We’ve already written about the importance of communication with customers throughout the installation process in the solar industry. In this post, we expand on this idea. This is a short post how solar companies can deliver amazing customer experiences during the installation phase by building a customer portal. We think every solar company should have a customer portal – independent if they focus on residential or commercial solar installations.
In principle, we see three main elements that can be combined into a customer portal:
Installation progress
Showing the installation progress will create transparency for your customers. Similar to e-commerce shipments, the installation status is automatically communicated there at any time. This will avoid unnecessary service requests where customers often only ask about the current status. Below is an example how it could look like in the customer portal (right side):
Document exchange
A simple web interface helps the customers to exchange documents that important for the installation. Examples are powers of attorneys or images from the inspection. This would save a lot of email traffic, which gets easily lost.
Communication
Your customers can ask any type of questions about their solar installation. Someone from customer support can answer them directly and easily – all at one place. This will reduce the number of service requests.
A customer portal will keep all the information about the solar installation in just one place for your solar business and for your customer. The three elements mentioned above can simply be displayed behind a login field and linked to internal systems. An alternative would be that the customer logs in with a her name and a customized code to access all information. This is similar to a booking reference for your flight for the checkin. As a solar business, you can route all information and data individually to each customer. In addition, this would also ensure data protection.
Here’s an example of how the customer portal can look like:
If you are looking to improve your customer experience throughout the installation and send personalized project updates, contact us.
