In the heating, ventilation and air conditioning business your tools are your trade, and without them you couldn’t offer the full range of services required to succeed in a highly competitive field.
Basic hand tools, power tools (electric drill and saw), electrical, gas and refrigeration testing equipment, sheet metal cutting, shaping and punching tools, a shop-vac, a ladder, trouble lights … these are just some of the essentials, and if your technicians are undersupplied they won’t be able to handle the broad range of challenges that inevitably arise out in the field.
But supplies for technicians are not the only tools an HVAC business needs to survive and thrive. Management and logistical tools are just as critical to the viability of your company, and if you neglect your needs or take shortcuts you’ll pay dearly for it in the long run.
Your stock of business tools should include a variety of HVAC-friendly apps and software systems, to handle crucial duties such as employee management, task management, invoicing and accounting. Your marketing strategies should fully embrace the primacy of digital storefronts, which means effective branding on social media and a smartly-crafted, content-heavy website that sells your brand and lets visitors initiate email contact quickly and easily.
Communications is another area of paramount importance for every HVAC business. Established and potential customers need to know they can find you whenever they need you, and that includes afterhours, during off-hours and when there are call overflows.
You cannot risk allowing calls for help to go unanswered, in real time, that is a cardinal sin in an industry where such sins are punished severely. Customers often have questions they want answered quickly, and more importantly they may have heating or cooling related emergencies that need to be addressed immediately.
While you might like to hire enough staff to answer the phones 24 hours a day, with no one put on hold or asked to call back the following morning during regular office hours, very few (if any) HVAC companies have the budget to implement such a comprehensive, in-house solution.
Or so it seems. But in fact, there is a practical and affordable solution to the round-the-clock customer access problem, and that is to hire an answering service that specializes in serving the HVAC industry.
On holidays, weekends, late nights, early mornings and when your office lines are busy, calls to your company will be instantly diverted to your specialized answering service, where highly-trained telephone service professionals will be available to take messages and relay them to technicians or members of your management team if customers need prompt assistance. Some smaller companies choose answering services to respond to all incoming calls, since that option is far less costly than hiring and training additional office personnel to handle phone duties.
To expand business profits, you must find ways to gain the edge on your rivals. By putting your company on-call 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, answering services provide a cost-efficient method for securing an enduring a competitive advantage. Never again will emergency calls be missed, and never again will your clients be left frustrated and determined to find a new HVAC contractor that won’t leave them in the lurch during their hour of need.
An answering service would make a great addition to your arsenal of business-enhancement tools, and once you begin using one you’ll wonder how you managed to make do without it for so long.
Among answering service companies, Centratel has the lowest Client Reported Error Rate in the industry. That makes us your safest bet for superior call-capture and message dispatch services, and we offer affordable packages appropriate for companies of all sizes and budgets. Our TSRs (telephone service representatives) are expertly trained and fully prepared to monitor and manage your company’s incoming phone traffic, and your clients will be so impressed by their work that your overall customer satisfaction ratings will soar.
Just as you have the tools to fulfill all requests for repair, maintenance and installation services, so, too, do we have the tools to make sure your clients can reach you immediately, every single time they require your services.
