Case study · Solar energy

Live Oak Energy Systems

HubSpot service and revenue pipelines for a solar company

CRM AutomationHubSpotSales PipelineService Operations

At a glance

Client: Live Oak Energy Systems
Industry: Solar energy
Role: CRM design and automation
Stack: HubSpot · HubSpot Workflows · HubSpot API

Every call trackedonly qualified work becomes a deal

Project details

Live Oak Energy Systems repairs, maintains and installs solar systems, and much of its work starts with a phone call: a system that has stopped producing, an inverter error, monitoring that says the system is offline. We designed and built the company's HubSpot setup end to end, so every one of those calls is tracked from the moment it comes in to the moment the work is paid for.

Tickets for every inbound, deals for real work

The structure rests on one rule. Every inbound request, whether a call, a web form or an email to the company's inbox, becomes a ticket. Only work that has been qualified becomes a deal. That keeps the sales forecast honest: a missed call or a general question never sits in the revenue pipeline, but it is never lost either, because it stays a ticket until someone has dealt with it.

Two pipelines

Service Requests, the ticket pipeline, runs through eight stages: New Call, Callback Needed, Spoke With Customer, Needs Diagnosis, Scheduled, Awaiting Approval, Work Completed and Closed. It covers solar repair, detach and reset (taking panels off for roof work and putting them back), and general enquiries. Service Revenue, the deal pipeline, follows the money: Qualified Inquiry, Diagnosis Scheduled, Diagnosis Complete, Quote Sent, Approved / Deposit Received, Repair Scheduled, Job Complete, then Closed Won or Closed Lost. Solar Shield keeps a sales pipeline of its own.

The workflows

Inbound call — HubSpot logs the contact and creates a ticket at New Call
Missed call — the ticket moves to Callback Needed
No connection on the return call — the ticket stays at Callback Needed and a follow-up task is created to call the customer back
Wrong number — the ticket closes with Invalid Contact as the reason
Qualified call — once the team reaches the customer and qualifies the job, a deal is created at Qualified Inquiry with the issue type recorded
Meeting booked — the deal moves to Diagnosis Scheduled automatically

Reasons on every close

A closed ticket records why it closed: invalid contact, price or budget, chose a competitor, or no response. A lost deal cannot close without its reason either: price, no response, or not a fit. And only completed, paid work is marked Closed Won, so the won column in HubSpot is revenue the company has actually earned. The ticket stays tied to the service work throughout, moving to Work Completed and Closed as the deal moves to Job Complete and Closed Won.

What a new ticket carries

Name — the job type and the customer, such as Solar Repair followed by the customer's name
Pipeline — Service Requests
Stage — New Call
Source — Inbound Call
Priority — set when the ticket is created

Every call is tracked as a ticket from the first ring, and only qualified work enters the revenue pipeline, so the forecast counts real jobs and Closed Won means paid.

“[Axar7 Team] did outstanding work. [They] implemented a custom HubSpot workflow and API integration for us and delivered everything quickly and exactly as expected. Communication was excellent throughout the project, and [they were] extremely responsive when questions came up during testing. The solution works perfectly and was delivered on time. Highly recommend and would absolutely work with [them] again.”

Sydney F., Live Oak Energy Systems

What we'd build next

Next, we'd capture more at qualification (monitoring platform, inverter brand, urgency and system type), add a revenue-source field so repair, detach-and-reset and maintenance income can be reported separately for forecasting, give installation and battery work pipelines of their own, and connect Zuper for technician dispatch.