COVID-19 has affected us like nothing we’ve experienced in this lifetime. We’ve undergone social distancing, schools across the nation have closed, jobs have been lost, incomes affected, and so much more. As our nation takes steps to recover, it has become clear that we will be embracing a “new normal” in our daily lives.
I can't believe it's already May. The nation has been battling (and responding to) COVID-19 for months. Personally, we’ve had to alter our daily routines, our shopping habits, schooling and more. Professionally, we’ve had to furlough staff, develop new safety processes and procedures, and prepare for what our business will look like after a pandemic. Whew.
Over the last six weeks, we’ve been working hard to plan restarts and help our clients reimagine energy efficiency programs in this new normal. Over the course of my entire marketing and service operations career, I have never witnessed a time when consumer sentiment and voice of customer have been more important.
Every sprint is a bit chaotic on day one. Anxiety runs high. You are, after all, pulling together a cross-functional team of strangers to solve a tough problem, and you're only giving them five days to do it. Most of the sprint team members will have never been through the process, some will think they can get away without doing the homework you assigned (hahahaha), others will dig in their heels about replacing the existing baseline solution because it's their baby.
Your "decider" may email and call you twice that day and once the next morning to ask variations of, "Are you sure this is going OK, Danielle? Because it's OK if it's not. Just tell me! I'll help you fix it."
Four days later, you'll all be friends and you'll have a fully functional, user-tested prototype of something completely new. But it's hard to imagine on day one.
Although our offices continue to remain closed for now and face-to-face contact is still limited across the nation, the Franklin Energy team is finding reasons to enjoy the present. We take pride in the work we do, and we're committed to bringing services to your customers where they are right now: at home. That's why we're excited to announce we're now offering virtual energy audits.
We have a solution that's ready to deploy—right now—using the existing technology, products and field staff we're already using to support our clients. In fact, the solution is already live with some of our clients who wanted to make a quick pivot from in-field to virtual services. To participate, customers only need are a browser and a mobile device. They can choose between a phone-based appointment or a video chat walk-through, and a kit of products will be shipped directly to their door. This solution is available for residential or small commercial customers
When it comes to meeting your customers' needs and achieving savings in today's touchless world and beyond, we know time is of the essence. That's why we acted quickly to deploy this initial virtual energy audit solution, and it's also why we ramped up our Innovation Lab to focus on developing the next iteration of it. Any clients using our first-generation virtual audit solution will have the ability to upgrade to the second generation of the product as soon as it's available.
Let us help you navigate the new reality of the coronavirus. Visit our COVID-19 response web page to learn more about the touch-free program solutions you can implement now, and schedule a virtual energy audit demo with an expert to see our new tool in action.
