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.

30-50

Employee Count

Website

www.lighthousesolartx.com

Other tools

Field2Base, JobNimbus

I realized that my project managers were spending up to 50% of their time on communications - most of which has been automated by Bodhi.

Stan Pipkin, CEO

Lighthouse Solar

SHORT TERM GOAL

Reduce time project managers spend on customer calls

LONG TERM GOAL

Improve the customer experience, boost staff morale

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.

SHORT TERM GOAL

Reduce time project managers spend on customer calls

LONG TERM GOAL

Improve the customer experience, boost staff morale

Description of process change

Life before Bodhi

The decision to change

These results were even better than I expected.

Stan Pipkin, CEO, Lighthouse Solar

84%

Notification read rate

Hours gained weekly

30%

Increase in referrals

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.

After the solar system is powered up, Bodhi begins monitoring the fleet performance across all 3 monitoring platforms Enphase, SolarEdge, and eGauge that Lighthouse deploys. Bodhi sends Lighthouse-branded performance summaries so the team stays top-of-mind with their customers. The Lighthouse team also receives alerts from Bodhi when a system is not reporting or producing power often before their customer even knows, allowing the Lighthouse Solar service department to proactively address the issue.