Latest / Clean Power Hour / Owning the Customer Experience with Sunvoy's Joe Marhamati | EP216

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Owning the Customer Experience with Sunvoy's Joe Marhamati | EP216 · Clean Power Hour

• 0:51
  Joe Marhamati: So you know, being in in a country where it just takes a long time to go solar, you want to have a customer who knows exactly what's going on during the process, but also after the process. So one thing that Sunvoy allows is for homeowners to submit service tickets, and for a solar installer to create an FAQ section, so that if your envoy goes out or there's a communication issue, you can troubleshoot it yourself. But basically, a good customer experience to me post sale is having no ambiguity with respect to the process, knowing what's going on with your solar system is performing to expectations, and then being able to submit service tickets and ask questions of your installer,
• 1:30
  intro: Are you speeding the energy transition. Here at the Clean Power Hour. Our hosts Tim Montague and John Weaver bring you the best in solar batteries and clean technologies every week, I want to go deeper into decarbonisation. We do too.
• 1:46
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• 1:52
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• 1:59
  Tim Montague: Today on the clean power our software that grows your solar business, I'm Tim Montague, check out all of our content at cleanpowerhour.com Give us a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify, please, and tell a friend about the show. I love to hear from my listeners, please connect with me on LinkedIn and check out our YouTube channel. My guest today is Joe Marhamati. He is the co founder of a company called Sunvoy, which is a platform for customer relationship management, but much more.
• 2:27
  Tim Montague: Welcome to the show, Joe.
• 2:31
  Joe Marhamati: Thanks, Tim.
• 2:31
  Joe Marhamati: Thanks for having me on.
• 2:32
  Tim Montague: It's great to have such a storied solar professional and entrepreneur on the show, I am just tickled to get to know you a little bit and learn about what you did with Epson. And now Sunvoy. So, Joe, well, we start with a little background on yourself, please tell our listeners about yourself and how you got into the solar industry.
• 2:56
  Joe Marhamati: Well, I think I've been in the solar industry for every single day of my career, actually. So I've been in this field now for about 17 years, 16 years. He started in 2008 at the Department of Energy. When the loan programs office was just getting off the ground there were literally writing the rules, and the playbook for how they were going to deploy these billions of dollars. And they did and was one of the first 30 employees there. And we funded through the Recovery Act some of the first utility scale solar projects, the Tesla facility in Fremont, California, where they were building the model s some of the first cellulosic biofuel facilities, solar manufacturing facilities, the first new nuclear reactor in the United States in decades. And it was a wild ride. And I'll never forget it, it was the honor of a lifetime working with some of the smartest people I've ever met, that really spawned the solar industry as we know it today. So that really was the beginning of my career. And in 2016, there was a change in administration's, and I went out with a friend to start a solar business in the Washington DC metro area called IPs and solar, that we've been growing for eight plus years now and had a wild ride and a super fun time building that business that's been primarily residential, and then some small, light commercial industrial projects, including the Constitution Center on the National Mall, kind of our Keystone projects that we're very proud of. And we built Sunvoy as kind of a spin off company from IPS and solar, we realized that there was a strange status quo in the solar industry, where homeowners, and business owners really didn't know what stage or project was at. And of course, these solar projects can take three, six, sometimes 12 months to complete.
• 4:49
  Joe Marhamati: And then when we turn those systems online, they had, you know, the manufacturers monitoring app, they weren't living in the app of the solar installer. So we built for ourselves a customer portal, that would allow them to have a better customer experience to be able to track their projects, see what stage they're at. And then to see all of their energy data in one place in a branded ecosystem from the solar installer. And so we spun off that concept into another company called Sunvoy when we saw the impact it had on our business. And that's primarily what we're working on today.
• 5:25
  Tim Montague: Well, that was a lot. And I'm totally psyched to get into the Sunvoy story, but I want to unpack a little bit of your history there with the LPO.
• 5:35
  Tim Montague: So the LPO was a phenomenon of the Obama administration. Is that right?
• 5:44
  Joe Marhamati: Oh, wow, that's that's a good question. So it actually came out of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which was in the bush admin stration It was sort of a grand bargain of what ended up sort of being the beginning of all of the quote unquote, all of the above, where they wanted to fund renewable energy, and nuclear and clean coal and all kinds of other stuff. And so they agreed to start this program, which is essentially a project finance shop within the Department of Energy. And you know, the first few years, they were really just setting it up, they were bringing in people from private industry, investment banking, the Export Import Bank, and OPEC and all over government and private industry to set up a loan programs office, right, the rules, start getting some money out the door, was a little slow.
• 6:30
  Joe Marhamati: I was there in the early days when they were trying to figure it all out. And then what really juiced it was the this financial crisis in September of 2008. And the need to really get money out the door and built. And so the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, wow, I can't believe that was 15 years ago, really, jump started the loan programs office. And it was called something else before that. It was like the loan guarantee program officer something and they rebranded it, and they brought in some really just wonderfully talented people. And there was a sprint there of Canyon blues, two years, it was from, you know, the implementation in 2009 of the Recovery Act to September of 2011, to get $30 billion out the door. And we did it. It was an incredible sprint of working nights and weekends and holidays for two years. But in those two years, we really funded the modern energy transition as we know it.
• 7:34
  Tim Montague: Yeah, this is this is what I call good government.
• 7:37
  Tim Montague: The government has many roles, but inspiring the economy to invest in certain technologies that are emerging is is ultimately a very important role that the government plays. And, you know, it's not without its ups and downs, like any capitalist venture, and people like to poke a stick in the eye of the LPO for its failed investments, but there's been many success stories there. So and now we're in phase two of the LPO with ticker shot the home and he's getting lots of traction, I take issue with some of their priorities. I think that you know, next gen nuclear is not should not be a priority, for example, just because it's expensive, and it's time consuming to deploy. I think we could deploy wind, solar and batteries a lot faster at scale.
• 8:30
  Tim Montague: But anyway, so let's let's get into Sunvoy, you're You're like an installers, installer, right, because you you grew up growing a solar installation company, really understanding that business from the inside out what installers want, what consumers want. And what you touched on there with Sunvoy, that really struck strikes a chord with me is that post installation, the consumer has given an app, it could be the inverter manufacturers app, or it could be some third party app. But technology changes over time. And and so they're really that experience is hit and miss.
• 9:16
  Tim Montague: And, you know, some companies have done very well, solar edge is famous for their for their app and panel level monitoring consumers and you know, our site to know if all the panels on the array are working and to be able to see when a panel is out. But what else can you say about the the mediation of Sunvoy?
• 9:41
  Joe Marhamati: Well, yeah, we realized, you know, in our business, that the customer experience was sub optimal. Now, some of that is just inherent to the American solar industry.
• 9:51
  Joe Marhamati: It's like it takes three, six months, and sometimes a year plus to get your solar project implemented. Sometimes because of difficult H J's, or because there's new battery technology that takes a long time to learn or to design or because of HOAs, or you know, any number of reasons. But homeowners justifiably get frustrated during that time because they're paying $50,000 for their projects, and they want to know what's going on. So we wanted a way for the homeowner to be able to track their project from the beginning when they signed the contract, but then also at PTO to not receive four or five different apps to see what's going on with their system, which is the status quo in the solar industry. And then beyond that, to not forget who actually educated them sold the system designed and installed it which is very common. You know, I was at a con For instance, a few weeks ago, there was an exhibitor there who's in the solar industry, who thought that an inverter manufacturer thought SMA installed the system?
• 11:01
  Joe Marhamati: Because it was five years ago, he couldn't remember who installed the solar system, right. So there's kind of three prongs to the problem. One is homeowners can't track their project over the three to six months. The second one, one is you're giving them a multitude of third party manufacturers apps that PTO. And a third is that years after the project's done, they could easily forget who installed it and not know where to send referrals. So Sunvoy solves all three of those by giving the homeowner a white labeled app that they live in.
• 11:31
  Joe Marhamati: And the minute they sign the contract to that 30 year life the system.
• 11:35
  Tim Montague: Yeah, it's it, I have to say this is super compelling. If it's a good experience, I haven't used the app. So I'm unbiased, so to speak, but conceptually, being able to remember who installed your solar array who took you on that journey, and you probably kick the tires on a couple of different installers before selecting the final installer.
• 12:01
  Tim Montague: And, you know, for installers, getting word of mouth referrals is the primary goal, right to grow your business, you want word of mouth, there's no better referral than word of mouth. And all the advertising in the world isn't going to measure up to word of mouth. It's like Tesla, right? They do zero advertising, and don't even have a marketing department now. And, of course, there are some frustrations with that, but but, you know, they really grew by creating a compelling product, and getting people to talk about it. And it works. So let's, you know, flip the table a little bit and talk about installers and what is their experience, pre Sunvoy posts Sunvoy, what do installers tell you that they like or that they'd like to see Sunvoy go after?
• 13:03
  Joe Marhamati: Well, it seems to mention marketing and referrals.
• 13:06
  Joe Marhamati: I'll give you one example of something I've seen several installers do with Sunvoy. So before they were in the platform, of course, at PTO, you get an activation email from the inverter manufacturer, which kind of parlays you into their app, their brand, their experience. And then just kind of as I referenced this, this fellow in the solar industry thinks SMA installed a system.
• 13:28
  Joe Marhamati: That's very common. Now what Sunbow installers are doing is they are bypassing the inverter manufacturer all together. So the homeowner never hears the name of the inverter manufacturer, they never know who the inverter manufacturer is any more than they know the racking system on the roof, or the module or the nuts and bolts of the system. Of course, there's probably 20 Different manufacturers sitting on your roof between all the pieces of equipment. And that sounds like it could be trivial, but it's actually not. Because now the homeowner doesn't have you know, both the installers name in their head and the manufacturer's name in their head, they only have the installers name in mind from the minute they sign the contract.
• 14:17
  Joe Marhamati: Probably 99.99% of systems in the United States today don't have that experience, homeowners really just know the manufacturers monitoring app for 30 years once the system PTOs.
• 14:31
  Joe Marhamati: So to not have that experience to only have the name of the solar installer in mind, and never hear the name of the inverter manufacturer that is going to increase brand equity that is going to increase referrals. And very much related to that. There are very few manufacturers monitoring apps that have a referral feature or fuel referral function in the app. There's one from one of the biggest manufacturers in the country. But it's not clear that the referral leads actually go to the solar installer. Because of course that manufacturer wants to monetize those leads.
• 15:07
  Joe Marhamati: Right. So now imagine you're owning that customer relationship. The homeowner is never hearing the name of the manufacturer and you're getting all of your own referral leads.
• 15:17
  Joe Marhamati: Of course, that's going to help your business. And by the way, this is something I've told the manufacturers every time I have the opportunity to get in front of them. I tell them you're going to sell more of your product. If the solar installer that's in the local community is owning that homeowner and not you
• 15:36
  Tim Montague: continue that line of thinking what why is that?
• 15:40
  Joe Marhamati: Well, for the most part, if if an installer is you know selling one manufacturer's product which is usually the case sometimes there's there's a second option but you Usually, there's one primary type of inverter that they're pushing, then, if they're growing as a referral based business, if their cost of acquisition is going down, if they're growing faster than they otherwise would have by owning that customer relationship, while they're gonna keep selling that inverter brand, they're just going to be selling it at higher volumes. You know, whereas if that lead is getting lost in an albatross of the manufacturers lead gen network, which in my experience is not usually very fine tuned, then it's not really helping either the manufacturer or the installer, or the customer who just trying to refer their friend.
• 17:26
  Tim Montague: I love that expression, the albatross of lead generation. Yeah, you know it, the solar industry is in chaos. To some extent, it's a bit of a gold rush. Very dynamic, fast growing, lots of ups and downs, markets are coming and going. It's so fascinating that you see, you know, what's going on in California with nem 3.0. And the chaos that has caused, and it's all good, in the end of the day, right? Like the energy transition is happening, there's so much money flowing into clean energy, because it generates a return for consumers. And for capitalists, these are companies, you know, making the equipment, building the solar installation companies, and everything in between, right, the service providers. So eventually, it will stabilize, right, we're still like the modern era. And solar, as you pointed out, really started in 2010. Even though the technology is now 70, plus years old, the modern solar era in America started in 2010. It started earlier in other places, because energy is very expensive in those places, and energy is cheap in the United States, and where we have a plethora of cheap fossil fuels primarily.
• 18:57
  Tim Montague: So, so Joe, tell us what else we need to be thinking about when it comes to creating a compelling customer experience?
• 19:13
  Joe Marhamati: Well, yeah, I think a good customer experience begins with good education. I think there's a lot of people who are intimidated by solar, because they don't understand it. They don't want to admit that they don't understand it.
• 19:30
  Joe Marhamati: And they're afraid that they're gonna get swindled. Because there's been a lot of bad press, unfortunately, resulting from the gold rush that you just referenced. So a good customer experience begins with customer education. On the front end. I think that there are a lot of companies out there that are doing great work in the mystifying solar, making it accessible to homeowners and business owners from the start.
• 19:58
  Joe Marhamati: So it doesn't seem like an enigma. So it's something that they can wrap their minds around as an investment that is not much different from a stock market investment. The mantra dips and solar in the sales team for many years. Was solar is an untaxed stock market return with no volatility. It's untaxed because it's savings on your utility bill. It's a stock market return when you look at the year over year savings with only incentives integrated. And there's no volatility because as long as the sun rises every morning, you're getting the same return day in day out year in year out. So it begins with good customer education. You know, follows on with a with a proposal and design that's trustworthy. And one of the features we built into Sunbow.
• 20:45
  Joe Marhamati: To help build that trust, is we have a module that shows what a solar installers fleet is performing at. So in other words, if you've promised a homeowner 10,000 kilowatt hours, and your fleet is actually overperforming, it'll show the homeowner that on sales call. So it's not just a random number, because this has been a really big issue with that Gold Rush is telling homeowners. Yeah, your production factor is going to be 1.9 in our some made up number based on sun hours that aren't real. Well now, Sunvoy, you can actually show a homeowner I'm not just promising you 10,000 kilowatt hours actually over performing relative to what we've promised homeowners. So good education, good sales process. And then once you've sold the project, really having it be totally unambiguous as to who you're interacting with, which is what Sunvoy is trying to do
• 21:43
  Tim Montague: Yeah, you touched a chord here. For me, installers who are listening to this, any business person listening to this must understand that you have to under promise and over deliver to your customer consistently, not once, not twice, forever. And trust is hard to win, and easy to lose.
• 22:12
  Tim Montague: And if we as an industry do not get much better collectively, at under promising and over delivering to consumers, we're going to continue to have so much shade cast on our industry so much fear, uncertainty and doubt out there in the social media sphere. And it's just not good for us as solar professionals, as a solar industry, much less society, it just creates friction, right?
• 22:41
  Tim Montague: When we create a bad customer experience, it creates friction, and slows down the energy transition, we can all get wealthier and have cleaner air and a safer, healthier future faster. Joe, if we'd created a winning customer experience, and it's not rocket science, right?
• 23:04
  Tim Montague: We have all the tools we need.
• 23:04
  Tim Montague: We just have to jigger says, deploy them. It's fascinating how how humans work. So why do you think that is Joe, that, that so many installers struggle to create a winning customer experience for their consumers?
• 23:26
  Joe Marhamati: Well, some of it is unfortunately, inherent in the larger policy ecosystem of the United States, right, we have 18,000 authorities having jurisdiction in this country.
• 23:38
  Joe Marhamati: And they all operate a little bit differently. Now, the DOE is created an amazing program to try to unify that it's a free or low very low cost program for H js to be able to have a clear uniform process for processing permits. But I think a lot of it unfortunately, is around that.
• 23:59
  Joe Marhamati: It just takes a long time to get through the process. I mean, I can speak to this personally.
• 24:06
  Joe Marhamati: Because operating in the Washington DC area in three different states with you know, five different utilities, and probably 20, different H J's, you know, we've had some H J's where there's same day permitting, you walk in, you walk out, or there's no permit really required at all. And then we've got some H J's where you've got to show up to the City Hall at 3pm on a Tuesday with a stack of bills to get your permit and give them a CD ROM, literally a hat HJ is asking to burn a CD ROM to get permits. So it's some of it is just inherent in the system. And you know, we'll there'll be an evolution there, and there'll be advocacy to streamline that and improve it. Some of it is just the cost of solar is too high.
• 24:50
  Joe Marhamati: And it's a result of that and tariffs on solar panels. And so it's less accessible to homeowners. And you know, I think if you're in Australia or Europe, where it's faster to go solar, it's probably a better customer experience, at least from a timeline perspective. So you know, being in a country where it just takes a long time to go solar, you want to have a customer who knows exactly what's going on during the process, but also after the process. So one thing that Sunvoy allows is for homeowners to submit service tickets, and for a solar installer to create an FAQ section so that if your envoy goes out or there's a communication issue, you can troubleshoot it yourself. But basically a good customer experience to me post sale is having no ambiguity with respect to the process. Knowing what's going on with your solar system is performing to expectations and then being able to submit service tickets and ask questions of your installer.
• 25:49
  Tim Montague: The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America. The maker of North America's number one three phase string inverter with over six gigawatts shipped in the US. The CPS America product lineup includes three phase string inverters ranging from 25 to 275 kW, their flagship inverter, the CPS 250 to 75 is designed to work with solar plants ranging from two megawatts to two gigawatts the to 50 to 75. pairs well, with CPS America's exceptional data communication controls and energy storage solutions go to chintpowersystems.com To find out more. Yeah, I guess there's three phases of a solar project.
• 26:33
  Tim Montague: There's, there's pre, during and post construction. You refer to solar up a project of an rel and the do e and this is a very important initiative to reduce the soft costs, the soft costs of, of solar are relatively high in the US compared to our brethren in Australia and Germany and other parts of Europe. And we there, you know, there's two components to that there's the h, j side. So we want H j's to adopt solar app, and integrate, ultimately, same day permitting right, like, get the turnaround faster, there's no reason to not make permitting relatively simple and fast. And then for installers to start using the app themselves, so it's about hand. But so before, during, and after construction, on the before side, you know, there is a lot of education required, there is a lot of kicking of tires that goes on, you mentioned the ability of a consumer to see into an installers portfolio and see how that portfolio is performing.
• 27:47
  Tim Montague: You would think that would be a very compelling sales tool. So what else? On the before side should installers know about?
• 27:57
  Joe Marhamati: Sunvoy, on the before sale side? Yeah, well, one thing we're very proud of that kind of spawned out of the original concept of a customer portal and a branded app that we didn't anticipate, is active monitoring. So to my knowledge, we're the only piece of software in the solar industry that can show a solar installer, all of their legacy sites. So everything that you've ever installed across every piece of hardware in the solar industry, and we've integrated with all of it in a single map view, so that you can go and troubleshoot systems that are offline or having production issues. And you don't have to log into five or 10, different inverter and battery platforms to see them all, which is incredibly difficult for service teams. And I know that firsthand, and from talking to solar installers, trying to triage all these systems across 10, different inverter platforms is very difficult. So why does that matter for the customer? Well, what we've seen a lot of solar installers do with Sunvoy, now that they have this fleet monitoring, active monitoring capability is cell active monitoring, to the homeowners and to the business owners that they're talking to. And again, that builds trust to say, we're going to look after your system after the sale after the install, so you don't have to think about it. And people love it. People are eager to buy active monitoring, because again, they're intimidated by solar. And they don't want to have to know whether their system is performing the spec.
• 29:28
  Joe Marhamati: Now, here's why it matters doubly. I actually met the solar installer, with the lowest cost of acquisition in the country, I believe. And I probably talked to 500 plus solar installers and I asked him, How did you do it?
• 29:44
  Joe Marhamati: How'd you get a cost of acquisition that's under $800.
• 29:47
  Joe Marhamati: This is a big company as a $20 million company. And he said, I put all my marketing dollars into a team of people that actively monitors our systems and reaches out to customers to tell them there's an issue that's been resolved before they find out about it. That's building trust and keeping trust for 30 years. And he's one of the only folks I know doing that. Before we built this act of monitoring the Sunvoy, it was inspired by him and his company.
• 30:13
  Joe Marhamati: Because I want every solar installer to be able to do that.
• 30:17
  Joe Marhamati: So that homeowners don't have to think about whether their system is performing to spec, they trust their installer to do it for
• 30:27
  Tim Montague: them. Who is that by the way?
• 30:30
  Joe Marhamati: It's a company called technicians for sustainability. In Tucson, Arizona, a company I have tremendous respect for that has great core values that has been built from the ground up as a referral based business does incredible work in Tucson and Arizona. And it's just a top notch company.,
• 30:52
  Tim Montague: Yeah when you think about being an installer, it's a tough business. But the playbook has been written on how to be a successful solar installation company. So if you don't have a successful solar installation company, go find those peers around the country.
• 31:09
  Tim Montague: And talk to me talk to Joe.
• 31:14
  Tim Montague: There's plenty of nodes in that network of people go to Amicus we talked about Amicus in the pre show. You're a huge fan of amicus which is a buying cooperative, and a group of companies that share best practices among one another.
• 31:32
  Tim Montague: What a concept, you know, it doesn't have to all be Doggy Dog competition. There can be coopetition and it floats all boats, and it's really good.
• 31:41
  Tim Montague: It's Gotta be good for your business. It's gonna be good for consumers total win win. Yeah, that's so cool about active monitoring and how you you stumbled upon that, in a way? It sounds hard to do, though, to integrate all these different, you know, inverters and communication systems under one roof. Is there it Tell, tell us about that experience some how has that been?
• 32:12
  Joe Marhamati: It's hard to do.
• 32:12
  Joe Marhamati: And it's definitely the secret sauce of Sunvoy, I have not seen a platform that can do it. And that's definitely our biggest differentiator is we integrate not just every piece of hardware in the solar industry, utility API's, we're integrating now.
• 32:30
  Joe Marhamati: We've integrated every CRM you can imagine, and a whole bunch of CRMs I had never heard of before, that are, you know, throughout the rest of the world, as well as proposal tools, were integrating or have integrated with all the proposal tools in the solar industry. So you can bring in your estimated production and compare it against your actuals from the inverter, which is where you get to that act of monitoring. It's it's a lot. And we have a team of people just dedicated to the integrity of those systems to make sure that they're working correctly, that they're playing well together. Because a lot of times API's change. And sometimes they they tell you about it, and sometimes they don't. So making sure that those are up to date that they're reliable is a lot of work. But the end result is that solar installers can be confident that their homeowners and their business owners or customers are getting reliable data within a branded experience in their own app.
• 33:31
  Tim Montague: And how many systems are you monitoring today, over
• 33:34
  Joe Marhamati: 150,000 systems throughout the not just the United States, we're also in Latin America and South America.
• 33:41
  Joe Marhamati: In Europe, we have a Spanish language version of Sunvoy German language version, and we're rolling out new language versions as the demand grows.
• 33:48
  Joe Marhamati: We're big in the UK now. And so it's it's a worldwide fleet.
• 33:57
  Tim Montague: And there's lots of growth ahead. I think there are over 3 million solar systems in the United States now. Right, so you could 10x And, and then double that. So let's talk about some of the other phases, though the during construction, or during project delivery, so to speak, and then post post cod, what are the features of your platform? And what to? What is the experience of consumers?
• 34:25
  Joe Marhamati: Well, I'll just give you one example. You know, we have the ability to text the customer at any time during the process. So we buy a phone number with a local area code for the solar installer, so that anyone in the company, from the salesperson to the project manager to the installers to the inspection coordinator can text the customer throughout that process and let them know, we're 60 minutes out from your house, we're on our way right now, or the inspection time has changed.
• 34:55
  Joe Marhamati: So this is customer communication aspect, where the solar installer through a branded email or through a local phone number can communicate with the homeowner directly. And it's totally unambiguous as to who it is. It's a local trusted company. It's from their email address, it's from their brand, it's from a local phone number.
• 35:14
  Joe Marhamati: So having that customer communication piece is huge.
• 35:17
  Joe Marhamati: Being able to get updates every single time, the project moves from one stage to the next, through email tax, the push notifications is huge. And you know, I think I might have mentioned that we're now providing the app in the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store. So previously, it had been just web enabled, which was fine. But there's a lot of people who they want to go download the ABC solar app from their Android phone or from their iPhone. And now they can do that. And what I love about that is that it says built by ABC solar, it doesn't say built by some third party developer.
• 35:59
  Joe Marhamati: There's no ambiguity as to who's actually owning that product and owning that customer relationship. So you know, I think the totality of that is the customer never has to question whether the solar installer is on top of the project. They never have to question what stage the projects at or whether their system is operating correctly. And you said it best. Trust is hard to get easy to lose. When you provide that kind of experience from the minute they sign the contract. That's the type of homeowner that's going to help you build a referral based business.
• 36:33
  Tim Montague: Yeah, absolutely.
• 36:33
  Tim Montague: It still boggles the mind. How few contractors I'm talking HVAC See roofing handyman, delivery people all all kinds of businesses in the logistics and and construction space are not using text messaging to communicate the status of a delivery or a project or a schedule. And it's a totally missed opportunity. I don't want my contractor to call me to let me know that they need to change the appointment. I want them to text me a link to take the action necessary. Right. Get it done. So in our last few minutes, Joe, let's talk about the post installation experience. And what are your challenges? I guess, you know, you're you're an ambitious software platform company, trying to convince solar installers all over the country, to onboard with you What challenges do you face?
• 37:38
  Joe Marhamati: Well, I think that service is, I think, is the biggest issue facing all solar installers. Right now, it's also the biggest opportunity. So unfortunately, in the last year, we've seen, you know, well, north of 100, companies go out of business, some very, very large companies as well. So I think the opportunity is there's a lot of orphaned systems out there that are looking for a home, there's a lot of homeowners that have sadly, been swindled or they've just been left without, you know, any provider, because their company has gone out of business. So there's a huge, essentially infinite opportunity for quality installers to build out a dedicated service division to help these orphan systems get up to speed, and be healthy, and produce. And so that's the upside. I think, you know, the downside, or the hard part for solar installers is getting their service division to be not even profitable, to just not lose money to break even, right, because for many, many years, what solar installers would do with service is nothing, just not pick up the phone. Or they would do it all for free. Right, they would just whatever it is, doesn't matter if it's related to workmanship or not, we're just going to do it out of the kindness of our hearts, which by the way, my company did that, too. I'm as guilty of it as anybody, because you want to build a strong brand, you want your customers to believe in you. And so you just do it out of the kindness of your heart as you're kind of getting your business going. But it's not sustainable. It's not. And it's not really good actually, for the solar industry, because it's dedicating free resources to something that could go somewhere else. And you know, if we're going to have to actively monitor millions and millions of systems, and act on behalf of the inverter manufacturer and do a bunch of work that's outside the scope of workmanship, it's going to bog solar installers down tremendously. And, you know, I think what solar installers are trying to figure out right now is how do we do Oh, NM, profitably, so that we can delight customers and they become referral generating machines for us, and we're not losing money on service. And there's a bunch of third party providers that are trying to come in and help solar installers with that, I'll give you my personal opinion. While I'm glad that they're there. And I'm all for innovation in the industry, I'm strongly believe solar installers should completely own their service, they should own extended warranties themselves, they should own act of monitoring themselves. So they're not their homeowners aren't calling a third party call center 3000 miles away. But that speaks to my larger philosophy of solar installers owning the entire experience, and not outsourcing it to somebody else. So I think that's the biggest challenge and opportunity post install right now.
• 40:34
  Tim Montague: Well said, I guess I'm not a solar installer. But if I were, and I'm putting all my installations on the Sunvoy platform, and there's a problem with the platform, then I'm then I'm kind of feeling potentially vulnerable. I guess the fallback would be well, I go back to the old system of using the the inverter monitoring system. Do you have any other I guess, peace of mind words for installers who are you know, thinking about this and potentially nervous about putting their eggs in the sundae basket?
• 41:16
  Joe Marhamati: Well, you know, all I can say is this product was built out of our lived experience as a solar installer and that is our secret weapon really is. We've been in your shoes. We know the struggles we know the challenges. You know, we know what it's like to wake up and have PTO issues of a construction company for many, many, many, many years. is. And so everything that we do is informed by that. And it's funny when I started selling this product, I thought I would just be selling Sunvoy all day. But no half of the time, I'm helping installers, find an HR professional who knows the solar industry or find someone who can map out their commercial sales process, or helping them capitalize their business or find a line of credit for their company or build out the rest of their tech stack. Because I've done all of that. And I can help with my lived experience and a lot of mistakes made, and some successes. And so, you know, I think that that is something that I would hope gives peace of mind to solar installers is really what gets me out of bed in the morning. It's not just selling software product is helping solar installers learn from my lived experience having been in their shoes. Well,
• 42:40
  Tim Montague: I think we'll leave it there, Joe, I would encourage our listeners to reach out to Joe on LinkedIn, and check out all of our content at cleanpowerhour.com. Give us a rating and review, please tell a friend about the show. Reach out to me on LinkedIn, connect with me at cleanpowerhour.com. And with that, Joe, how can our listeners find you? Well,
• 43:06
  Joe Marhamati: sunvoy.com, S U N V O Y is simple enough to go on the website and see if you qualify for participating and having your own app. You can find me on LinkedIn, I love talking with solar professionals all over the country and all over the world and learning from their experience. You can email me at Joe at Sunvoy.com If you just want to talk shop, I'd love to hear your experience. And I just want to thank you, Tim for for this opportunity. I'm a big fan of the show and the work that you do, and adding value in the solar industry every single day.
• 43:40
  Tim Montague: Thank you. I really appreciate that. And thank you for coming on the show. I'm Tim Montague, let's grow solar and storage. Take care. Hey, listeners. This is Tim, I want to give a shout out to all of you. I do this for you twice a week. Thank you for being here. Thank you for giving us your time. I really appreciate you and what you're all about. You are part and parcel of the energy transition, whether you're an energy professional today, or an aspiring energy professional. So thank you, I want to let you know that the Clean Power Hour has launched a listener survey.
• 44:21
  Tim Montague: And it would mean so much to me.
• 44:21
  Tim Montague: If you would go to cleanpowerhour.com. Click on the About Us link right there on the main navigation that takes you to the about page. And you'll see a big graphic listener survey, just click on that graphic and it takes just a couple of minutes. If you fill out the survey, I will send you a lovely baseball cap with our logo on it. The other thing I want our listeners to know is that this podcast is made possible by corporate sponsors.
• 44:59
  Tim Montague: We have chin power systems, the leading three phase string inverter manufacturer in North America. So check out CPS America. But we are very actively looking for additional support to make this show work.
• 45:12
  Tim Montague: And you see here our media kit.
• 45:18
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• 45:22
  Tim Montague: You know we're dropping two episodes a week. We have now over 320,000 downloads on YouTube. And we're getting about 45,000 downloads per month. So this is a great way to bring your brand to our listeners and our listeners are decision makers in clean energy. This includes projects executives, engineers, finance, project management, and many other professionals who are making decisions about and developing, designing, installing and making possible clean energy projects.
• 45:57
  Tim Montague: So check out cleanpowerhour.com both our listener survey on the about us and our media kit and become a sponsor today. Thank you so much. Let's go solar and storage