Ralos Energy Project Overview

Ralos Energy Project Overview

SERVICE INNOVATION THROUGH 5 TOUCHPOINTS

5 Touchpoints: People, Place, Props, Partners & Processes

People

Service Design - Touchpoint No. 1

"(Sungevity) reconfigured the classic model of the consumer decision journey, immediately paring the consideration set to one brand, streamlining the evaluation phase, and delivering David directly into a loyalty loop, where he remains in a monogamous and open-ended engagement with the firm."

– Harvard Business Review, Competing on Customer Journeys

The Loyalty Loop

Case Study Review of Sungevity's Inbound Strategy

Based off of a Harvard Business Journal case study, I created a visual to explain Sungevity’s process from prospect to lead to customer. Then walked the Ralos Energy staff through the process.

Intrapreneurship

Encouraged individual creativity

Created a visual glossary from A to Z of marketing strategies. Socialized the opportunity for anyone to select 1 strategy or a pairing of strategies, and propose a plan of action to leadership, requesting the budget to run the campaign with a selected team.

Leadership

Facilitated a weekly meeting with the founders

Implemented a weekly leadership meeting to bring the 3 founders together for discussions around marketing and communication experiences. Discussed discovery findings, current market and customer decision journey opportunities and proposed a pivot from Ralos Solar to Ralos Sustainable Living.

Place

Service Design - Touchpoint No. 2

"Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context - a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment and an environment in a city plan."

– Eliel Saarinen, Article by Architectural Digest

Creative Space

Functional makeover from a conference room to a creative space

The most significant change was to the walls. On the east and west walls we painted 2 layers of magnetic paint and 2 layers of whiteboard paint. This allowed anyone who was interested in collaborating to sketch ideas and leave each other notes, as well as reuse magnets, instead of wasting tape.

Recycling

An opportunity to "walk our talk" as a sustainable living company

In preparation for a pivot from a solar energy company to a sustainable living company, we identified opportunities within the office for us to “walk our talk.” We put a recycling program in place as part of our efforts.

Reception

3 rows of drought tolerant plants, each row representing a founder and his division

We placed 1 small, drought tolerant plant for each person in a division on the division’s row, on the reception area’s main wall. As the division grows, so would its corresponding row of plants. For more on this innovative approach to designing around humans at work, read the Background Story on the Ralos Energy Reception Area. (Link also at the bottom of this page.)

Props

Service Design - Touchpoint No. 3

"Service Design follows an iterative design process... exploration, creation, reflection and implementation are a very basic approach to structure a complex design process that (itself) actually consists of many loops (or) iterations."

Trifold Pamphlets

Designed a trifold for each energy efficient offering – solar, HVAC, roofing, coating & windows.

Door Hangers

Designed door hangers for sales and field installation service notification.

Pitchbook

Designed a company brochure to illustrate the company’s mission, culture and offerings.

Uniform Shirts

Designed staff shirts personalized to identify the individual by last name, team and company.

Employee Badge

Designed a new employee badge for a more consistent employee uniform.

Business Cards

Designed new business cards on eco-friendly paper, in 2 themes to allow for individual preference.

Partners

Service Design - Touchpoint No. 4

"Consistently practicing these actions—questioning, observing, networking, and experimenting—triggers associational thinking to deliver new businesses, products, services, and/or processes."

Field Installation Partners

Association Skill

The installation team was comprised of three types of people. Ralos Energy employs one supervisor and a technician. The majority of the construction crews were employees of a separate company which two out of the three founders own together. And a small subset of them were freelanced contractors picked up for jobs that either required a special skill or were contracted to help during a busy week of installations. In a sense, Ralos Energy uses a 3rd party for its installations.

The average customer installation journey took several interactions over four to six months, which created plenty of opportunities for customer feedback.

After implementing the Door Hanger campaigns for the sales offerings, it was easy to associate the Door Hanger as a solution to help with some of the customer feedback which centered around lack of field crew communication. I designed a Door Hanger that the installation crews could leave behind. This accomplished two goals – validated that they had been at the house and communicated the next step in their installation journey.

Operational Partners

Networking Skill

When the CFO/COO expressed a need for help in organizing his office, I reached out to my network and found someone who was exquisite in converting a paper filled office into digital storage. She digitally cataloged Ralos Energy, and the CFO’s last 4 businesses worth of paper that collectively created what was once a cave of boxes and overflowing filing cabinets.

This relief allowed him to think about more pressing business like moving the company to an automated payment system, so I reached out to my network again and found someone who would hand off sound advise on the process of reviewing payroll vendors. Roughly 6 weeks later Ralos Energy was up and running with employee direct deposit and company insurance through Paychex.

Processes

Service Design - Touchpoint No. 5

"The designer tends to approach data from a completely different angle. They will intuitively think about the end user and how real people can benefit from the data... Designers know how to take complex or disparate information and make it tangible, understandable, and importantly, more human."

HubSpot CRM

Activity tracking across the sales funnel

Conducted a comparison of CRM features and chose HubSpot for their CRM, Inbound Marketing and Advanced Sales Reporting. Implemented their CRM which made it easy to organize contracts, track and grow sales pipelines. Performed initial sales staff training and managed data entry of prior 18 months of sales information.

Zapier

HubSpot Integration with Smartsheets through Zapier

Used Zapier to connect apps and automate the conversation between field sales and office support. Zapier moves information between web apps automatically, so we could focus on creating efficient workflows and staff training.

PandaDoc

Moved from manual to digital contract process

Implemented PandaDoc which allowed field staff to create and customize a contract in realtime, digitally route it for signature and  track the signing process.  PandaDoc saved employees time as contracts no longer needed to be printed, driven to the customer and then driven back into the office.

entryway-wall_for-webpage2

Background on the Ralos Energy Reception Area

In 2016, I worked with Ralos Energy, which is a solar start-up in Chatsworth, CA. During discovery on one of our projects, I ran across an article that really opened my eyes as a consumer to the positive impact that solar energy has, beyond saving the homeowner money on their electrical bill…

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