Earth Day: Top 6 ways renewable energy industry can power up exceptional customer experience

This Earth Day, the push towards renewable energy has never been stronger, with rapid innovations in the sector, increased investments, and new tax incentives available for those transitioning to solar power. Residential solar had a record year in 2022, representing a 40% growth over 2021—and the solar industry is expected to grow five times larger than it is today over the next 10 years, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. That translates to a significant increase in customers in the solar pipeline who will want to be able to get their inquiries answered, and secure installation. 

With consumer interest rising, solar companies can anticipate spikes in demand by increasing capacity and harnessing every exceptional tool to deliver customer experience that outshines the competition.

Solar customers are already savvy about technology as they’ve decided to tap into the latest innovation in energy, and they will be expecting the latest in customer experience as well so incorporating a digital-first CX strategy is vital.

Read more about the top six ways renewable energy companies can power up seamless customer experience with the latest innovations.

1. Empower proactive conversations with artificial intelligence

Many solar companies are using proactive CX strategies to enhance customer experience. Organizations that proactively engage customers at the start of their journey empower them to intelligently solve problems faster.

Businesses can easily manage multi-day, asynchronous conversations across customers’ preferred channels with proactive conversational AI, anticipating their needs before they even reach out for help. This approach transforms the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of operations, while revolutionizing the overall experience and delighting customers.

By engaging in proactive conversations at the right moment in the customer journey, businesses simplify and streamline their experience. Preempting inbound calls and anticipating customer needs allows companies to take the right action at the beginning, reducing the cost of serving customers and achieving a better return on investment.

In the highly competitive solar industry, effective customer conversations can help businesses retain and acquire more customers. From onboarding and appointment scheduling to billing and ongoing customer care and support, proactive conversations benefit both customers and providers alike, enhancing their experience and driving business growth.

Proactivity can be truly transformative to your bottom line. Companies that implement proactive strategies can achieve remarkable improvements in customer satisfaction, operational efficiency, and overall business performance.

Or even if your company is using the term “proactive” – it’s important to use the best AI tools available. According to Gartner, 60% of service leaders say their customer service function uses proactive service to resolve customer issues but 85% of customers end up reaching out to customer service after proactive outreach.

If customers need to reach out, that’s reactive. Leveraging the latest technology can help connect with customers when it matters most and deliver personalized interactions to customers at the ideal time as early as possible in the journey.

2. Achieve 360-degree customer management

Customers making the switch to capture the sun’s rays for their energy needs also want to feel the warmth of good customer experience.

Ensuring 360-degree customer management is important in any growth industry, particularly in the burgeoning renewable energy sector.

Take the example of a fast-growing European energy company looking to ramp up support of customers’ energy transition by investing massively in renewable energy sources.

To launch its presence in a new region, it hired a global leader in business process outsourcing and NICE partner to deliver a scalable, omnichannel contact center solution.

Moving to NICE CXone offered the company a potent combination of ease-of-use and flexibility to implement 360-degree customer management. It was able to make the pivot by integrating with Google Analytics using CXone APIs to track the customer journey from acquisition to conversion.

“With this unique customization, our client can track leads from beginning to end in order to analyze channel conversion rates and pinpoint which marketing campaigns are performing best,” said the Business Development Director for Global Technology Enablement at the BPO.

Consumers who see the company’s marketing banner on a third-party website can access the website with one click or call the number on the banner. The integration between CXone and Google Analytics is used to track the lead.

To further pinpoint the success of marketing efforts, callers are given a unique phone number to identify which third-party website they visited. If a prospect subscribes to the client’s services, CXone sends an event to Google Analytics to track the entire lead acquisition journey.

If the consumer initiates a web chat with an adviser and becomes a subscriber, a disposition code is assigned to the interaction to show a sale was made. The web chat invitation has a unique Google Analytics session ID to track the interaction from initial interest to the point of conversion.

This all results in successfully following the customer journey to better serve them and close a sale.

3. Gain visibility into real-time KPIs

A solar company looking to fuel its growth ran out of steam when it came to delivering outstanding customer service. Fortunately, it found the right call center solution to quickly turn around the customer experience.

The nation’s leading home solar, storage, and energy services company with 48,000 home battery systems wanted to collect more data around outbound calling. Key goals included determining its contact rate, measuring success in calling potential customers, and maintaining appropriate staffing levels.

The company quickly recognized its employees are the heart of the organization and wanted to pursue ways to help them focus on what matters: high-skill, high-value tasks.

Leveraging the industry’s leading performance management tools made it possible to give agents important feedback on their performance. Using their dashboards, agents could see important KPIs in real-time with a quick glance.

In addition, directors and managers have their own customized dashboard views so they’re positioned to gain a high-level view of arrival patterns, performance and a real-time view of how their agents are doing so they can step in to provide more offline coaching or team meetings to help recalibrate if agents need assistance to meet overall goals.

Identifying more dynamic ways, such as automated gamification, to motivate agents also plays a central role in performance management and engaging agents by making work fun.

“We give everybody access to the metrics and use it in a fun way so employees aren’t concerned if peers see their data,” said the manager of contact center operations. Every week, we reward the top person for sales conversions, and it’s driving a more competitive spirit.”

4. Leverage workforce management for efficiency

Imagine using spreadsheets to manually figure out staffing requirements? Tedious and out of step with modern capabilities.

The nation’s top home solar, storage, and energy services company was doing just that until it implemented a modern workforce management solution.

Now the solar company can use patented artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to anticipate business demands and optimize its workforce—more intelligently and more accurately with an omnichannel forecasting engine.

The intuitive look and feel allows a company to get its workforce management up and running more quickly and makes it easier to manage forecasts and schedules. If a change is needed, the solution offers flexibility to follow the pace of intraday insights and reforecasting capabilities.

“We were putting our employees through a lot of pain, because we were moving their schedules, sending them home early, etc.,” the manager of contact operations said. “We now have an integrated solution for forecasting schedules based on historical call volumes, so we are much less reactive. … And our employees are happier, because we’re not changing their schedules so frequently or moving their shifts around.”

By onboarding a new workforce management solution, the company has increased its occupancy rate, or the percentage of time agents spend dealing with customers compared to their total available time, to 90% (up from 60%) and achieved its goals on service level, abandon rates and speed-to-dial KPIs.

5. Streamline training with a unified platform

Toggling between multiple contact center solutions resulted in lost time and threatened a positive customer experience. So, the European company looking to broaden its solar power customer base sought a unified solution to help curb any potential delays from advisers spending unnecessary time navigating too many tools.

Having an intuitive interface streamlined the training process—a critical piece of the plan for going live in 90 days.

“Using a unified platform also lets us quickly track performance—even across different channels—and ensure that we’re satisfying SLA requirements,” said the business development director for global technology enablement for the BPO.

Its new managed solution “helps the company successfully close deals, increase sales and optimize marketing,” he added.

The global technology solutions marketing manager for the BPO agreed that building up a company requires a solution that offers the flexibility that only a unified cloud solution can offer.

6. Scale for cost-effective growth

Before you take your business on a growth trajectory, it’s smart to make sure you have a scalable customer experience solution. In fact, the European company focused on solar called it critical to maintain service levels to support client growth and the evolution of the business.

For example, if interaction volumes fluctuate, the call center can quickly onboard new advisers and adjust capacity. It also has been able to ramp up omnichannel capabilities, such as supporting social media inquiries.

And even more attractive to any business, all this can be done cost effectively with a pricing model based on a pay-as-you-use model.

“It’s reassuring to know that our client’s future growth will always be supported without incurring additional infrastructure expenses,” said the global technology solutions marketing manager for the BPO working with the European company dedicated to increasing the green energy transition for customers.

Limitless growth allows companies to grow and operate with confidence while enjoying greater
scalability, reliability, and security—all on a single platform.

Renewable energy firms can take the lead of the example of the companies described above by learning how to accelerate innovation, empower agents, and simplify administration with a single, modern cloud native architecture. Get a CXone demo today to start implementing a 360-degree digital first customer experience.