About
Wiltshire Energy is a 25-person plumbing, heating and renewables company, starting as a one-man band five years ago. The business covers heat pumps, solar panels and battery storage, with four heat pump installation teams and dedicated electrical teams for solar work.
In the last year, Wiltshire Energy's annual turnover has grown 45%. The team went from managing three surveys a week to three a day. Zac credits Spruce as a driving factor behind that growth.
"Since we've used Spruce, our revenue has grown 45%. Spruce has been a driving factor behind this growth." — Zac, Renewable Energy Assessor
The Challenge
Wiltshire Energy had been growing steadily before Spruce, but processes behind the scenes weren't keeping up. Surveys were done with freely available software and manual calculations - walking around properties with a tape measure, sketching rooms by hand, then spending between two to three days checking and rechecking figures with a calculator.
Risk of errors in their process
These manual processes also had a higher chance of error. With longhand calculations, a wrong figure could mean a heat pump ended up oversized or undersized. This meant that for a large property, a survey could take four hours, and Zac would still need to go back through and check the numbers.
"The previous process meant that there was a risk there would be a manual error, resulting in the the heat pump being over- or undersized. That's what drove us to look for a new solution - to eliminate that error and build our reputation knowing we'll get it right first time."
Losing leads to slower response times
When enquiries came in through the website, someone had to manually transfer the details into their CRM, estimate the heat loss, and put together a proposal in a Word document. Customers would have to download it, sign it, and email it back. The whole process could take a day or two, by which point a competitor had often got there first and they had lost the job.
"We'd ring them up after sending and ask them what they thought of our quote. And usually they would reply saying someone else got to them first."
The Solution
Wiltshire Energy now has a Spruce smart-enquiry form on their website. When a customer enters their details, Spruce generates pulls their EPC data automatically. Zac can send an estimate within 10-15 minutes of the enquiry coming in, while it’s still fresh in the customer’s mind.
Surveys happen directly in Spruce on an iPad. Zac walks through each room, captures photos of radiators and pipework, and the heat loss calculates as he goes - cutting what used to be a multi-day process down to hours.
To put that into perspective: an eight-bedroom Georgian house (400 square metres), took Zac two and a half hours in Spruce for the survey, calcs, and design. Previously, the survey alone would have taken four hours by hand, before any of the design work started.
The detail Zac likes the most is the visual feedback while he’s doing the system design. Spruce colour-codes each radiator - green if it works at the design flow temperature, red if it doesn't - so he can see at a glance which rooms need changes and suggest replacements accordingly. Instead of cross-referencing spreadsheets, the whole design happens in one place.
"It works a visualisation tool for me to look and go ‘that radiator suits that room’, ‘or actually, let's look at downsizing that’. It ties together all that feedback, so I'm not flicking between different screens."
The Result
Key outcomes:
Increased revenue: 45% increase in one year
Greater survey capacity: Three per week → three per day
More installations: One → three per week
Faster response time: Estimates sent within 10-15 minutes of enquiry
The faster response time has made a measurable difference to conversion. Getting an estimate to customers while they're still thinking about their enquiry means Wiltshire Energy reaches them before competitors. The team are winning more work and doing around three installations per week.
The business has grown from one heat pump team to four, with engineers receiving installation packs three days before each job so they arrive prepared.
"Thanks to Spruce, we've had around four more people per week engaging with our system. Before, it'd be countless follow-up emails and phone calls. Now we're able to keep on top of that and convert them into proper jobs.”
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