Ask any HVAC business owner what happens if you don’t answer a phone call and they will tell you matter of factly that you just lost business.
Of course, that is a generalization, the call could have been a telemarketer just as easily as it could have been a legitimate service call but generally speaking, if you miss out on that service call you just lost out on a substantial amount of money and on a new customer.
It doesn’t matter if it’s day or night, normal business hours, after-hours or the weekend; missed calls equals lost profits.
How can you handle overloaded times?
During the busy months, your technicians are working tons of overtime already, sending them home with the on-call phone to wake up and take calls in the middle of the night is a sure cause of burn out. Plus, where is the accountability, how do you know that they even picked up every call that rang last night?
As the business owner, you have put your heart and soul into getting the business up and running and then continuing to grow the company.
You have put in your time taking every call, being the front office and the after- hours on-call person and now you are looking for a well-deserved work/life balance.
So, what do you do…the solution is actually pretty simple…
Use an Answering Service
The answering service is your assurance policy that every call gets answered and you do not ever miss a call. Their job is to then filter through calls to determine whether it is a service call and dispatch it to your team or to just take a message for situations that are non-urgent in nature. They weed out telemarketing calls and provide real customers with real customer service.
Customers don’t want to talk to offshore personnel who are clueless about how to resolve their issues. Companies need someone who can take calls after hours for lead collection, and to provide a service that can integrate with their company’s brand. Most importantly, answering services need to be able to distinguish between an emergency and non-emergency situation to properly dispatch personnel according to the customer’s individual needs.
Customers also need someone who can do more than just “take a call”. It’s not feasible to keep in-house personnel to take calls on a 24-hour basis, which means the answering service you choose needs to specialize in service for HVAC companies and provide information in a seamless manner and won’t give the impression of a third-party answering service. HVAC companies need an answering service that knows the immediate and non-emergency issues to properly dispatch personnel, and they need to know industry standards to provide a seamless method of taking calls.
Twenty-four hour phone coverage for your business is equally important to providing twenty-four hour service to your customers. Make sure that you partner with a reputable and high quality answering service that specializes in taking calls for the HVAC industry.
