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Lessons for the Solar Industry: Customer service

Solar Novus

December 27, 2011

It’s not just people in the customer service department who interact with customers. Everyone should understand the value proposition of the company, how their company is better than the competition, and how that value translates to the customer. What are the important elements of customer service that can be done by all employees that creates customer loyalty and clearly distinguishes your company as the one to do business with? What are the technical parts of the business that must be mastered and how is this conveyed properly to employees and customers? Customers are your greatest source of information, and successful companies listen and learn from them.

Through proper training, consistent values, tools and knowledge, a winning spirit can be instilled in all employees. All should possess the same attitude when dealing with customers. If the message is well crafted and well communicated, customers will see the cohesion and there will be a continuous effect. But don’t think it ends with early success. The message needs constant attention and improvement with regular measurements of the results. It is the obsession with satisfying internal and external customers that drives these top organizations to their distinct market positions and profitable results. The principles of the corporate vision and how to treat customers and their peers must be reinforced on a daily basis.

One way to ensure that your employees can provide top quality customer service is for the employees to have real confidence in your products. An example of this is demonstrated by Cenergy Power, a solar integrator based in Carlsbad California.

Motivation

According to Todd Desiato, Vice President of Engineering at Cenergy Power, they motivate employees to go the extra mile with awards for excellent performance, beyond the norm for service and efficiencies. In addition to being very strong from an engineering and quality point of view, the company holds continuous improvement as a core value. They reward outstanding work on a quarterly basis to employees throughout the company who demonstrate effort way beyond the norm of a good employee. This could be someone who “wowed” an account with their service or an engineer who improved efficiencies or solved a quality issue before the fact rather than afterward. Their mantra is to clearly be the best in all parts of the business, which results in customer satisfaction and great referrals.

Borrego’s CEO, Mike Hall, offers incentives for bottom line performance; he listens to employees, and is open to change.

Another example in the solar industry is Borrego Solar, which specializes in the commercial and military sectors. CEO, Mike Hall’s philosophy is to have a culture that is “boundaryless,” meaning that he encourages employees to have new ideas and to take calculated risks.. He offers incentives for bottom line performance; he listens to employees, and is open to change—a philosophy that he attributes to General Electric’s Jack Welch.

Borrego’s value proposition is that have 20 years of experience in the industry, offer integrated financing along with a vendor-agnostic approach. This enables the company to be able to deal with the best and most cost effective technologies and suppliers, according to Hall, what also motivates their employees to be the best is that each owns stock in the company and results are shared with them quarterly.

Everyone should understand the value proposition of the company, how their company is better than the competition, and how that value translates (or should be translated) to the customer. Like Cenergy and Borrego , all businesses should look at the important things in customer service that can be done by all employees to create customer loyalty and clearly distinguish the company as the one to do business with.

Confidence is instilled in each employee with the right training, consistent values, tools and knowledge. And that confidence is seen by customers. If you think of Apple, Amazon, Nordstrom, and Southwest Airlines and similar great companies, you will see that this is true. From the receptionist, to the salespeople, engineers, and customers service, they all just seem to “get it” and have an energy that is attractive and creates enormous loyalty by customers.

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