Reducing headaches at Lighthouse Solar

About Lighthouse Solar

Founded in 2008, Lighthouse Solar is a leading regional solar integrator in Central Texas that provides system design, installation, and financing within both the residential and commercial solar markets.  Based in Austin, their team is made up of architects, engineers, CPAs, master electricians, journeymen electricians, NABCEP qualified sales professionals, experienced PV installers, project managers, and designers.

Life before Bodhi®

Led by their experienced team and prioritization of customer experience,  Lighthouse has enjoyed a decade-plus of organic growth.  Their success in scaling sales meant project managers and support staff no longer had the bandwidth to provide the level of service they were known for.  Once excited customers grew frustrated as they waited for project updates. Project Managers, who were spending half their day talking to customers, also grew frustrated because they wanted to focus on project execution.

The decision to change

Lighthouse needed a real solution to this problem of communication inefficiency - one that took into account the unique characteristics of solar. Tied to this was also the fact that Lighthouse’s closely tracked referral KPIs were on the decline. When reviews suggested Lighthouse’s reputation was becoming a victim of its success, the search for a solution was on.

Description of process change

Initially, the customer-first culture at Lighthouse Solar caused the team to feel apprehensive that Bodhi®’s automated communications would be a viable substitute for personally composed correspondence. Lighthouse decided to roll out Bodhi® to a limited set of customers and collect feedback. The initial class of Bodhi® users reported positive experiences while the Project Managers realized how much more time they had in the day because those customers no longer needed individual updates.

Life with Bodhi®

Today, Bodhi® is included as a standard product to all new Lighthouse customers. Sales reps introduce Bodhi® to customers during the sales process as a differentiated service offering and a way to easily refer their friends and neighbors to Lighthouse.

Once their project moves to the installation phase and throughout their construction project, customers receive consistent interaction from Lighthouse via automated updates from Bodhi®. These automated updates are hyper-personalized as if written to the contact personally, and provide project updates as granular as “your Mission Solar 310W solar panels have been ordered.” Further, Bodhi® has improved the Lighthouse Solar customer experience through integrated surveys, which illuminate any customer service issues so they can be addressed well before they come to a head.