What does it take to be considered the best solar PV retailer

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We’ve recently concluded our awards for the Best Rated Retailer and Top Volume Retailers. Our award ceremony had an outstanding response. Award winners have now all received their trophies, endorsement certificates and award badges.
 
The award ceremony and all this publicity has caused many retailers to wonder ‘what does it take to rank in the top retailers’?
 
There are two award categories: Best Rated Retailer and Top Volume Retailers
 

Best Rated Retailer

Customer ratings and reviews are the best way to independently ascertain which retailers are most-liked by their customers. For a long time, SunWiz has followed solar business ratings, and it was SunWiz who revealed that a 4.2-star rating is actually one of the lowest ratings solar businesses achieve.

Remarkably, 50% of solar businesses have a 5-star rating on Google, though most of those businesses have but a handful of reviews. Our analysis showed the more reviews you have, the greater chance you have of having one 4-star review that ruins your perfect 5-star rating. A few 5-star reviews doesn’t indicate a business has a reliable process that consistently delivers outstanding results. But when you’ve still got an outstanding average after receiving over 100 reviews – that says your business delivers great results time and time again.

We’ve also noticed that a company’s average rating on one platform could be remarkably different to their average rating on another platform. This is because many companies direct their happy customers to their preferred review site… but unhappy customers will grumble on whichever platform they choose. So, when establishing the best rated retailer, its important to collate reviews from multiple different platforms, and also to exclude companies who rely on one single platform for 90% of their reviews.

The next criteria was where to set the threshold. We found only 100 businesses (2.5% of the market) had collected more than 100 reviews spread reasonably across multiple sites, with an average rating higher than 4.8 stars. Therefore that is where we set the threshold of being eligible to be considered a best-rated retailer.

Within that segment, there were those that had the greatest number of reviews, who became eligible for a “Top 40 Most Popular Solar Retailer”. There were also those that had achieved a near-perfect score of above 4.95 stars – who became eligible for a “All Star” award.

So, that’s what it takes to become a Best Rated Retailer. You can find out more on our webpage dedicated to the best rated retailers.

Top Volume Retailer

These awards go to retailers that install the most volume in a year. Size isn’t necessarily an indication of greatness, though businesses as large as these are incredibly complex to run, so if those businesses consistently appear in the top ranks its an indication that they’re doing something right.
 
SunWiz uses STC records to identify leading retailers. Most leading retailers self-register STCs, and by virtue of this appear in SunWiz’s leaderboard. Plenty of retailers instead use STC agents to register STCs on their behalf – many of whom submit their STC records to SunWiz so they too appear on our leaderboard. Anyone is eligible to be ranked, they just need to provide their STC accreditation codes – no personal or private information gets shared.
 
Top-ranking retailers are identified at a national and state level, for residential and commercial solar. SunWiz also tracks LGC systems and invites leaders to submit their job records in order to be ranked in the top LGC companies.
The Top-ranked retailers for 2022 are listed here.
 
If you’re simply interested in knowing what it takes to become a top volume retailer, here’s an easy way to find out:
We’ll send you the volumes of the top 23 companies nationally and in each state, when you fill in this questionnaire.