In the latest in our series, Andrew Gaved talks about removing the friction points for the installer with Hemal Morjaria, Chief Commercial Officer at City Plumbing:
You can’t sit in an interview with Hemal Morjaria and not be affected by his enthusiasm for the business of renewables. As he points out, there is a lot to be excited about: “In an industry that’s evolving, working for a merchant which is absolutely at the forefront of that positive change is exciting. We want to make a difference in a market that hasn’t had real change for years and if we can make the heat pump installation process more streamlined and more efficient, which means we can reduce the cost of the install from start to finish, then that will make the adoption of heat pumps even easier.”
The experience of InstallerSHOW for Hemal was that the installers are really starting to get to grips with this renewables world: “I think there’s definitely change coming, because I’ve had installers come and talk to me about solar PV at the show, when all they’ve done is boilers all their lives…Over the last five years, solar has gone from 0% of our business to 7-8%, so we are starting to see it really grow within our current customer base. We are also seeing a lot of interest in battery storage, both with solar PV and also in a rising number of battery-only installs – especially where the customer hasn’t got the right roof type or elevation for solar panels to benefit from night-time tariffs.”
The aim, he says, is to avoid installers having to go to a different merchant or speak to a different person, get terms in a different business etc, for the range of products.
“Everything the installer needs, we can help, support and guide – whether it is a boiler, a bathroom, a renewables product, or a shower install. Whereas you might traditionally associate City Plumbing with just getting a consumer unit or an isolator or a fan, when we do your design, we can quote you for everything you need.”
He adds that this will have one product code: “Previously it would have been down to you to find the boiler; to find the CO alarm; to find the cables that you need. We’re now making that journey seamless online with our all-in-one packs.”
However, the business has learned that with that breadth of portfolio, it is important not to lose sight of the installer’s bottom line – and visible consistent pricing is what will give the installer confidence to make City Plumbing their one-stop shop, he says:
“Tradespeople also are consumers, and therefore the way they are shopping and their expectations of a merchant are changing. Companies like Amazon have changed expectations, and therefore the merchant relationship with our customers is evolving.”
The fact that Hemal used to work for Amazon informs his respect for their business model and their ability to adapt quickly. But he points out that the way that a merchant like City Plumbing can add real value to the installer is the addition of trade-specific expertise and trained branch staff.
Providing knowledge in depth
That combination of branch footprint and the people within them is the key weapon in City Plumbing’s armoury, he believes: “I don’t think any merchant across the UK has the expertise across all product categories that we have. We’ve trained; we’ve educated; we’ve upskilled our branch colleagues to have that initial conversation with an installer about heat pumps; about solar PV; about electrical. If it then gets into more detailed conversation, we can give them a direct line into our renewables team, or our electrical or bathroom teams.”
That expertise comes into its own in the world of the installer, where every job can be different, he adds, particularly in the developing renewables arena: “An installer has access through our branch network to expertise and solutions to navigate complex installs.”
The challenge for the merchant is of course to give the website that balance of a wide product portfolio and the in-depth knowledge to navigate it. This, says Hemal, is where the development of AI tools are also helping City Plumbing– enabling the website to be a well-stocked source of knowledge.
“For example, if we put a product on our website, we’ll get the manufacturer’s data sheet at the outset, which is fine, but we know it doesn’t actually answer all the detailed questions that an installer has. What’s the size of the fan, for instance? How deep is it? All that sort of stuff will be in the technical drawings, but not in the description.
We’re using AI to enhance our product descriptions, reviewed by a human to bring together all the data an installer might need. The feedback we’re getting on that has been great – in fact, our colleagues are using it, as well as the customer.”
It seems only a matter of time then, before we will be seeing a ‘virtual online assistant’ added to the City Plumbing roster of knowledgeable tools and support . Watch this space.
Seizing the renewables opportunity
With this knowledge at hand, the challenge for the merchant team is to give confidence to the homeowners in a climate where negative publicity still gets headlines. But that confidence, he notes, is becoming less around paying for the heat pump itself, than navigating everything that comes with it: “If you were to do a boiler quote online now, you’re looking at something like £3500-£4,000 pounds for a like-for-like boiler switch – and a heat pump with the BUS grant is probably around the same sort of price, so now it’s pretty much parity. However, the crux is that a boiler install is generally half a day to a day, whereas a typical heat pump install is three days. And with that there is a lot of disruption, a lot of change.”
The challenge then, he says, is to turn the homeowner’s perception around: “Let’s look at it as only three days in someone’s life. These are people who will have a bathroom installed and they might be five days without a shower or whatever, but they have learned to cope with that. So how do you start to persuade the homeowner? That’s where the installer comes in – I don’t think loads of installers yet will say ‘the boiler needs replacing so here’s an opportunity for you to have a heat pump.’”
The point, Hemal stresses, is that many installers won’t make this suggestion, even though many now understand the products, and get the advantages: “The upsell opportunity has just not been grasped yet, but also the pull from the customer is not there. So unlocking that is the challenge.”
He also raises the issue of the bureaucracy that comes alongside heat pump installation. “The questions like ‘How do I navigate the MCS and get grant funding?’ I think most installers can cope with the actual installation, but it’s areas like financing and cashflow that I don’t think we talk about enough.”
He adds that while City Plumbing’s umbrella scheme can answer such questions, the real question is how to educate its installer customers to do that themselves: “To unlock the market, we need to make it easier for installers, as well as homeowners. Empowering installers is key to increasing adoption.”
In keeping with a number of leaders we have interviewed, consistency and stability are top of the list for Hemal when it comes to ‘What would you request from the government?’
“Understanding what’s coming and when it’s coming is really important because we invested early in renewables,” he says, “The business, as you can imagine, is asking what the future will look like, whether that is regarding the Warm Homes Plan or Building Regulations or the like. We are a fairly agile organisation when it comes to adapting to policy, but the wider market isn’t as flexible.”
The logistics challenge
Heat pumps have brought another challenge for the industry and the merchant – logistics. Hemal acknowledges the challenge, but he is upbeat about how to navigate it: “We could fit probably three or four boiler installs on one vehicle and thus it’s three or four deliveries in one trip, whereas now it’s effectively one heat pump per delivery. If you need to add a new cylinder and a new set of rads, that might be two trips and therefore that becomes costly.”
However, he adds, logistics is an area where City Plumbing is setting the pace: “We have timed deliveries, and we will communicate with the installer, such as making sure there’s a safe place to deliver to if the installer isn’t there. We own our own vehicles and we have our own delivery drivers. So we can be more agile in the way we operate.”
Hemal’s concluding message for the installer focuses on helping them improve efficiency: “I’d say ‘Come and talk to us. We will absolutely support you on your renewables journey – and we can make your install process so much more efficient.’ If we can make an installer’s life so much simpler and get two installs done in a week, that immediately doubles the number of jobs for the installer.”
It is clear that efficiency is going to be a key area, for City Plumbing and Hemal summarises the challenge – and the ambition: “We won’t get renewables adoption high enough unless we have parity with boilers, and so we need to take away the friction points. Can we bring that install process down from three days down to one day by being a more efficient and effective distributor? I don’t see why it can’t happen!”
Contributors
Andrew Gaved (author)
Andrew is a seasoned journalist with 25 years’ experience in heating, cooling and energy.
