Q&A: Ohme and Motability

Russ Morgan is Commercial Innovations Director at Ohme. Since joining in 2021, Russ has helped build our managed installation service to managing our customer experience team. Today, his sole focus is looking after our partnership with Motability Operations.

A major part of his role with Motability is to help with the differing challenges of moving its 800,000 customers over to electric vehicles.

How long has Ohme worked with Motability?

Ohme started working with Motability with a small trial in late 2021 and then our partnership officially started in April 2022. We are now Motability’s primary EV home charger provider.

What services does Ohme offer for Motability and its customers?

Ohme offers Motability customers a fully managed installation service. Any Motability customer getting their first full EV qualifies for an Ohme charger with a standard installation at no additional cost. 

Ohme offers Motability customers an end-to-end installation process ensuring that their introduction to their first electric vehicle is as seamless as possible. As part of owning an Ohme charger, Motability customers have access to a smart charger that can charge at the greenest and cheapest times, further reducing their running costs of having a car and helping to save them money.

How has Motability changed Ohme’s working practices?

Both Motability and Ohme have a focus of being customer obsessed and always putting the customer first.

While we always had a good idea of what it meant to deliver a great customer experience, there was a lot we had to learn about what that meant when providing a service to customers with disabilities. Our first step was to reach out to our, now partner, Leonard Cheshire. Leonard Cheshire is a charity that promotes inclusivity and provides support to those with disabilities.

They helped us by undertaking a comprehensive review of our inclusivity practices. We have reviewed and improved our customer services practices, our disability-inclusive customer training, as well as reviewing our app, our website and all of our marketing material with accessibility services in mind.

Through Leonard Cheshire, we’ve also participated in its Change 100 programme, giving paid internship opportunities to students and graduates with disabilities and long-term conditions.

We have also been fortunate enough to benefit from Motability Operation’s expert training team. They have helped to train numerous Ohme staff in various customer service practices to deliver the best customer outcomes.

By making any product or service to be more inclusive, it improves the totality of the service for everyone.

What has changed with Ohme’s processes as a result?

Under the disability act, every organisation has the obligation to make reasonable adjustments to serve those with disability and Ohme is obviously no different. Many people don’t realise, but more than 20% of the UK population have a disability – that’s around 16 million people – and some of those disabilities aren’t always visible.

If any customer faces any barriers to our managed installation process, we have specific adjustments to accommodate them as necessary. We will obviously make those adjustments for any customer – both Motability and non-Motability.

The best prepared organisation is an inclusive organisation.

Is Ohme involved with Motability in any other ways?

Yes, we attend all of Motability’s Big Event programme days held across the UK and also its Test Drive experience days where you can get behind the wheel of an EV. The Big Event days are especially important as it gives Ohme an opportunity to educate customers on the benefits of home charging.

More importantly though, we also learn from those customers ourselves too. We’ve always participated in them as it gives us great insights, so that we can make improvements to our products in the future. It may sound corny, but first-hand customer feedback at these events is invaluable, we’re privileged to attend these events and speak to Motability’s customers.

We also work with Motability on a type of training exchange programme, both with their staff helping us with their latest practices and us also helping them on the latest technology in EVs and charging worlds.

We’re working with Motability on a number of innovative projects that will be launching soon, so stay tuned!

What advantages does the switch to an EV offer for Motability customers?

The main one is obviously the cost savings that running an EV can bring compared to a petrol car – around £1000 a year. Having a home charger from Ohme also changes the game with regard to refuelling too – we’ve heard from customers who previously had to make arrangements with their local petrol station when filling up.

The average daily mileage is around 15 miles a day, so you’re never going to run out of charge, while our charging connector weighs less than a petrol pump.

We’re proud to be able to help Motability customers move into the latest EVs and charge at the greenest and cheapest times, we want to ensure that no driver gets left behind in the transition towards e-mobility.