Imagine a parallel universe where, when you start a solar company, you’re handed a branded app—with your colors, logo, and brand—hosted on your website and available in the Apple and Google Play stores. In this universe, your customers are seamlessly connected from the moment they sign up for solar through the 30-year life of their system.

They know exactly what stage their project is at, and they never hear the name of the inverter manufacturer or juggle multiple apps because all their energy data is available in one place. Through your branded app, you receive service tickets and referrals. Customers can access their documents—including automatically delivered paid-in-full invoices for tax time—while your service team tracks all your sites in a single, centralized location.

Now, imagine this: your inverter manufacturer drops by the office and pitches an alternate solution. They’ll provide their app—branded with no trace of your company—which activates only after PTO (Permission to Operate).

It overwhelms customers with excessive data, tripling your service tickets, while funneling all referrals to the manufacturer for their own sales pipeline. Meanwhile, your customers are left in the dark during project development, constantly calling you for updates. Service tickets flood into five different people in your company through harried calls, emails, and text messages.

If we lived in that universe, it would be absurd to consider such a system as the standard. Yet, that is exactly the status quo in today’s solar industry.

So why do we continue to accept it when it’s not necessary? Let’s break it down.

The Current Status Quo: 10 Pain Points for Solar Installers and Customers

1. Lack of Project Transparency

When customers sign up for solar, they’re often told it will take 3–6 months (or longer, depending on complexity and the AHJ). However, they’re left in the dark about what stage their project is at, what’s coming next, and when it will be completed. If they want updates, they have to call the solar installer, ask for information, or wait and hope for sporadic updates via phone or email.

2. App Overload

Once the project is online, customers are often bombarded with multiple manufacturer apps that have no connection to the solar installer’s brand. These apps might include one for solar production, another for the home’s energy consumption, one for the battery, another for circuit-level consumption, one for the load control device, and yet another for the EV charger—and the list goes on. Does anyone really want 5+ apps just to monitor their home energy system?

3. Tax Chaos

At tax time, hundreds or even thousands of homeowners will reach out to request their Paid in Full invoice to claim their tax credit. Instead of having this document preloaded in a single, easily accessible location they were informed about at PTO, they’re left scrambling to track it down—adding unnecessary frustration for both the customer and the installer.

4. Disorganized Service Requests

Service tickets often arrive through multiple channels and to a variety of people—an email to the outside salesperson, a text message to the inside salesperson, a phone call to the project manager, a voicemail to the CEO, or even a fax to the service manager. This chaotic system creates inefficiencies and confusion, instead of training homeowners to submit service tickets in a single, centralized location.

5. Lost Referrals

Solar installers rely on referrals from their great work, but unfortunately, homeowners often forget who installed their system after a few years. With over 20 contractors having come through their door during the process and only the 5+ manufacturer apps left on their phone, homeowners mistakenly think the manufacturers were the ones who installed their system.

So when a neighbor asks for a recommendation, the installer’s name is lost in the shuffle.

6. Fragmented Reviews

Reviews are often written piecemeal, one at a time, on scattered platforms.

Instead, customers should be empowered to share their great experience on 7+ review sites from a single, centralized location, maximizing the reach and impact of their feedback.

7. Untracked Production Guarantees

Solar installers often offer a production guarantee but either fail to track it—hoping homeowners won’t notice—or spend countless hours manually compiling data in an SQL database.

8. Reactive Issue Management

Homeowners often discover issues with their solar system or battery before the installer does, leading to frustrated calls demanding to know why they weren’t notified about the problem.

9. Overwhelming Data

Homeowners receive excessive data from panel-level monitoring, leading to unnecessary service tickets that overwhelm and bog down the solar installer.

10. High Customer Acquisition Costs

Solar installers are grappling with rising customer acquisition costs because homeowners often have a poor experience and aren’t motivated to recommend the installer to friends or neighbors—if they even remember who installed the system in the first place.

Each of these consequences of the status quo comes with a:

• cost in time,
• marketing dollars,
• lost opportunities,
• poor morale of the solar installer’s team members,
• added service team troubleshooting,
• and higher costs of acquisition.

The Universe Where Sunvoy Exists

Now imagine if you have an all-in-one solution.

Sunvoy changes everything. This single, branded app transforms the solar customer experience and eliminates the inefficiencies that plague today’s industry. Here's how:

1. Project Tracking

Provide your customers with a branded app the moment they sign up for solar, giving them a single, seamless platform to track their project from start to finish. With real-time updates on each stage of the process, homeowners no longer need to call or email for information—they’re always informed about what’s happening and what’s coming next.

2. 30-Year Engagement

Ensure your customers stay connected through your branded app for the full 30-year life of their solar system. This app becomes their go-to hub, housing all their energy data in one convenient location—from solar production to energy consumption, battery performance, and more. Over time, this builds loyalty, strengthens your reputation, and makes it easier for them to recommend your services to friends and neighbors.

3. Tax Simplicity

Keep all of your customers' invoices conveniently stored in your branded app, so they always know where to go when tax time rolls around. Imagine this: your customers never have to dig through emails or call your office to hunt down their Paid in Full invoice at tax time. Instead, it’s right there in your app, ready and waiting.

This tax simplicity makes it easier for them, but is also one less thing for your team to worry about.

4. Streamlined Service Requests

Train your customers on submitting service tickets only in your app, nowhere else. This keeps everything organized in one place, cutting down on the chaos of emails, texts, and phone calls going to different people on your team.

5. Boosted Referrals

Give each customer their own personalized referral landing page with a custom URL they can easily share with friends, family, and neighbors. This site-specific page showcases their solar installation, highlights your company’s work, and makes it effortless for their network to reach out directly to you for referrals.

6. Centralized Reviews

Make it easy for your customers to share their great experience by giving them a single location where they can copy and paste their 5-star review onto 7+ review sites at once. No hassle, no jumping between platforms—just one streamlined process to spread the word about your business far and wide.

7. Production Guarantee Tracking

Offer a production guarantee you can confidently track and honor by monitoring actual performance versus estimates for all your solar systems in one centralized location. With this level of visibility, you can proactively ensure your systems are meeting expectations and quickly address any issues before customers even notice.

8. Proactive Monitoring

Take your customer experience to the next level by notifying homeowners of any issues with their system before they even notice. Better yet, solve the problem proactively so they don’t have to lift a finger.

Want to go a step further? Offer active monitoring as a premium service—something many customers will gladly pay extra for.

9. Data Simplification

Skip offering panel-level monitoring unless a customer specifically asks for it—it usually doesn’t add much value.

Instead, focus on providing the data that actually matters, like system-wide performance and energy savings, to keep things simple and clear for your customers. Overloading them with unnecessary details can lead to confusion, unnecessary service tickets, and more work for your team.

Remember, less is more when it comes to monitoring.

10. Lower Customer Acquisition Costs

Finally, cut your cost of acquisition by focusing on what really works: building a referral-based business. Instead of spending time and money chasing low-converting leads from social media ads and lead-gen companies, turn your happy customers into your best sales team. Referrals come with built-in trust, convert at a higher rate, and cost far less than cold leads.

Most importantly, they reinforce your reputation as a reliable, community-driven solar installer.

Final Thoughts

Sunvoy offers a solution to the unsustainable status quo in the solar industry with a single, branded app that transforms the customer experience. From tracking project stages in real time and centralizing all energy data, to simplifying service tickets, boosting referrals, and proactively monitoring system issues, Sunvoy streamlines every step of the solar journey.

Want to know more? Feel free to reach out.