EV Charger CRM for Drivers and Hosts

First session to second session

Operators measure sessions, energy and utilisation. None of those distinguishes a hundred drivers charging once from twenty charging five times, and those are completely different businesses.

1. 1

   They arrive

   Paid for by the site, the signage, the listing, or simply by being where a driver needed a charger. This is the only introduction you get.

2. 2

   They charge, or they do not

   A first session that fails is worse than no first session, because the driver now has a specific reason to avoid you rather than no opinion at all.

3. 3

   They come back, or they do not

   The step most operators never measure, and the only one that compounds. Every site that works has a base of drivers who stopped choosing and started defaulting.

4. 4

   They become regular

   At which point the site earns predictably, the host sees a curve going the right way, and the acquisition cost is behind you.

The ratio between step two and step three is the number to run the business on. It is also the number that tells you whether a poor site is poorly located or just poorly run, which is the most expensive question in the industry to get wrong.

Why a driver does not come back

• The session failed, or started late, or stopped early, and nobody followed it up
• They could not pay, or paying was awkward enough that they will not do it twice
• It was slower than expected, which is often the vehicle rather than the charger, and the driver was never told that
• They were charged for something they did not understand, which is the complaint that turns into a review
• The bay was blocked, or dark, or they could not find it
• Nothing went wrong at all, and they simply had no reason to choose you again

The last one is the largest and the one operators never count, because it produces no ticket, no complaint and no signal of any kind. It is invisible in every dashboard and it is most of the loss.

What brings a driver back

1. 1

   Following up the session that went wrong

   A failed or interrupted session, acknowledged quickly, with a credit where one is due. This recovers a driver who had otherwise written the site off, and it costs almost nothing.

2. 2

   An offer aimed at this driver

   Not a network-wide discount. Off-peak pricing for a driver who always arrives at the busiest hour, a return offer for one whose first session failed, a rate for a driver who charges weekly. The platform knows which is which.

3. 3

   Something they cannot get elsewhere

   A report on their own battery, built from sessions they were having anyway, is the clearest example: useful to the driver, free to produce, and impossible for a competitor without the data to copy.

4. 4

   Being told what happened

   A completion message, a receipt that explains itself, an answer about why it was slow. Most churn from confusion is preventable with information the platform already has.

5. 5

   Noticing the gap before they are gone

   A regular whose interval has stretched from weekly to monthly is leaving. That is visible in the session data well before the sessions stop.

What the driver side has to hold

• One record per driver, with every session, payment, ticket and conversation on it
• Segments that mean something operationally: first-timers, regulars, lapsing, lapsed, and the ones whose first session failed
• Offers that can be targeted at a segment, a site, an hour or an individual, with an expiry
• A record of what each campaign did, because an offer with no measured effect is a discount rather than a campaign
• Automatic follow-up on the events that matter, since a follow-up that depends on an agent remembering will not happen
• First-session-to-second-session conversion, per site, as a number with a named owner

The host side, before they sign

A site host is a long sale with several people in it, and the pipeline behaves nothing like the driver one.

1. 1

   Target

   The malls, apartment associations, hotels, offices and yards worth approaching, held as a list with an owner and a stage rather than in the sales lead's head.

2. 2

   Qualify on the site, not the logo

   Supply capacity, parking layout, dwell time and who actually decides. These determine what can be installed and what it will cost, and they belong on the record from the first conversation.

3. 3

   Show them the number

   What their site is likely to earn, based on sites like theirs. A host signs with whoever can answer that question credibly.

4. 4

   Agree what happens if it underperforms

   Settled before signature rather than discovered at the first quarterly review.

The host side, after they sign

Hosts do not churn loudly. They do not complain, they decline at renewal, and by then the conversation is already lost.

• Their own view of their own sites, so routine questions never become emails to you
• What was earned, invoiced, settled and shared, in a form they can check rather than take on trust
• Utilisation they can act on, and an honest account of where it is below expectation and why
• A record of every fault at their site and how long it took to resolve, because they are keeping that score whether or not you are
• Renewal dates with enough warning to do something about them, rather than a month out

The host retention argument is the driver retention argument one step removed. A host renews when their site earns, and their site earns when drivers come back to it.

What to measure

Most operators can produce none of these today, because the session record and the customer record live in different places. That is the problem to fix first.