Contractor Marketing Blog

Choosing software for your company can seem overwhelming. It is a big financial commitment and you want the software to suit the jobs and needs of your company.

I officially launched my career in the field service industry when I was contracted to select and implement a service management solution for an extremely busy regional plumbing and HVAC company in Boston.  The company moved at the speed of light.  There were over 35 trucks that were each dispatched to 4-6 service calls every day throughout New England.  Phones would ring off the hook, technicians would call in to report their status and obtain credit card information to purchase parts and since it was a family owned business there was someone always yelling at somebody. Sound familiar?  It was an extremely reactive environment and there were several business challenges that a service management solution would be able to solve including:

You know what they say, “practice makes perfect.” This is the mantra you want to instill in your employees. In a perfect world, job protocol and etiquette would be so engrained that the company would always function without a hitch. Fortunately, with the right training and attitude, this can happen.

It’s summertime and for many field service businesses it is the busiest time of year, especially for break fix organizations like air conditioning contractors. Service calls are pouring in and revenues are at a season high.  It’s easy during the peak season to lose focus on efficiencies since cash flow is good this time of year.  Here are 4 tips to keep your dispatch and scheduling process efficient during your peak seasonality: 

For many companies, putting an advertisement in the paper and waiting for people to apply is their go-to in hiring new employees. But do you really want to take such a passive approach to the revenue-generating aspect of your business?

Whoever said time is money was certainly not joking.  Let’s say you manage a commercial HVAC company with 50 field technicians with a fleet of 30 vehicles.  For a fleet of this size it may take two or more people to coordinate logistics, scheduling and dispatching of crews for service, preventative maintenance and installs.  In my experience an average HVAC company this size will have 800 or more active customers.  Each customer will have a different service level agreement with varying contracted response times and obligations.  On a typical day a dispatcher in this organization will spend 6 or more hours opening and closing work orders and coordinating routing and scheduling of resources.  In peak season the day may be stretched to 10-12 hours and overtime kicks in for not only the dispatcher but also for the field technicians.

Many service companies operate with multiple vehicles or a “fleet” to travel and get jobs done at different locations. This inevitably leads to a hefty fuel bill to account for jobs and travel throughout the workday. Here are some ways to minimize the gas bill when dealing with “fleets.”

The other day I had a plumber over my house because my pipes froze. Yea I know- pretty rookie mistake. When I showed him the spot where the water came into the house he took out his phone and used a flashlight app to see up into the crawl space. He then used his iPhone to take a picture and take notes of what he saw. I asked him how he liked his phone and he said “I can’t live without it now.”  I was intrigued to look for some more awesome iPhone apps for the service industry:

Somebody There When You Can't Be

Many times in the service industry, the primary business owner may be out on a service call or handling a job. They might also be conducting a sales call, which is one time that you do not want to be interrupted with an administrative task. When you have a virtual assistant, you have somebody there whenever you decide it is necessary and they can handle incoming calls, field emails or set appointments while you are doing something else.

Finding the Right Clients
Vast amounts of capital might be spent on customer surveys that will help a company to identify the people that it should be targeting terms of its marketing strategy. It is often the case that this information already exists and is held in the information gathered by the sales team. The data that is held by the sales team is generally are more effective than what might be garnered by the marketing team through traditional methods.