How a UK clean energy brand sparks sales using Zapier and AI

Switching to renewable energy can moderate some of the worst effects of climate change. But with so much misinformation and "greenwashing" out there, it's hard enough trying to reduce waste as a consumer.

That's why egg is on a mission to make it easier for people to switch to renewable energy. They offer clean energy solutions like solar panels, electric vehicle (EV) chargers, and battery storage for homes and businesses across the United Kingdom.

Though the renewable energy market is growing, it's still confusing for the average consumer to navigate. So egg's sales teams rely on deep prospect and competitor research to offer the right solutions and ultimately, close that sale. 

"They're looking at energy usage, finding [the home or business] on Google Maps, maybe reading some of the news to build that context," says Usman Mahomed, Head of Product at egg. 

But the team was spending hours researching each prospect—and that really hurt their sales efficiency. If they were going to advance the shift to cleaner energy, they'd need to maximize their time.

How egg cracked the sales efficiency conundrum

Like many companies, egg is navigating two competing viewpoints on AI use.

"The non-technical population in our company is like, 'Let it loose on everything,'" says Usman. "In the technical population of our company, we're a lot more apprehensive about letting an LLM [large language model] speak to customers."

Usman was already using Zapier for automated workflows but hadn't delved further. One day, he stumbled upon a video of Zapier Central doing the exact task his sales teams were spending hours on.

"I looked at that video and I said, 'Hmm, I think Central can do that in like a minute.'"

Usman saw a golden opportunity to solve his team's sales challenges, bridge his company's AI divide, and help people switch to renewable energy. 

Jump ahead:

• Pull up-to-date research on prospects and competitors

• Plug the gaps in existing customer data

• Scale outreach and prospect insights

Pull up-to-date research on prospects and competitors

Usman dove right into Central and started tinkering. He soon discovered all the ingredients he needed to create a personal sales research assistant.

"The best thing about [Zapier Central] is it's in essence an [AI] agent, not a fixed LLM," Usman says. "Because [Central] can do those Google searches, we're actually able to find live information we can rely on, which is just incredible." 

Usman rolled out his Central assistant to egg's entire business-to-business (B2B) sales team, and when the technical sales team heard about it, they too wanted in.  

"Everyone's using it," he says. "It's taking them less than five minutes [to do] what used to take them three hours." 

That original Central assistant started hatching other ideas around the company. 

Egg's Head of Technical Sales approached Usman with his own request: a Central assistant that could find EV chargers in the market that met a set number of requirements. 

Usman quickly spun up another assistant: When the Head of Technical Sales provides the use case or product requirements, Central returns a formatted table with a list of chargers, relevant information, and product links. 

"And then I went crazy with [Central]," Usman laughs. 

Plug the gaps in existing customer data 

Customer data is the backbone of any sales or marketing strategy, but egg was missing critical industry information necessary to maintain a steady flow of new leads. 

"We were literally paying someone on contract to look up this information for all of our customers," says Usman. 

Since Central can also complete tasks in the background, he easily whipped up another assistant to fill in the data holes. 

Here's how he set it up: 

• Create a customer list as a data source: Central can use live data sources like Google Sheets to complete tasks. Instead of creating the spreadsheet from scratch, Usman used HubSpot's built-in Google Sheet integration to automatically populate his data source. 

• Add the data source to Central: Once Usman added his customer list, Zapier syncs it regularly, so his Central assistant is working with the latest info.

• Tell the Central assistant what to do: Usman created a behavior, instructing the assistant to find customers with missing industry details, search for the info, then update the Google Sheet with the new details. 

Now, Central does the work in just five minutes—and egg no longer needs to pay a contractor. 

Scale outreach and prospect insights

With Central providing the additional prospect insights, egg had all the ingredients necessary to send personalized outreach emails to new leads. 

But internally, the diverging perspectives on AI came to roost. 

"Our non-technical population want to just throw it to ChatGPT, off it goes. We're not so keen," says Usman. 

Instead of trusting AI entirely with email writing, the team combined Zaps with Zapier Tables to automate the process and minimize risk with a human review step. 

Here are a few of the workflows they created:

• Build a list of outreach-ready leads: "When we upload a lead, it pulls in all that context from Central and populates a Zapier table," Usman says.  

• Draft outreach emails with just a button click: Referencing the record data in that same table, this Zap uses ChatGPT to write an email. Then, it creates a draft email in Microsoft Outlook. That way, the team can review the drafted email and make any changes before sending.

• Analyze replies to email outreach: "When the email comes back, ChatGPT does a sentiment analysis," says Usman. "If it's a negative [sentiment], it populates a Zapier table and creates a a Slack notification. If it's positive, it goes into HubSpot." 

With this approach, egg can scale outreach to more people, finesse their sales and marketing, and ultimately help more people switch to cleaner energy sources. 

Sparking a sustainable future with AI

Democratizing clean energy is an ambitious undertaking—but by rolling out smarter sales processes with Zapier and AI, egg can charge ahead to bring clean energy to homes and businesses across the U.K.