Imagine looking for something in your email. Wait, maybe they texted it to me…? Ugh, I’ll just ask them to resend it. That’s what happens right before your customers reaches out to you or someone on your team. And it’s a bad experience — for you AND your customers.
It’s also outdated. When your customers order something off Amazon or UberEats, they don’t have to dig through emails to find out what’s going on. They find everything they need to know in their dedicated app.
And the most important thing? It reduces the amount of calls your team has to handle. If you do it well, the difference can be dramatic.That’s why every solar business should offer a customer portal.
Don’t know where to start? Don’t worry. We’re sharing the 7 things your customer portal needs in order to be successful.
Fixing solar customer amnesia
Know that voice in Peanuts that goes wa wa wa? That’s what your solar customers hear when you talk about their system. Sure, for a few days they may remember they have a 10.6 kW system — but they’ll inevitably forget when their neighbor asks what they got installed.
That’s why your solar business should provide a solar customer portal that includes their system details. As a baseline, this should display the basic details — system size, inverter and panel manufacturer. More advanced customer portals will also connect to your crm or project management system. That way, any change by your sales team or project managers is automatically updated for the customer.
The ultimate solar customer portal will also integrate monitoring, so that when they reach PTO, your customers can show their neighbors their cool production data.
The #1 thing solar customers want
If Domino’s can do it, why not my solar installer? That’s what your solar customers are thinking when they haven’t heard from you. They want a pizza tracker, but for their solar project, so they know exactly what’s happening with their $30,000 investment.
That’s why your solar business should provide a customer portal that includes a solar project tracker. Baseline, this should be just like the Domino’s pizza tracker, meaning a visual tracker that shows where they are in the process of going solar.
Want to level up? Then integrate your solar customer portal with your crm or project management tool so that finer detailed updates, like permit statues, automatically get sent out.
Be careful though, this integration needs to be able to handle advanced logic because the solar process is messy, and you don’t want to send out the wrong updates.
Fixing this project management pet peeve
Solar project managers hate resending the same documents over and over to their customers. But customers’ inboxes are like black holes — after it reaches a certain depth in the scroll, you’re never finding that proposal or contract again. At a minimum, this means having all project documents and photos accessible in one location for the homeowner. No more inbox searches.
If you want an even bigger productivity booster, you’ll also integrate the customer-facing document repository with your company’s internal document storage service like Google Drive or Dropbox for real-time accessibility.
And the ultimate time saver? Adding e-signature capabilities directly into your customer portal to accelerate time-to-sign.
Stop texting your customers
Texting customers is great for responsiveness….but then you’re trying to put your kid to bed or take a vacation, and yep. They’re still texting you. Luckily, investing in a solar customer portal that consolidates all of your customer communications can fix this headache.
So what does this look like? Well, in its most basic form, your solar customer portal should have a simple chat function. Think about it — your homeowners will already be in their portal checking the status of their project or looking for their tax documents. Then they have a question, and they see a chat functionality, and you just saved yourself an 8pm text alert.
More advanced customer portals will go even further to consolidate customer communications — bringing emails, chat, and yes, even text, into one inbox for your team to easily see and respond to.
Avoid this solar SNAFU
If you don’t have an FAQ, your solar customers are probably saying WTF. Your operations team may even join them. After all, when your customers feel lost, they overwhelm your project managers with endless (basic) questions. And that makes for a SNAFU.
That’s why every solar company should build a solar customer portal that has an FAQ page. At a minimum, this section of the portal should have written and video materials explaining the solar process and the customer’s system.
For installers who have the resources for something more advanced, we recommend a searchable knowledge base — making it even easier for the customer to self-serve.
Eventually we may recommend an AI-powered chatbot, but for now we’d hold off. The technology is too early, and your customer relationship is too precious to jeopardize.
Streamlining solar referrals
You know you’ve got happy customers, but they’re not turning into referrals. So what’s the deal? You may not have a good process or interface for your customers. That’s why every solar company should have a solar customer portal where customers know they can find updates about their project — and easily submit referrals.
This doesn’t have to be fancy. At its most basic, this can be a 4-field form embedded in your portal with some basic automations. For example, your sales rep gets alerted when your customer submits the form, and the referee gets a nice intro email.
But if you have the resources, we recommend getting a little fancier. Use surveys or customer sentiment analysis tools to actually segment customers to know who to target for referrals.
Building your own solar customer portal
You’re ready. You know everything you need to know about a solar customer portal — why solar businesses are implementing them and what it should include. But now you need to actually…get a solar customer portal. So should you build it yourself or look for a vendor?
Well, it depends on staff resources, your implementation timeline, and your budget. Basically, if you want to build it, you need a LOT of all three. Especially when factoring in ongoing costs — including technical updates AND maintenance to keep up with business process changes.
Beyond what we’ve already covered, your solar customer portal should also:
- Have an installer-side portal, so your team knows what’s going on
- Be accessible on all devices (mobile, tablet, and desktop)
Baring all that in mind, only you will know whether you should build or buy.
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