AI Follow-Up Automation for Solar Installers in Austin, TX

Selling solar to a city of comparison shoppers

Austin produces a particular kind of solar customer. A lot of homeowners here work in software, semiconductors, state government or at the university, and they read a solar proposal the way they would review a spec: line by line, with questions in the margin. Holding several proposals at once and taking weeks to decide is normal behavior here, not a warning sign.

For an installer, that means the expensive part of the sale is rarely the first appointment. It is the quiet stretch afterward, when a well-designed proposal sits unopened in an inbox while a competing rep is the one who checked in. A deal can be lost in that silence without anyone ever saying no.

AI follow-up automation covers exactly that stretch, and the ones after it. It does not answer general website questions or clean up your CRM records; other tools handle those jobs. Its work is the scheduled, rule-driven sequence of touches that begins after the first conversation: proposal check-ins, paperwork reminders, milestone updates after the contract, review and referral requests once the system is running, and careful reactivation of proposals that stalled. EVOTECH designs each sequence around your sales process, writes it in your company’s voice and connects it to the software your team already uses.

One metro, three utility rulebooks

Ask three Austin-area homeowners who their electric utility is and you may hear three different answers, and each answer changes what the follow-up has to chase. Inside its service area, Austin Energy is the city-owned utility; customers there do not shop for a retail provider, and the utility runs its own residential solar programs with their own eligibility steps and paperwork. Much of the Hill Country edge west and south of the city is served by Pedernales Electric Cooperative, which has its own interconnection process for members. Parts of the northern suburbs sit in Oncor’s delivery territory, where the homeowner also picks a retail electric provider, and that provider’s plan decides how exported power is credited.

The automation captures the utility at the first touch, from the address or an uploaded bill, and routes the contact into the matching branch. When the utility is still unknown, the first follow-up simply asks for a photo of the bill’s first page rather than guessing.

Because every branch pulls from a template your team approved, a policy change is a one-place edit. Update the template, and every contact in that branch receives the corrected wording from then on.

The three weeks after the proposal link goes out

Most of the value sits in a short, well-built sequence after the proposal is delivered. Here is a representative Austin sequence; EVOTECH adjusts the timing and channels to match how your reps actually sell.

1. Day 0. The proposal link arrives with the rep’s name and a two-line summary of what the homeowner is looking at: system size, the equipment line quoted and whether a battery is included.
2. Day 2. If your proposal platform reports that the link has not been opened, a short resend goes out. If it has been opened, this step is skipped.
3. Day 4. A message built from the questions Austin buyers raise at this stage, linking to your pages on production monitoring, workmanship warranty and battery options.
4. Day 8. No automated text. The system creates a call task for the rep instead, because at this point a human voice usually matters more than another message.
5. Day 14. A neutral guide to lining proposals up side by side: panel count, estimated annual production, inverter type, warranty terms and who services the system afterward. It never criticizes another installer.
6. Day 21. A polite close-the-loop question with three options: keep this proposal open, pause it for a few months, or close it out.

Every step checks stop conditions first. A reply, a booked call, a signed contract, an opt-out or a rep marking the deal lost ends the sequence immediately. Replies are sorted before anyone sees them: a technical question goes to the rep with the proposal attached; “we went with another company” closes the deal and asks one optional question about why; “check back after summer” pauses the contact and sets a re-entry date; anything about financing or credit goes straight to a person, never to a template.

Keeping signed customers from drifting before install

A signed solar contract in the Austin area can wait weeks or months before the system produces power. Design and engineering, the permit, an HOA’s architectural review, the utility’s interconnection approval, installation, inspection and permission to operate each take their own time, and homeowners who hear nothing during that gap start having second thoughts.

The follow-up automation listens for stage changes in your CRM or sales platform, whether that is Enerflo, Salesforce, HubSpot or something else, and sends a short, plain-language update at each milestone. It also chases the documents that stall projects: a signature on the HOA application, the homeowner’s approval on the interconnection form, a clear photo of the main electrical panel. Texas law generally prevents HOAs from banning solar outright while letting them set certain placement rules, so the HOA step is usually a matter of paperwork and patience, which is exactly what reminders are good at.

Two rules matter more than the rest here. First, when a contract was signed in the home, messages during the cancellation period are purely informational; there is no automated pitch aimed at keeping the deal. Second, any message that mentions cancelling is flagged to a person right away with the full thread, and the automation stops talking. It also never announces an install or inspection date that your team has not entered and confirmed.

Asking for the review when the system is actually producing

A common mistake is sending the review request on installation day. The panels are on the roof, but the system usually cannot run until the utility grants permission to operate, and a customer asked to rate a system that is not producing may write exactly that.

The automation waits for the permission-to-operate stage and then a set number of days of production, confirmed by a CRM stage or a flag from your monitoring workflow. Before it sends anything, it checks the recent conversation for complaints or open service tickets. If it finds one, the review request is held and a task goes to your office instead. Customers who are clearly happy get a single request with a direct link to your Google Business Profile, followed by one reminder at most.

Referrals come next, and only after the review. In neighborhoods where panels are visible from the street, neighbors ask about them. The referral message explains your program in the terms your team approved, and it goes out once rather than as a drip.

Waking up old proposals without replaying old math

Every Austin installer carries a long list of proposals that ended in “not right now.” Some of those homeowners will be ready later, but reactivating them carelessly does damage. The rule EVOTECH builds in: an old proposal’s numbers are never resent. Equipment prices and utility program terms move, and the federal incentive rules that many older residential proposals relied on were changed in 2025, so an old quote’s assumptions may simply be wrong now. A reactivation message offers a fresh design, and the rep regenerates the proposal before any figure reaches the homeowner.

Reactivation is triggered by events that make a new conversation reasonable. The first summer bills of July and August are the obvious one in Central Texas. A new battery product your company now installs is another, especially since the February 2021 winter storm turned backup power into a standing question for many local households. A contact who told you “after we finish the remodel” hears from you when that date arrives. Each contact is capped at a small number of reactivation messages per year, and anyone who does not respond drops out quietly.

Scoping, building and tuning the sequences remotely

EVOTECH builds and supports these systems remotely; our US-based team works from the Houston area and meets with your staff by video and phone. A typical project runs through these steps:

• Map the pipeline. We document your stages from consultation to permission to operate and mark every point where a homeowner waits or a document stalls.
• Write the message library. Every template is drafted in your voice, in English and Spanish where you need both, and nothing goes live until your team approves it.
• Set up consent and compliance. Texting consent is captured and stored, opt-outs take effect immediately, quiet hours are enforced, and business texting is registered with the carriers through the standard 10DLC process. Your counsel sets the policy; the software enforces it.
• Connect the systems. The automation reads stages from your CRM or sales platform and writes activity back, so reps see every automated touch on the contact.
• Test, launch, tune. We run every branch against internal test contacts, launch, then review reply reasons and stop points with you each month.

Central Texas has a large Spanish-speaking population, so bilingual templates are worth scoping from the start rather than bolting on later. You can read how we approach AI automation more broadly and how follow-up automation for Texas contractors works across trades, or call (832) 359-2425 for a free consultation. Scope and price are set in a fixed written quote before any work begins.

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