Bumblebee EV uses Zoho Flow to grow their installations by 4x

About the company

Bumblebee EV is a UK-based company that installs electric vehicle chargers, primarily for domestic customers. Founded in 2019, Bumblebee EV completed just one installation in December of that year. Today, the business has scaled to more than 1,000 installations per month, supported by an automation-first approach that has allowed installation volumes and revenue to grow significantly faster than headcount. In 2023, Bumblebee EV was acquired by Arnold Clark, one of Europe's largest privately owned car retailers.

Automating the deal-to-installation pipeline

Bumblebee receives requests to install new electric vehicle charging units, and each customer conversation takes at least 15 minutes. That personal interaction is an important part of the customer journey, but as installation volumes grew to 150–200 per month, the administrative work surrounding each installation was becoming increasingly difficult to scale.

Outside of those conversations, a significant amount of the team's time was spent on manual administration: creating sales orders, shipments, and labels, copying tracking details between Zoho Inventory, Zoho CRM, and UPS, and managing compliance checks, payment confirmations, and order-versus-invoice matching one by one. As installation volumes continued to grow, it became clear that simply adding more people wasn't the answer. Bumblebee needed to automate the administration around each job while allowing its customer-facing teams to remain focused on the customer.

Bumblebee began using Zoho Flow at around this stage and has continually developed and refined its automations as the business has scaled. Today, flows connect much of the operation, with data moving between Zoho CRM, Zoho Books, Zoho FSM, Zoho Sign, Zoho Forms, Zoho WorkDrive, and Zoho Creator in real time.

Once a deal progresses in Zoho CRM, workflows trigger the relevant stages automatically. Zoho Books generates the invoice, Zoho FSM picks up the job for scheduling and dispatch, Zoho Forms collects the required site and installation data, and information is stored centrally in Zoho WorkDrive. Zoho Sign handles customer agreements and, once a document is signed, Zoho Flow can trigger the next actions behind the scenes, allowing the job to continue progressing without someone manually checking each stage.

Booking installers and customers without the back and forth

Agreeing on an installation date previously required Bumblebee's team to act as the link between the installer and the customer. The team would request the installer's availability, wait for a response, relay the available dates to the customer, wait for their selection, and then confirm the booking back with the installer. This created unnecessary administration and became increasingly difficult to manage as installation volumes grew.

One of the earliest flows Bumblebee built using Zoho Flow eliminated this process entirely. The flow sends the job to the chosen installer, the installer returns their available dates, those go straight to the customer, the customer picks one, and the booking is confirmed with nobody in the middle.

Connecting fulfillment and compliance in one pass

Every installation needs equipment from the fulfillment partner and a submission through the ENA portal. Previously, both were managed separately once a job passed QC: two departments, two systems, and a handoff that depended on someone following each one through.

Bumblebee used Zoho Flow to integrate directly with the ENA portal via API and folded it into the same workflow as fulfillment. Once a job passes QC, both processes move in parallel automatically. There's no manual data entry and no risk of a submission being missed or delayed because of a gap between the two teams.

Automating the edges of the customer journey

Beyond the core pipeline, Bumblebee's in-house developer continually identifies and automates the process that previously required manual intervention. Leads from a lead-generation partner arrive as a spreadsheet attached to an email; a custom function reads every record and creates the leads directly in Zoho CRM. Leads received by spreadsheet are automatically created in Zoho CRM, priority partners can track customers through a dedicated Zoho Creator portal, payment confirmations are handled through direct integrations, and Trustpilot review invitations are triggered automatically.

Benefits and ROI

"Zoho Flow automates the behind-the-scenes works, allowing our customer-facing teams to spend more time having meaningful conversations with customers. As a result, we've increased our installation volumes by more than4x while keeping headcount lean."

Brian Coyle, Operations Director, Bumblebee EV

Automating their sales pipeline helped Bumblebee grow from 150–200 installations per month to more than 1,000 per month, while keeping headcount lean. Connecting fulfillment and ENA submissions into one workflow has significantly reduced manual administration, mismatched orders, and the risk of missed compliance submissions. The team now has real-time visibility across the pipeline, dispatch, and QC without assembling figures by hand.

Moving forward

The team continues to extend automation across the customer journey, keeping individual flows simple so they remain easy to maintain as volume grows.