Solar electricity company, Sunrun, used Mixpanel to track data more accurately and to increase adoption of its mySunrun app.

With a mission to create a planet run by the sun, Sunrun makes solar simple for its 200K+ customers across the country. The vision for the mySunrun app was to give consumers an inside look into the uniquely opaque process of solar installation and generation. Where other installers relied on physical paperwork and left consumers wondering when technicians would arrive or what contractors might do to their roof, mySunrun provides real-time milestones for the installation process.

Wanting to create the most elegant experience for consumers to learn more about solar energy, Sunrun needed to get more accurate user analytics that all of its teams could use. The company also wanted to drive adoption of its mySunrun app and reduce call center volume to clear up some of its support team’s time.

Unifying Sunrun teams

To reduce the number of amicable disagreements in product and marketing meetings, and to improve the integrity of its measurements, Sunrun turned to user- and customer-focused analytics. “Aside from just the technology, one of the largest differentiators in Mixpanel is the customer success and experience team,” said Adam Smith, Digital Director at Sunrun. On top of that, Mixpanel’s security with customer data was a top priority, and Sunrun’s technical team found that Mixpanel met every industry standard.

Increasing app adoption

While the mySunrun app helps make customers’ lives easier, it also helps the company quantify user experiences by making interactions measurable. But, when mySunrun implemented Mixpanel, the team noticed that the percentage of customers using the mySunrun app was in the low single digits. As a result of this finding, Adam and the team decided to create an installation tracker to make onboarding as seamless and easy as possible. With the installation tracker, Sunrun tests and analyzes which metrics and milestones it exposes to consumers within the app. By giving customers a clear view of what they wanted to learn, the team drove adoption of the mySunrun app by over 50%.

Reducing call center volume

“We’re very different from other software, where teams worry about monthly active users,” said Adam. “We’re not trying to maximize the take rate or upsell.” Instead, the company focuses on metrics like inbound calls from new customers who aren’t quite understanding the service, which used to take up a considerable amount of the support team’s time. “We found that more proactive education provides more overall value. Better design leads to fewer inbound calls, which both helps the customer and saves the company a lot of money on customer service.”

“Changing the world for the better and creating a renewable future is what inspires me every day, and the only way we can do that is by using Mixpanel” said Adam. Having a very tight analytical understanding of what’s happening, why it’s happening, and how they can improve to create a better customer experience is how Sunrun will continue to move forward in their mission to create a more sustainable world.