Most solar owners hire their first customer service person the same way. The phone has been ringing out for three weeks, the owner is answering warranty calls from the roof, and someone says “we just need a person on the phones”. So you hire one and divide their wage by 52 to get the cost. That number is wrong, and it’s usually wrong by a lot.

I’ve watched this play out across a lot of install businesses over twenty years, from the supplier side, from the sales side and from inside the back office. The wage is the part you can see. Everything that makes a solar customer service role harder than a generic reception job sits underneath it, and none of the cost guides ranking for this topic mention any of it.

So this is the solar version. I won’t hand you made-up salary figures, because I don’t have verified solar-sector wage data and I won’t pretend I do. What I’ll give you is the cost model, the solar-specific lines the generic guides leave out, and a way to compare it fairly against outsourcing and software.

Why the generic cost guides don’t help you

Search this question and you get three kinds of result: outsourcing vendors explaining why outsourcing is cheaper, receptionist services explaining why a receptionist service is cheaper, and broad support-cost benchmarks written for SaaS and e-commerce teams. They’re useful as a starting framework, and the better ones are honest about the overhead that sits on top of base pay (Cross Angle, 2026; Ruby Receptionist, 2026).

The problem is that they’re written for a business whose customer calls look like “where’s my order” or “can I change my booking”. A solar business gets those calls too. It also gets “my inverter’s showing a fault code”, “the STC discount wasn’t on my invoice”, “your rep told me the battery would pay for itself in four years” and “I want to cancel within the cooling-off period”. Each of those carries technical, financial or regulatory weight that a generic support role doesn’t.

That gap is the whole point of this article. The generic model gets you started. The solar lines decide what the role really costs.

The base cost model everyone uses

Here’s the general overhead model the competitor guides work from. It’s sound, so start here and fill in your own numbers.

Base salary. Whatever you’re paying under the relevant award or your own agreement. Check the award classification properly before you advertise, because an underpaid admin role is a Fair Work problem you don’t need.

Superannuation. The Superannuation Guarantee sits on top of ordinary-time earnings. It isn’t optional and it isn’t included in the salary figure you quote.

Leave and leave loading. Annual leave, personal leave and, depending on the award or agreement, leave loading. When your person is on leave, someone else is answering the phone, and that cover has a cost too.

Payroll costs. Payroll tax once you’re over your state’s threshold, workers’ compensation premiums, and the admin time to run pays.

Equipment and software. A desk, a headset, a computer, a phone line or VoIP seat, a CRM licence, a call recording licence if you’re recording, and whatever ticketing or inbox tool you use. The receptionist-cost guides are right that these quietly add up (Ruby Receptionist, 2026).

Recruitment. Advertising, your time screening and interviewing, and the cost of a bad hire who leaves in month two.

Training and ramp time. The weeks where you’re paying full wage for partial output.

Management time. Someone has to supervise, answer the questions they can’t, check their work and handle escalations. In a small solar business that someone is usually the owner, and the owner’s hour is the most expensive hour in the building.

Industry benchmarks suggest the fully loaded cost of a support person runs well above base salary once those lines are added in, and the 2026 benchmark pieces are clear that headline wages understate the true cost per interaction (The Office Gurus, 2026). Treat any multiplier you read as a rough guide, not a rule. Build your own from your own payroll.

The solar-specific lines nobody adds

This is where the generic model falls over. These are the costs that make a solar customer service role a different job from reception.

Product and compliance knowledge takes real training time

A solar customer service person has to understand enough about the product to triage properly. That means knowing the difference between a manufacturer’s product warranty, a performance warranty and your own workmanship warranty, and knowing which one a given complaint falls under. It also means knowing what Clean Energy Council accreditation actually covers, so they don’t promise a customer something your installers can’t sign off.

They also need to explain the STC discount correctly. STCs aren’t a rebate. They’re tradeable certificates the customer assigns to you in exchange for a discount up front, and a customer service person who calls them a “government rebate” is setting up a future complaint. I’ve written about that separately in STCs are not a rebate, and it’s worth making that article part of your onboarding pack.

None of this is learned in a week. In my experience, a new hire with no solar background takes months before they can handle a warranty or billing call without escalating it. Count those months as a cost, because you’re paying for them.

Complaint handling carries a compliance load

If you’ve signed up to the Solar Retailer Code of Conduct, or you’re working under the newer consumer code arrangements, complaint handling isn’t just good manners. It’s an obligation with expectations about how complaints are received, recorded, responded to and escalated. I’ve covered the code itself in the CEC Solar Retailer Code of Conduct explained, and the shift away from the old approved retailer program in how the NETCC replaced the Approved Solar Retailer program.

What that means for cost is simple. Your customer service person isn’t only answering the call. They’re logging it, tracking it against response timeframes, documenting what was promised and keeping a record that would stand up if a fair trading body or the code administrator came asking. That’s admin time on every complaint, and a generic support role doesn’t carry it.

The complaints software market hasn’t caught up with this either. The general complaint-management tools are built for any industry and treat a complaint as a ticket with a status (HappyFox, 2026). They don’t know what a code obligation looks like, so your person ends up doing the compliance mapping by hand.

Cooling-off, cancellations and sales follow-through

Solar has a direct-sales tail that most businesses don’t. Customers ring about cooling-off rights, cancellations, deposit refunds and what the rep said at the kitchen table. Getting those calls wrong is expensive. Your customer service person needs to know your cancellation process cold, and they need to record those calls properly.

That’s more training, more process documentation and more supervision. It’s also a strong argument for keeping these specific calls in-house, which I’ll come back to.

Rostering for lead response and seasonal spikes

This is the cost line that catches owners out the most.

Solar enquiries don’t arrive evenly. They spike around power bill season, around price movements and when a neighbour gets a system installed. They drop off in quiet stretches. Speed of response matters a great deal in this trade; the business that calls back first often wins the job, which is the whole argument in why speed to quote wins solar jobs.

So you face a sizing problem. If you staff for the average week, you miss leads in the peak weeks, and missed leads are the most expensive failure in a solar business. If you staff for the peak, you carry idle capacity through the quiet stretches. An in-house team has to be sized for peak demand, which means you’re paying for capacity you don’t use for part of the year.

The outsourcing vendors lean hard on exactly this point, and in fairness it’s their strongest argument (ClearDesk, 2026). Overflow and after-hours coverage are where a shared-capacity model really is cheaper than a payroll.

Then there’s coverage. One person means no cover for lunch, leave, sick days or the hour they spend on a complaint escalation. Two people means double the wage line for a workload that might only be one and a half roles in a normal week. That step change from one to two is where a lot of small solar businesses get stuck.

Putting the numbers together

Here’s how I’d build the comparison. Do it in a spreadsheet with your own figures.

  1. Fully loaded annual cost. Base salary, super, leave cover, payroll tax and workers’ comp, equipment and software, plus a recruitment allowance spread over the expected tenure.
  2. Ramp cost. Months to competence multiplied by the share of output you’re not getting in that time.
  3. Management cost. Your hours per week supervising and handling escalations, priced at what your time is actually worth to the business.
  4. Compliance admin. Average minutes per complaint spent logging and documenting, multiplied by your complaint volume.
  5. Idle capacity. The gap between the hours you pay for and the hours of real demand in your quiet months.

Divide the total by your annual call and enquiry volume and you get a cost per interaction. That figure is what you compare against outsourcing quotes and software pricing, not the base wage.

Every line here is an estimate you should check against your own payroll and call data. If you don’t track call volume yet, start there before you hire anyone.

Comparing against outsourcing

Outsourced call centres price per minute, per call or per seat, and the Australian cost guides break those models down reasonably well (Cross Angle, 2026). On the raw cost per interaction, outsourcing often wins for simple, scriptable calls.

Where it falls over is the solar-specific load I described above. A generalist agent won’t know your warranty structure, won’t understand the STC discount and won’t carry the code obligations in their head. The cheap call becomes the expensive one when it’s misdiagnosed or mishandled. I’ve set out a full decision framework for this in should your solar company outsource customer service.

The model I see work most often is a hybrid. Outsource overflow, after-hours and simple booking calls. Keep warranty, complaints and cancellation calls with someone in-house who knows the business.

Comparing against software

The third option isn’t a person at all. Help desk and ticketing tools, auto-responders and AI chatbots can take a real share of the low-value load off whoever answers your phone.

Ticketing platforms are mature and well documented, though they’re built for general support teams rather than solar workflows (Zendesk, 2026). AI chatbot vendors are now pitching directly at solar warranty enquiries (Convocore, 2026). Be careful with these. A bot that confidently gives wrong warranty advice is a complaint generator, not a cost saver.

Where software earns its keep is in the first response and the record-keeping. An instant acknowledgment and booking link on every web enquiry protects your lead response without adding headcount, as I covered in solar enquiry auto-responders and instant booking. A proper system that ties every enquiry, complaint and promise to the customer’s job record cuts the compliance admin line in your cost model.

That second point is the reason I’m building CurrentFlow. The idea is to keep customer enquiries, complaints and compliance records in the same system as the quote, the job and the STC paperwork, so whoever answers the phone isn’t digging through three tools and a shared inbox to find out what was promised. It isn’t a replacement for a good person on the phones. It’s designed to make that person’s hour go further, and to give you a software line to put next to the headcount line when you’re doing this sum.

What I’d actually do

If you’re at the point where the owner is answering every call, here’s the order I’d work in.

First, measure. Track call and enquiry volume, by type, for a month. You can’t size a team you haven’t measured.

Second, take the cheap wins. Auto-respond to web enquiries, put your booking process online and fix the systems so the history of every customer is in one place.

Third, decide which calls must stay in-house. For most solar businesses that’s warranty, complaints and cancellations.

Then hire for those calls specifically, budget for the ramp properly and push the overflow and after-hours load to an outsourced partner or software. That way you’re paying for knowledge where it matters and capacity where it doesn’t.

If you want to follow along as I build CurrentFlow, join the waitlist. I’m building it because I needed it.

References

ClearDesk. (2026). How solar companies streamline operations with outsourcing. https://www.cleardesk.com/post/outsourcing-solar-company-operations-streamlining-success-in-the-renewable-energy-market

Convocore. (2026). AI chatbot for solar installers warranty claims. https://convocore.ai/ai-chatbot/solar-installers/warranty-claims

Cross Angle. (2026). Customer support outsourcing cost guide for Australia. https://www.crossangle.com.au/blog/customer-support-outsourcing-cost-analysis-australia/

HappyFox. (2026). Best complaint management software: 12 tools for 2026. https://www.happyfox.com/helpdesk/use-cases/complaint-management-systems/

Ruby Receptionist. (2026). In-house receptionist cost Australia: Hidden savings. https://rubyreceptionist.com.au/blog/in-house-receptionist-cost-australia-hidden-business-expenses/

The Office Gurus. (2026). Customer support cost benchmarks for 2026: What you need to know. https://theofficegurus.com/customer-support-cost-benchmarks-for-2026-what-you-need-to-know/

Zendesk. (2026). Best 24 help desk software and ticketing systems for 2026. https://www.zendesk.com/au/service/help-desk-software/ticketing-system/

FAQ

How much does an in-house customer service person cost a solar business?

There isn’t one reliable figure, and I’d be wary of anyone who quotes one without knowing your business. Start with the award-based salary, then add super, leave cover, payroll tax, workers’ comp, equipment, software, recruitment, ramp time and your own management hours. In solar, add training on warranties, STCs and the consumer code obligations, plus the admin for every complaint you log.

Why does solar customer service cost more than a general receptionist?

The calls are heavier. Warranty triage, STC discount questions, cooling-off cancellations and code-compliant complaint handling all need product and regulatory knowledge that takes months to build. Every complaint also needs documenting properly, which adds admin time a generic reception role doesn’t have.

Is outsourcing cheaper than hiring in-house for a solar company?

Often, for simple and scriptable calls like bookings, overflow and after-hours cover. It’s riskier for warranty, complaint and cancellation calls, where a generalist agent can create expensive mistakes. A hybrid model usually gives the best balance of cost and control.

Can software replace a customer service hire?

Not completely, but it can shrink the role. Auto-responders protect lead response times, ticketing tools organise the queue, and a single customer record cuts the time spent hunting for history. Be cautious with AI chatbots on warranty enquiries, because confident wrong answers turn into complaints.

When should a solar business hire its first customer service person?

When you’ve measured your call volume and it consistently takes more owner time than the business can afford, and you’ve already done the cheap software fixes. Hire for the calls that need knowledge, such as warranty, complaints and cancellations, and push the rest to software or an outsourced partner.