, which was fair. A product decision includes answering for its commercial result.

Reason for the move

Appointed chief product officer when the company merged its product teams.

Mandate

Prepare the company to sell electricity to households from the April 2016 retail opening.

Outcomes

• Completed registration as a retail electricity supplier before the opening
• Wrote the first household tariffs and pre-contract explanation documents
• Built switching and billing processes with the incumbent network division
• Reached 18,500 household contracts by March 2017

Decisions in context

I joined a company that understood gas cylinders, delivery rounds and long relationships, and had never priced a kilowatt-hour. The launch team was seven people borrowed from billing, sales and information systems. We wrote tariffs, prepared the documents customers must receive before signing and tested the switching process with the incumbent utility's network division until it worked reliably. I insisted that our first bill be readable by the gas delivery staff, because customers would ask them. That rule delayed our first bill design by three weeks. My telecommunications background helped with tariff structure and billing, but I had to learn electricity procurement from colleagues hired from a trading house, and I relied on them for every assumption about wholesale cost. One of them, Ryohei Sakuramine, now leads our supply and trading team. Working with him taught me to label which assumptions were mine.

Reason for the move

Asked to lead household electricity products once the launch had stabilised.

Mandate

Design data and family plans that customers could compare honestly with those of the large carriers.

Outcomes

• Reduced the plan line-up from twenty-three to seven
• Introduced a data-usage alert at 80 per cent of allowance
• Designed a plan with telephone support for customers over sixty-five

Decisions in context

Mobile pricing taught me how revenue can depend on inertia. When we reduced twenty-three plans to seven, about one customer in five moved to a cheaper plan within a year, and revenue per line fell before new customers made up the difference. My manager supported the change only after finance and I agreed in writing what we expected to lose. The data alert at 80 per cent of allowance came from a similar argument: it reduced overage charges, which some colleagues regarded as income. I also designed a plan for customers over sixty-five with telephone support and a printed manual. It sold modestly, yet it taught me how differently older customers approach a product, a lesson I took directly into energy. Revenue per line recovered within two years, though more slowly among family accounts than we had forecast.

Reason for the move

Returned to Nagano to join household energy retail before its 2016 opening.

Mandate

Price broadband plans through the move from dial-up to ADSL and then fibre.

Outcomes

• Built the company's first churn analysis by plan and customer age
• Recommended retiring three ADSL speed tiers that customers could not distinguish
• Introduced a plain-language price summary on every contract

Decisions in context

I moved to Tokyo for this role because broadband pricing was changing faster than anywhere I had worked. Each new technology added speed tiers, bundles and introductory discounts, and the marketing team wanted to advertise all of them. My churn analysis showed that customers who misunderstood their plan in the first three months were the most likely to leave in the second year. That finding persuaded the director of marketing to retire three speed tiers and add a one-page price summary to each contract. I was an analyst and later a manager of four, with no authority over final prices. The role taught me to bring evidence that changes the decision-maker's mind, rather than expecting a recommendation to carry itself. The one-page price summary stayed on every contract after I left, which I regard as the role's most lasting result.

Reason for the move

Joined a mobile operator to work on product design rather than pricing analysis alone.

Mandate

Confirm that invoices matched contracts and resolve billing queries passed on by the customer centre.

Outcomes

• Rewrote the annual price-change notice so that the reason appeared first
• Built a log of billing queries by cause
• Reduced repeat billing calls after the 2000 package change

Decisions in context

My first job was to confirm that each invoice matched its contract, and most of them did. The difficulty lay elsewhere. Customers received correct bills they could not understand, and they called the customer centre to ask what had changed. I kept a log of those calls by cause and found that most concerned notices rather than errors. With my manager's agreement, I rewrote the annual price-change notice so that the reason for any increase appeared in its first sentence. Repeat calls after the 2000 package change fell noticeably. The work was modest, but it gave me the habit I still rely on: read the complaint as information about the product, not as a failing of the person who made it. I left after five years because broadband tariffs, then being invented in Tokyo, were where those lessons could be tested at scale.

Reason for the move

Moved to Tokyo to work on broadband pricing as the internet business grew.