After successfully launching a home solar offering, So Energy aimed to scale up the proposition to reach higher sales volumes and help customers towards achieving net zero. However there were challenges due to bottlenecks in the largely manual processes involved in creating a solar quote for each customer. I worked with the Solar Team and Product/Engineering to identify opportunities and improvements to the quoting process.
Initially I spent some time shadowing the Solar Team to get an idea of the processes they followed to create, send and follow-up a solar quote. Next I ran a workshop with various stakeholders from Solar, Product and Engineering to map the customer’s journey through the solar quote and installation process, and the corresponding steps taken by the Solar Team. As some steps were very detailed, we added screen recordings of team members completing these processes to the corresponding step in the Miro board.
Once all steps were mapped, we identified key areas in which improvements could be made and ranked each based on impact to the team / customer vs effort to design and develop.
As it stood, basic customer info such as name, address and contact details were being captured as a lead online and sent to the team’s CRM software. The team then contacted each potential customer, asking them to complete a Typeform to share information including:
Getting customer information in this way was cumbersome and time-consuming; the initial response rate was low and the team often had to follow-up to obtain extra information or remind the customer to complete the form.
For the MVP we focussed on capturing the customer information essential for the team to create a quote. The design used a step-by-step wizard type format which had been used successfully in previous projects, with the following steps:
The form information, including location data, is then sent to the Solar Team, who can prioritise and quote accordingly.
I created tested seven iterations of a prototype on usertesting.com, before fine-tuning the UI design and handing over to the Front-End Team.
The Solar Team saw immediate benefits after launch. With the time saved on contacting customers for information, as well as checking eligibility based on postcode, they saw a 20% uplift in quotes completed each week.
In terms of next steps, we are looking to create an alternative design to A/B test, based on showcasing the packages first and then completing the questions in one page. Also in the pipeline is a redesign of the solar homepage to include more information about the products and installation service, a simple savings calculator and evolved branding, based on a previously completed branding exercise.
