Turn every bill shock into a trusted moment.
Your app makes households wait while bills are assembled. Assembling turns that wait into a reward they keep — power bill credit at launch, with more rewards rolling out. One line of code. You keep 55%.
the smallest credible next step.
fail any line of the scorecard and we change the design or stop.
No production access is requested by this concept. No live customer, price, reward or purchase is involved. Scope, privacy, security and commercial terms require joint approval before any pilot begins.
"the concept looks right except for one thing — [your constraint here]."
Every wait in a power account
Six moments between choosing a plan and opening a winter bill — the whole relationship happens in the gap between using power and finding out what it cost.
The comparison gets made against this household’s actual use rather than an average nobody lives in.
The silence gets named, so it stops reading as something gone wrong.
The bill explains itself in the order a person actually asks — what changed, why, and what happens next.
Most hold calls are one fact. Putting the fact in the wait ends the call before it starts.
The first question in an outage is whether it is only you. Answering that stops a call and stops a worry.
The hard bill arrives with the options already worked out, before anyone has to ask for help.
Four steps, every time.
- The signalSomething you already record says a person is now waiting, and roughly how long for.
- The predictionHow long this one will really take — not the average, this one.
- The valueSomething worth their attention goes into that window: an answer, a credit, a thing prepared while they wait.
- The exchangeThey get value. You get someone who stayed, and one optional answer you have always wanted.
This is the reward layer, running for real on this page. Drag to scratch it. Nothing is collected and nothing is sent — it is here so the idea is something you do, not something you read.
When a wait earns a credit, it arrives as a line item on the bill, in plain words — not a voucher, not points, not a draw. And if the customer prefers, one choice gifts the same credit to a household in hardship instead. Their credit, their call, and the bill says which in writing.
What a pilot actually asks of you.
Written out in full, because the honest version is short and most of it is your time, not your money.
One named person
The approver. Every draft stops with them and nothing reaches a customer until they say so. About two hours a week, reading drafts rather than managing a project.
One situation, not the business
One wait on one customer segment, for six weeks — the first bill after a switch. Not the whole book, and nothing that changes a tariff.
Read-only access, nothing that writes
Read-only access to billing and meter-read events already emitted, and your published plan terms. No customer data leaves your environment and nothing writes to an account or a rate.
Your actual rules
The policies, limits and words the drafts are held against. Every rule shown on this page is a placeholder standing in for yours. An afternoon with whoever owns them is usually enough.
Six weeks, then a real decision
Scored on: Drafts a billing lead sends without rewriting. Contacts about a first bill against a control. Whether the bill needed explaining twice. And: would that lead be annoyed if you switched it off? Fail any line of that and we change the design or stop. You keep everything drafted either way.
A fixed fee, agreed in writing first
No number is published on this page, because it depends on which situation you pick. Whatever it is, it is agreed before any work starts and it does not move.
Run the pilot.
Say yes to the six weeks above, and add anything you would change first. Nothing here is fixed — most pilots move a line or two before they start, and the notes below are how that happens.
Opens your mail app to assembl@assembl.co.nz with your notes in it. Nothing is collected by this page.
- Six weeks, one situation, scored against a written line
- Read-only access, nothing production
- A named approver — nothing sends without them
- A fixed fee, agreed in writing before anything starts
- Stop any time. You keep what was drafted
what a monetised wait state is
A monetised wait state is a wait that pays for itself — the customer gets something useful out of it, and the business gets work done that would otherwise cost it money later.
the same thing, in words
- Every business makes people wait somewhere. Here it is the three to four days a switch takes to complete.
- Today that time produces nothing — some people give up, and the work still happens later, when it costs more.
- assembling fills it: one small question in, prepared work out, and something back for the customer.
- Who is better off: the customer gets a bill in plain words, credits, on the bill, no surprise meter read; the retailer gets fewer billing calls, evidenced compliance, a switch that sticks.
- A credit and hardship specialist stays in charge — before any action on an unpaid account.
what it may do, and where it stops
consent
You asked to switch, or asked about your bill. The agent works inside your account and tells you what it touched.
what it reads
- your ICP — the Installation Control Point — and its registry record
- your plan and its rates
- the meter reads behind each bill
retention
Billing records keep their statutory life. The explanations are part of the bill, not a separate file about you.
authority
act within limits
it never
- never disconnects anyone — that decision belongs to a person, after every Consumer Care step
- never changes your plan without your yes
- never recommends prepay where anyone is medically dependent
the human gate
A credit and hardship specialist, before any action on an unpaid account. Electricity Authority Consumer Care Obligations, mandatory since 1 April 2025 — including at least five separate contact attempts before disconnection is even considered.
The wait is why they switch.
The average saving a Powerswitch user found by switching. The cost of a wait handled badly is not the call — it is the customer who leaves at the end of it.
Saved collectively in one year by Powerswitch users who switched. The door out of an energy relationship is well signposted and well used.
New Zealanders spent 22 million hours on hold in 2025 — 8.7 hours each. Nearly half say slow service is reason enough to switch.
Offered a callback instead of holding, 58% took it. People do not object to waiting. They object to waiting with nothing.
Every figure carries its source and its country, and overseas figures are flagged as overseas. Where no local number exists we say so rather than inventing one — there is still no published NZ study tying hold time to churn in energy retail.
what it should move
Stated as a hypothesis and a mechanism. We are not going to put a number on it before we have run it.
contacts per bill
A bill that explains itself does not generate the call.
payment plans completed
The five Consumer Care contacts are orchestrated and evidenced, so the plan starts before the debt hardens.