Airbnb for the Sun

“One of the secrets to our success was being resolute in our vision,” said Dave Anderson, Complete Solar’s  CMO and co-founder. “Ten years ago, every residential solar company needed to bring together suppliers, installers, finance companies, salespeople and customer care.”  That required significant resources and diverse expertise. “Our vision was to be a platform and to provide a premier service by bringing all those different parties together.” Each partner can then focus on their particular area of expertise–providing huge customer benefits. “Today we are able to bring that vision to fruition.”

In its mission to drive solar adoption, customer experience has always been Complete Solar’s “special sauce.” They hired a staff of developers to create the platform, a set of software tools to manage partners and customers. This was unusual for a solar company. When it came to managing the service experience–actually delivering equipment and doing installation–“ to get the platform to do what we needed to do would take a lot of development,” related Anderson. “So, we did a build/buy analysis.” After reviewing a number of companies they decided to integrate with Arrivy.

“Arrivy’s core functionality–the ability to let our customers know who was coming, where they were coming from, sold us,” said Anderson. “Arrivy was the most differentiated offering, which made us more special.”

Complete Solar integrated Arrivy with their platform allowing them to automate customer communications, let customers see the crew’s approach on a map, and get detailed reports on metrics like on-time arrivals and job completions.

Anderson sees solar as an industry on the cusp of going “horizontal,” where every element of the value chain (suppliers, installers, customer care, etc) can exist as independent specialized entities. Complete Solar becomes the “glue” that binds these elements together and provides a unified interface/experience to the customer. Like Airbnb (a lodging provider with no inventory) or UBER (a transportation provider with no cars), Complete Solar is a platform that enables customers to adopt solar. 

In that sense, Arrivy is another piece of Complete Solar’s value chain. And, since we often describe Arrivy as “UBERizing the customer experience,” an appropriate one, as well. Said Anderson, “We’re happy with the way the partnership has worked, and customers really appreciate the functionality.”