3 Tips To Improving Your HVAC Business’s Customer Service

These days, home and business owners have more choices than ever when choosing which home service business to work with. In fact by 2024, the HVAC industry is expected to grow by 14%. The plumbing sector is expected to grow 12%. As a result, the workforce for both industries are expected to boom.

So, how do you stick out from your competition? Great customer service.

Can you make customers feel like regulars at your HVAC business, even though you’re entering their home? Of course you can! Nurturing customer relationships has always been a best practice of business for as long as humans have been exchanging services and goods. People are more inclined to do business with a friend than with a stranger.

Let’s see how you could be growing your client base by focusing on the customer-technician relationship.

Building Trust

The fact is, history builds bonds. That same principle is true for your HVAC service business. Your techs, sales reps and staff should know the complete history of a client that has done business with you before. They should reference notes from previous jobs including the services the customer needed performed. If they walk into the interaction with this background knowledge, they are building history with a client and ensuring future business with them.

What if your customer could have background knowledge on you as well? Having a stranger come into their house can be stressful for many clients. A software that connects the customer to the technician who will be working in their home can overcome this stress. Technician bios that have information and pictures of your tech will help grow a tech to customer relationship that builds familiarity and trust. Customers could also track their technician’s arrival and get appointment reminders by text or email. The more transparency there is between your HVAC service technicians and your customers, the more likely they will be to have a comfortable, positive experience with your company and become a loyal, returning customer.

Think about when you go to your doctor. They have your full medical history in order to provide you with the best medical care. It is the same principle when tracking HVAC customer history.

You can build history and trust with a client by tracking and storing information from every interaction your business has with a customer. Having a database where these interactions are stored will ensure that the information is there for any of your employees — even if they haven’t worked with a specific customer before. This way, any employee that enters the customer’s home (or even takes a phone call) will always put the best foot forward for your HVAC service company.

Upselling

According to a study done in the book Marketing Metrics, the likelihood of selling to an existing customer is 60 to 70 percent while the probability of selling to a new customer is anywhere from 5 to 20 percent. The home service industry should be capitalizing on those metrics, and upselling to your clients becomes easier when you’ve built a relationship with them.

Using prior knowledge from a database, your service tech might know that your client Kevin has an aging furnace. The tech can go into that house prepared. This builds trust with the customer and offers the ability for the tech to make a tailored sales pitch to their specific needs. “While I’m here, do you want me to take a look at the furnace and make sure it’s up to snuff?”

Likewise, the technician’s efforts won’t go unnoticed. A software that integrates your marketing efforts and connects with the customer allows for greater insight into customer happiness. It can also encourage high quality performance from your technicians. If a customer gives your technician a shoutout for a job well done, you can see that. At your next company meeting, that technician can get the pat on the back they deserve in front of their peers. Connecting technicians with the impact they have will add an incentive and promote increased customer service.

Organization

Having this kind of information at your disposal requires organization. Too often, communication gets lost in translation. Mistakes can happen on so many levels. Maybe the CSR forgot to mention a key detail to the technician as he or she left the office on a call. A way to avoid problems like this one is to have a single source of truth for customer information, notes and anything your employees might need to know.

Having the technology to archive and pull HVAC customer info in an efficient way will show growth in your business. Soon those customers are going to feel like regulars and they are going to keep returning for your company’s great service. Your clients will spread the word about the positive interactions they have with your employees, bringing you new referrals.