Managers in the HVAC platforms industry often struggle to balance their time between managing client expectations and generating new clients. While an ongoing maintenance contract can be a reliable source of income, there are many opportunities to grow your business with new customers. However, managing both can cause chaos within a company and reduce productivity as well as impact customer service. This is due to the rapid advancement in technology within the HVAC industry. It has become a concern for many service providers.
How can you manage HVAC maintenance contracts and service arrangements while still providing great customer service?
Renew Existing Contracts By Balancing Them With New Leads
Businesses can find it difficult to manage both new and existing HVAC contracts. For example, if you get an emergency call from a lead, but have a full schedule, your regular clients will usually take priority. You have two options in this situation:
Ask the client to contact you with their next appointment. Remind them that they are still your priority customer.
Tell potential customers that you are unable to respond immediately to urgent calls. You could lose them to a competitor.
You should ultimately avoid both. You don’t want your loyal customers to feel pressured and could cause damage. A better solution is to use field service software to streamline your business operations. This allows you to drill down into your HVAC schedule, and then re-prioritize work based upon a client’s location, service history, and appointment details.
You can fit emergency calls in immediately with the right software while still maintaining your schedule. This will make your clients happy and may result in a new customer for you to sign a service agreement.
Track Your Contracts Accurately
You will send out more invoices if you have more service agreements. This increases your margin of error. This is why our HVAC invoice program can help you to reduce errors by allowing your engineers to access client notes from the field. It is difficult to access your records if they are only kept in the office or on paper.
This app can be accessed on any engineer’s smartphone. It gives them instant access to client notes and service agreements, as well as account history. You will always have complete visibility of your parts, tools, and other equipment with inventory management capabilities.
Assure Consistent Service Across All HVAC Maintenance Contracts
Every HVAC system is unique, so it is important for engineers to have a good understanding of each client’s property. You can customize your service by keeping a checklist for each client. This allows you to compare the manufacturer’s preventive maintenance schedule with your engineers’ protocols and their notes on current issues.
Your engineers have access to digital job sheets and portable forms so they can quickly complete checklists, take notes, and attach any relevant information to customers’ profiles. To encourage customers to keep up with basic maintenance, system reports can be shared with them. This will show your customers you are well-informed about your system and can be used to help them educate themselves.
Remind Customers To Book Appointments
The HVAC industry faces a challenging challenge in ensuring that its customers are satisfied with their system’s performance. Clients rarely schedule their own maintenance appointments or services. It is a good idea to remind your clients by email and notify them about any upcoming preventive maintenance. This will encourage repeat business and ensure that you have enough maintenance contracts in the future.