Vivint Solar | Sales experience
Redesigning the point-of-sale (POS) experience to facilitate trust between consumers and sales.
How deep insight into user needs, behaviors, and experiences leads to accelerated growth with dynamic, personalized, peer-to-peer delivery.
Dynamic POS tool, designed for both customers and sales alike
Client overview:
Vivint Solar is a direct-to-home (D2H) sales company that provides homeowners with low-cost solar panels, innovative home technology, and backup batteries. As with any D2H model, competition can be fierce, and consumers can feel inundated with aggressive, close-fast sales pitches. That's why, in 2011, Vivint Solar adopted a relationship-based sales model built on trust and service. Sales reps were then referred to as 'energy consultants' and later re-branded as 'The Home Energy Pros.' As part of a whole new, top-to-bottom approach, The Home Energy Pros received all-new training and sales materials, placing homeowners at the center of the experience. Homeowners benefited from unparalleled service and support from Home Energy Pros they could trust.
Business rationale:
As more and more competitors have entered the residential solar market, the need to stand out is more important than ever. In 2017, The Home Energy Pros relied heavily on costly paper brochures, business cards, and handwritten notes to answer customer questions and provide product information. Adding to the complexity, between 2018 - 2021, we worked with Vivint Solar to launch multiple in-person and online sales platforms, including Retail, Home Builder; Grid Services; Dealer / Sales Partner; Digital Marketing; E-Commerce; and Self-Service.
Primary business objective: Develop a completely digital, omnichannel point-of-sale tool. The platform must work for door-to-door sales reps and customers. And it should facilitate relationships between customers and their reps. Peer-to-peer delivery should lead to richer experiences, improved profitability, and a more sustainable growth strategy.
Solution summary: No more one-size-fits-all approach
Data-driven analysis and segmentation: Research and analyze the relationship between customers and their sales representatives in every market and sales channel. Identify common patterns and characteristics for segmentation. Understand both who our customers and our employees are, their journey, and experiences at every user touchpoint.
Omni-channel digitization and personalization: Using centralized customer data and dynamic content + design experience maps, personalize the user journey for both reps and customers. Help homeowners find what they're looking for, tailor their experience, and facilitate trust-based relationships between Pros and customers.
Homeowners benefit from professional support and build lifelong relationships with The Home Energy Pros
Bringing our users to life
The relationship-based sales model varies from a traveling salesman approach in that reps live and operate within their neighborhood. It gives them intimate knowledge and understanding of their environment and how renewable energy products work and the ability to build lifelong relationships with homeowners and their community.
Conducting our consumer insights research study, we found 3 primary segments emerged:
Early Adopters (37.4%)
Metric-Hungry Homeowners (44.4%)
Cost Cautious (18.2%)
Designing for a completely digital, omnichannel point-of-sale (POS)
Sales reps used the same paper brochures, whether reps were operating through direct-to-home (D2H), in a retail store, or anywhere else. They would often add handwritten notes and personal contact information in place of company information in the brochures. These brochures cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars every year in terms of overhead alone. As the company expands into new channels to market, a one-size-fits-all approach creates bottlenecks, ineffective messaging, and unknowable amounts of post-consumer waste. Moreover, as the company continually revamps with new and improved products, reps can struggle to stay in the know as offerings are constantly changing and expanding.
User journey blueprints
Putting it all together
Designing the digital product we all want
Customized proposals generate dynamically using real-time data and inputs, whether they enter the data themselves online or The Home Energy Pros during an in-person consultation. The digital proposal packets are stored automatically for homeowners in their online customer accounts and sent to them via their choice of text or email. Homeowners can respond to their proposal with feedback and changes or accept their proposal and sign their contract, all within the same application.
The home screen of the dynamically generated customer proposal pack
Dynamic screens overview
Educational screens
Omni-channel approach for dealers and partners
Some core brand elements downplay themselves for use by Dealers, Sales Partners, and Home Builder Partners.
Results summary
Customer rNPS score increased at point-of-sale by 2 points over 6-week implementation.
Set rate and contract signing rate are improved by more than 12% nationwide.
Material waste decreased, and printing costs dropped by six figures in 2020
Notable Home Builders, Retailers, Dealers, and Sales Partners cited digital customer point-of-sale (POS) as a driving factor in their decision to partner with us over our top competitors.