SIR THORNEY

I used to do online marketing for a local heating engineer who installed, serviced and repaired Worcester Bosch boilers. Throughout the year Worcester Bosch would send recommendations for improving the client’s marketing, and one of their favourite companies to use as a shining example of “who is doing it right” was Boxt.

Boxt, at the time, was a trailblazer in the industry. They appeared out of nowhere and were growing like wildfire, with their coverage quickly expanding across the South of England, and then to its current national coverage.

Within a year Boxt had become the second largest installer of boilers in the UK, installing over 4,000 boilers and generating over £18 million in sales revenue (without any salespersons).

So how did Boxt innovate and grow?

Before Boxt arrived, if you wanted a new boiler installation you had to phone a local heating engineer and schedule a home appointment for them to provide a quote. Boxt worked differently, allowing people to simply input their home details into Boxt’s website and receive an instant quote.

Better yet, Boxt’s quotes were generally much cheaper than your average local heating engineer, sometimes almost £1,000 less. This was thanks to Boxt cutting out the sales process of going to customers’ homes. And if you can’t afford the installation price, Boxt allows you to spread the cost into monthly instalments with finance.

Additionally, thanks to the website being able to provide a quote and also schedule the installation appointment in one system, receiving a new boiler was as easy as ordering a phonecase from Amazon.

However, Boxt’s monumental growth isn’t exclusively due to its website’s innovative design.

Worcester Bosch (the leading boiler manufacturer in the UK) had bought a minority share in the company.

In addition to Worcester Bosch being able to help invest in Boxt’s growth, they also encouraged local heating engineers (who install their boilers) to become part of Boxt’s network of engineers across the UK. By doing this, Boxt could provide nationwide coverage without needing to hire any additional gas engineers.

Issues with advertising a company like Boxt

Despite Boxt’s intuitive website, it isn’t a perfect solution. There’s one glaring issue in Boxt’s process; it relies on people making a big financial commitment within minutes of visiting the Boxt website.

If you haven’t heard of Boxt prior to going on their website, you probably won’t be excited about agreeing to spend thousands of pounds on them. Because of this, the conversion rate of Boxt’s website was likely pretty low when they began advertising within their initial service area, which is worrying when you consider that the heating industry is one of the most competitive industries to market for (with cost-per-click going as high as £20).

Luckily, thanks to Worcester Bosch encouraging engineers to join onto Boxt’s installer network, Boxt could expand their service area and therefore advertising radius, helping reduce advertising costs considerably.

To further help their conversion rate, Boxt have introduced a live chat feature to their website, although the popup text features way too many emojis to be taken seriously.

What issues does Boxt have?

One of Boxt’s main obstacles is that Worcester Bosch are more than happy to give away Boxt’s unique website system to their competition.

Despite owning a minority share of Boxt, their primary goal is to sell Worcester Bosch boilers. With that in mind, by sharing Boxt’s website system to smaller heating companies, Worcester Bosch can boost these local installer’s sales and therefore help boost theirs as well.

Worcester Bosch began selling a replica of Boxt’s boiler quote and appointment booking system to smaller heating companies soon after they bought a minority share in the company.

Whilst Boxt still has some of the most competitive prices in the industry, they’ll struggle to compete with the brand awareness of these local companies, and are likely to lose a lot of sales because of this.

With no post-sales services such as boiler servicing, Boxt live and die with their sales.

Additionally, outside of Worcester Bosch creating competition for Boxt, other heating companies have arrived offering the exact same online experience, such as Heatable.

What does the future hold for Boxt?

Whilst Boxt is seeing its competition continue to grow with every month and with this competition comes the chance of its position as the “Boiler Installer King” being rocked, Boxt seems to stand strong with its marketing plans.

Boxt has since expanded its installation services to include air-conditioning, with plans to expand into smart home and electric car charger installations in the near future.

This is a smart move, as heating products mostly sell in the autumn and winter, so diversifying to other products will help spread their sales across the other seasons.

Whether this will work is yet to be seen, and with Worcester Bosch keen to sell their ideas it’s interesting to see what will happen in the future.