At Nesta, we’ve spent the last year supporting more than 214,000 (as of April 2023) people to turn down their boiler flow temperature, reduce bills and slash their carbon emissions. However, we know that our campaign won’t reach everyone, so we have been exploring ways to disseminate boiler optimisation advice in other ways.

Gas engineers service, repair and install our heating systems and are, for consumers, the trusted face of the gas industry. We wanted to explore how boiler optimisation advice could be shared during gas engineer visits and wanted to answer the questions below.

• What do gas engineers think about lowering flow temperatures?
• How could we ensure that boiler optimisation advice is given to consumers during visits?
• How could we make it easier for gas engineers to give this advice?

As part of our user research, we used personas to bring together the insights we gathered. These personas are not meant to be a perfect representation of all gas engineers in the UK. Instead, they are a tool for concisely capturing insights from the industry experts we’ve spoken to and identifying any opportunities for innovation.

We interviewed ten gas engineers to refine our understanding of their work, needs and barriers. Our panel was made up of Gas Safe-registered engineers focusing solely on servicing, repairing and installing gas boilers. We discounted gas engineers with low-carbon heating training as we thought they might have a low-flow temperature bias. During interviews, we asked gas engineers about their job routines, interactions with customers and opinions on training and optimisation advice.

We found that while energy efficiency and system optimisation advice was often given when prompted by customers, the engineers’ main focus during visits is ensuring that heating systems are working safely. As many boilers are serviced regularly, gas engineers often have loyal customers and are highly trusted by them, which makes them critical actors in disseminating optimisation advice.

Whether engineers work as a sole trader, subcontractor or are employed by a company, they share many similar working practices. They often have a busy diary with scheduled appointments and thus – outside of the tasks they are booked in to do – they have limited time to educate their customers. To help manage their work, they use various tools such as online apps (to produce documents and consult manuals), social networks (for troubleshooting and getting advice from peers) and other online content (to stay up to date on what’s new in the industry or advertise their business).

Gas engineers know optimisation advice varies depending on customers’ homes and heating systems. This means it requires adapting to each customer’s circumstance and therefore increases time spent with customers – extra time that engineers often lack. Despite the fact that many engineers we spoke to did not consider that giving boiler optimisation advice was a central part of their role, they were generally positive about lowering flow temperatures and would encourage their customers to do this if asked about it. Moreover, we learned that some gas engineers already provide their customers with resources such as flyers, magnets or stickers which provide various information on safety and use.

These interviews also helped us identify different goals, barriers and needs and allowed us to group these into gas engineer personas. We created three personas by taking into account interests (commercial and learning), roles (management and advisory) and capacity to access resources or new customers.

A small portion of gas engineers are employed by gas installation companies and energy suppliers. It is estimated that 5% are working for small companies with between 10 to 49 employees, which are often working as subcontractors for larger ones.

Employed gas engineers often receive jobs from their managers. They are more likely to service and install boilers for non-occupiers such as landlords or housing associations. This means they might have less direct interaction with paying customers and therefore have more limited opportunities to provide energy advice.

Depending on the company, some employers provide resources and support to their employees. These can include weekly engineer check-in sessions (to share their experiences or have quality assessment reviews), training (relevant to the type of work performed), or company documents such as service checklists or resources for their customers (informative flyers).

Providing optimisation advice is not part of gas engineers’ core service. However, we noticed that some employers are training their gas engineers to give efficiency advice to households as part of their service.

Around 95% of gas engineers work as sole traders. The advising sole trader is more likely to prioritise a high level of customer service and support to ensure high customer retention. This persona might have many long-standing customers and is more likely to give them information on how to best run their boilers, providing advice on optimising their heating system and reducing their energy bill.

They are generally more likely to be interested in investing in training and upskilling, including in low-carbon solutions, extending their range of advice from changing boiler settings to getting smart devices or switching to a heat pump.

This persona is likely to be proactively looking for information that could benefit their customers and knows where they can access trustworthy information.

As gas engineers focus on gas safety, they are less likely to consider giving optimisation advice unprompted. This persona might answer questions related to heating optimisation when asked by the customer, but might not offer much depth as it adds extra time on the job. They might want to avoid callbacks and complaints and therefore might be wary of giving advice if they are uncertain about the benefits or worried it might lead to customers needing additional support.

As with all sole traders, this persona has to manage their own customer base and keep them satisfied. This persona is likely to prefer keeping communication with clients brief and might have developed a streamlined routine, using time-saving tools they are familiar with.