SolarCleaningBossPro Blog — Quotes & Estimates

Working Form Responses: Turning Solar Cleaning Requests and Sign-Ups Into Clients

Website forms are only half the job. The other half is what happens when the requests come in. A list of unanswered requests is just a list of people who went to someone else. A list worked every day, at the same times, in the same way, is a steady flow of new customers.

One Place for Every Request

Sign-Up Forms With Pricing: Booking Solar Panel Cleaning Without a Phone Call and the request form article before it covered the two forms on your website. In SolarCleaningBossPro, both flow into Form Responses. That gives the office one list to work instead of an email inbox, a voicemail box and a stack of sticky notes.

Two Kinds of Responses

Each response is one of two kinds, and they get handled differently:

• Quote requests come from customers who want a price. They need an estimate.
• Sign-ups come from customers who chose a service, saw your pricing and signed up with a card captured. They need to become a client and get on the schedule.

Handle sign-ups first. Those customers have already said yes, and the faster they hear back, the better their first impression of your company.

Handling a Sign-Up

For each sign-up in Form Responses:

1. Check the address and panel count. Pull the address up on satellite view. Does the count look right? Is it really one story?
2. Check for duplicates. Is this an existing customer signing up again, or a second property for someone you already serve? One client can have many addresses.
3. Convert it. One click turns the sign-up into a client.
4. Set up the job. Enter the panel details on the job once (panel count, mount, stories, pitch, extras and access notes) and set it as one-time or recurring.
5. Schedule and confirm. Put it on a truck and a day, then send a short confirmation text.

Watch the services the customer picked, too. A sign-up for a one-story cleaning on a house that is clearly two stories needs the add-on before the first visit, and the customer should hear about it from you, not from the invoice. A quick text with the corrected price, sent before the job is scheduled, keeps the relationship clean from day one.

If something does not add up, like 12 panels entered on a roof that clearly has 30, text the customer before scheduling. Fixing it now is a friendly conversation. Fixing it on site is an awkward one.

Handling a Quote Request

For each quote request:

1. Acknowledge it quickly. A short text tells the customer a real person saw it.
2. Look at the roof. Satellite view first, then ask for photos or the install paperwork if needed.
3. Build the estimate from your service list. Per panel, minimum, story and steep-pitch add-ons, bird proofing, critter guards, inspection.
4. Send it the same day. The customer approves it online from a link.

The full quoting routine is in How to Quote a Solar Panel Cleaning Job, Step by Step.

A Daily Rhythm That Works

Form Responses works best on a schedule, not “whenever someone has a minute.” A rhythm many small companies use:

• Morning, before the first stop. Clear overnight sign-ups and acknowledge new requests.
• Midday. Send estimates for anything that came in during the morning.
• End of day. Catch anything new, and look for estimates that have not been answered.

For an owner-operator, that might be three ten-minute sessions in the truck between jobs. For a company with an office person, it is part of their daily routine. Either way, the list should be empty, or close to it, at the end of every day.

Who Owns the List

Give one person clear ownership of Form Responses each day. When “everyone” is responsible, requests sit because each person assumes another one got to it. Office user roles let you give a helper their own login, so you know who handled which request.

If you share the work, use two-way texting from the office rather than personal phones. The whole conversation stays with the customer's record, so anyone can pick it up later.

From Response to Regular Customer

Every response is a chance at more than one job. When you convert a sign-up or send an estimate, offer the plan: twice a year for most homes, yearly for customers who want less, quarterly for commercial arrays. Plans come due on the Waiting List on their own, so one well-handled response can become years of cleanings.

To see how Form Responses connects your website to estimates and the schedule, visit the solar cleaning estimate software page.