Demand IQ: Digitizing solar sales and enhancing customer experiences with Solar API
About Demand IQ
Demand IQ's software-as-a-service product uses conversational AI to make going solar more affordable, transparent, and accessible. Their virtual solar consultant AI is designed for residential solar providers to make the solar installation decision effortless for homeowners—ultimately increasing sales with an automated customer acquisition process that simplifies the customer shopping experience.
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact usDemand IQ uses the Solar API to help solar companies provide online, accurate, real-time rooftop assessments to homeowners considering a transition to solar energy.
Google Maps Platform results:
- Gives online shoppers a personalized experience, allowing them to instantly view their home's solar value potential
- Reliable online data helps customers and installers determine whether a home qualifies for solar panels without home visits
- Provides clear visualization of customers' roofs, showing appropriate placement and optimal system size for solar panel installation
- Automates lead qualification, appointment booking, and utility data sharing, saving contractors, on average, 1.5 hours per appointment
- Increases website lead capture rate up to 2x, cutting customer acquisition costs up to 40%
Digitizes solar shopping to increase transparency and conversions
Did you know the Earth receives enough sunlight in one hour to meet the electricity needs of every human on the planet for an entire year? But if a homeowner is interested in using solar energy to power their home, where do they start? Like for most purchases, they hop online, but determining whether a home qualifies for a solar power system, what the cost versus savings will be, and getting quotes from installers can be complicated. That's what Demand IQ set out to simplify using geospatial data and conversational AI.
They created a virtual solar consultant that enables shoppers to easily get an accurate, transparent estimate when browsing a solar provider's website. After a homeowner enters their address and information regarding their current power usage, the consultant instantly calculates the number of solar panels needed, estimated price, and potential savings, along with a high-resolution visual display of their rooftop.
Seeing the imagery powered by Solar API is the critical starting point for shoppers considering a transition to solar energy because it helps them easily determine whether their roof qualifies for the installation of solar panels.
—Austin Rosenbaum , CEO, Demand IQDemand IQ offers this software-as-a-service product to solar providers who can simply install the no-code website plugin and choose between an AI chatbot or a click-flow experience to guide potential customers through their end-to-end process—from qualification to quoting, all the way to appointment booking for installation. This greatly lowers customer acquisition costs and improves efficiency by automating the sales process and eliminating the need for costly, preliminary onsite sales consultations, while also providing prospects with an interactive, enjoyable experience that builds trust.
"Our vision is to simplify the journey towards solar adoption for customers," says Austin Rosenbaum, CEO, Demand IQ. "So people can find the best way to transition to solar energy independently, without pressure, and through an instantly personalized online estimate without the need for verbal interaction with multiple potential providers."
Helping homeowners make educated decisions about solar energy
While building their solution, Demand IQ joined Google's Solar API pilot, which evolved from Project Sunroof, a Google initiative to help people estimate solar savings. The company aimed to tap into the expansive data, mapping, and computing resources of Solar API, eventually becoming one of the first customers of the Solar API from Google Maps Platform, a product developed to help solar providers create best-in-class proposals in minutes with extensive data coverage available in over 40 countries.
To qualify for solar, homeowners need enough viable roof space to support the amount of panels required to offset a home's energy demands. To determine this, it is critical to know how much sunlight each location on the roof gets. In addition to the area's cloud cover, this can be impacted by things such as trees, neighboring buildings, chimneys, or other obstructions casting shadows on the panels. To get an assessment of their roof, customers can enter their address on a solar provider's website using the seamless Demand IQ solution. Using Solar API data and insights, all of these factors are taken into account, along with a 3D modeling of the roof and all possible sun positions over the course of a year to determine the various solar panel arrays the roof can accommodate and the energy potential of each option. All of this information is then used to produce a comprehensive qualification report.
The Solar API integration furnishes the necessary data to instantly generate a rough solar estimate for any home, nationwide, with our software.
—Austin Rosenbaum , CEO, Demand IQ"Everything we're building is for customers to be able to self-serve in real-time. So it was a hard and fast requirement that at this stage of the shopping process, customers are able to receive a real-time assessment of their solar needs and costs. The Solar API is fantastic for that because it encompasses entire neighborhoods and entire regions of data," says Rosenbaum. "The integration furnishes the necessary data to instantly generate a rough solar estimate for any home, nationwide, with our software. We marry this Solar API data with provider-specific and other proprietary data to tailor the outputs, ensuring they accurately reflect the offerings of the solar company."
Additionally, the Solar API powers Demand IQ's solar irradiance map, which allows customers to see a heatmap of their roof, showing which areas are shady and sunny and where solar panels should be installed, building confidence and trust throughout the customer journey. "Seeing the imagery powered by Solar API is the critical starting point for shoppers considering a transition to solar energy because it helps them easily determine whether their roof qualifies for the installation of solar panels," explains Rosenbaum.
Shedding light on the bottom line
Another consideration when transitioning to solar energy, is whether the investment is financially worth it. Solar providers using Demand IQ's digital shopping experience, can effortlessly help customers analyze whether investing in solar panels makes financial sense for them in the short and long term, based on their roof's potential to produce energy, government incentives, their current consumption and rates, and future energy needs.
"Our solution creates scenario analysis for customers to demonstrate how many panels they truly need, and how many panels actually fit on their roof. It also puts into context the equipment pricing and financing from the solar provider whose website the customer is browsing, so they can get a rough savings estimate before committing to the next steps," says Rosenbaum.
Bolstering the efficiency of solar providers
Demand IQ also offers a field marketing application that helps solar companies streamline data capture during in-person interactions with potential customers, such as at events, in-store, or while canvassing. Using tablets and kiosks to access Demand IQ's solution, solar contractors use it to explain the value of solar to customers more effectively. The Solar API helps them to provide solar qualification reports for customers more transparently, and on the spot.
"This is designed to bolster the efficiency of field sales representatives," explains Rosenbaum. "Whether in the field or online, we enable solar providers to harness the power of the Solar API to increase trust and interest from the potential customer. With our SaaS offer, solar providers can get started in days or weeks instead of months, quarters, or even years of engineering and product development."
To support the transition to solar energy, we need to help customers make informed decisions, and we need to help solar providers to answer their questions with up-to-date, accurate data. With Demand IQ and the power of data from the Solar API, we now do that in real-time.
—Austin Rosenbaum , CEO, Demand IQCrucially, their solutions integrate with the solar providers' websites, CRMs, and other digital tools that help them streamline and optimize workflows. For example, because many customer journeys start online, Demand IQ's solution has shown to nearly double conversion rate volumes, improving the ROI of their clients' ad engine.
"Many of our clients leverage Google Ads, which is one of the primary ways customers discover solar contractors," says Rosenbaum. "Using our software at that early discovery stage, the customer feels like they're in the driver's seat and are more likely to fill out the contractor's forms or take the next step. The result is up to two times more opportunities generated from our solution compared to standard 'Contact Us' forms."
The ability to access this information isn't just helpful for prospective clients, it also helps solar providers gather information without costly and time-consuming home visits. Knowing whether a home qualifies for solar and its solar potential before moving forward, helps them to focus on homeowners who will benefit the most and therefore be more likely to result in a sale. They can also create more accurate proposals in a fraction of the time it used to take, giving them an advantage over installers who are still calculating proposals manually.
Bringing the vision to life with the Solar API
The solutions developed by Demand IQ create a frictionless experience from a previously disjointed shopping process. "With more transparency into what their investment will look like, how it works, how much it will cost, and how much energy they will be able to produce from it, people can more confidently transition to solar," Rosenbaum explains.
The number one question people ask when considering the transition to solar is—how much will it cost me or how much will it save me? Traditionally, those were also the most difficult questions for solar providers to answer, because they lacked information for an accurate assessment. "Those days are over," he concludes, "to support the transition to solar energy, we need to help customers make informed decisions, and we need to help solar providers answer their questions with up-to-date, accurate data. With the comprehensive data from the Solar API, we now do that in real-time."
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About Demand IQ
Demand IQ's software-as-a-service product uses conversational AI to make going solar more affordable, transparent, and accessible. Their virtual solar consultant AI is designed for residential solar providers to make the solar installation decision effortless for homeowners—ultimately increasing sales with an automated customer acquisition process that simplifies the customer shopping experience.