6 HVAC Customer Service Secrets to Create Loyal Customers

Whether your HVAC businesses services residential (homeowners) or commercial customers, giving your customers an excellent customer service experience almost always leads to repeat business and increased loyalty.

It should be straightforward to do that: While your field staff politely interacts with your customers in person, your HVAC tech support team provides customers with a great first impression of your company while making appointments and answering questions remotely. However, it takes more than a team of people with great communication skills and good manners to achieve excellent customer service in the HVAC business. 

The challenge involves implementing customer service processes consistently and ensuring that all your CSRs, call center staff, and techs have the excellent customer service skills it takes to keep homeowners happy, which is more complex than it might appear. 

ServiceTitan’s HVAC software has specific features built to address the challenge of running your service contractor business efficiently while also providing amazing customer service. 

In this article, we’ll cover the top 6 ways to ensure your HVAC customer service is on point, and show you how ServiceTitan’s business management software helps you and your team implement them. 

6 HVAC Customer Service Secrets

1. Personalized customer service

2. Fast response times 

3. Showing up on time and prepared

4. Accurate estimates and convenient transactions

5. Nurturing an ongoing customer relationship

6. Looking and acting like an HVAC pro

» Want to see how ServiceTitan can help you grow your HVAC business? Click here to get a demo.

1. Personalized HVAC Customer Service

Every sale in the HVAC industry begins with an initial phone call or message sent to your company. Treating each customer uniquely helps create more powerful relationships. Using front- and back-end software to arm your HVAC customer service representatives (CSRs) with vital information about a customer helps create the perfect experience every time.

Smooth Call Booking with ServiceTitan

ServiceTitan’s call booking software provides your CSRs with customer details before they even pick up an incoming customer call. It gives them customer names, call occurrence, service history, equipment used, and even special notes from techs, managers, or other CSRs. 

With this information at their fingertips, your reps can immediately make a great first impression by greeting each customer by name and referring to previous work done for them.

Our software automatically populates customer information as calls come in, cutting call time and making the booking process easy for reps and customers. For any additional information that is needed about why the customer is calling, CSRs refer to easy drop down prompts to ensure that they ask all the right questions on every call, and record all the vital details your techs need before they arrive on site. 

ServiceTitan’s easy-to-follow call booking system allows CSRs to focus on their conversation with the customer instead of being distracted trying to type in crucial information.

Additionally, ServiceTitan shows CSRs the property data it has for each customer, including the size and age of the property along with the HVAC equipment they currently have installed. This gives CSRs the chance to spot sales opportunities by recommending maintenance visits or equipment upgrades, for example.

ServiceTitan stores recordings of all incoming service calls. This way, your HVAC company can review what a customer said over the phone when needed, make a follow up call, or spot training opportunities for CSRs. 

2. Fast Response Times for HVAC Services

When a customer calls for service or repair on their air conditioning system, they typically don’t want to wait days or weeks for service. Ensure your HVAC technicians remain punctual to maintain a positive brand reputation. Dispatch the best available tech to serve the need for each call by using an HVAC software platform that monitors the GPS location of field techs.

Track Tech Location with ServiceTitan

ServiceTitan helps you keep track of your HVAC techs’ individual locations in real-time on the dispatch board. Our scheduling optimization software keeps an eye on their GPS location and helps techs avoid issues that keep customers waiting, such as traffic delays. Dispatchers can easily extend jobs, shorten them, or reschedule, with a single click, keeping your team flexible throughout the day.

Dispatchers back at the office can also stay in touch with service technicians in the field by sending and receiving SMS, which allows them to keep techs informed of changes in their schedule and helps techs get to each appointment on time.

With ServiceTitan’s field service software, every customer receives an automated job confirmation text message to ensure they will be available when your HVAC techs show up. This reduces no-shows and gives customers the reassurance that the tech is on their way, without your customer service team spending hours on hundreds of confirmation calls. In our experience, this feature alone can save your team up to 12 hours per week in customer calls.

By adding ServiceTitan’s web scheduler or chat-to-text widget on your website, you can also give customers a highly convenient way of scheduling a job with your HVAC business or starting a text conversation with a CSR at the office.

3. Show Up on Time and Prepared

The best companies in the HVAC industry respect their customers’ time by providing accurate service windows, being punctual, and calling if they fall behind in their daily schedule. Using field dispatch software, your customers can receive an automated text notification when the tech heads toward their house for an appointment, and track the technician’s progress in real-time, in exactly the same way they can track a food delivery. On the flip side, if a customer has to make a last-minute change to their appointment, your team of customer service representatives can rearrange tech schedules and adjust appointments on the dispatch board based on real-time data and messaging.

Keep HVAC Techs Fully Informed and On Time with ServiceTitan

If your HVAC and refrigeration CSRs ask all the right questions beforehand, using the prompts ServiceTitan provides (mentioned above), your technicians should show up to the job site with all the required skills and tools to complete the service and keep the customer happy. That provides the best customer service experience from start to finish.

With ServiceTitan Mobile, your HVAC and refrigeration techs have access to all of ServiceTitan’s features while out in the field. All the information your CSRs collected when the customer called is logged and made available to the tech that arrives for the job. This way, they have the following details at their fingertips:

• Customer’s name

• Contact information

• Detailed job history

• Photos

• Voice notes from other techs

• Outstanding estimates

• Previous invoices

• A recording of the customer’s call with the CSR

So, not only will customers be impressed with how well-informed your techs are about their situation, but you also avoid the embarrassment of a tech failing to acknowledge a loyal customer, or trying to sell them a service they have already purchased.

The additional benefit of having all this information centralized on ServiceTitan and accessible on ServiceTItan Mobile is that you don’t have to worry about lost customer paperwork, or waiting for techs to file invoices on a weekly basis, or longer. All the forms are uploaded directly on the ServiceTitan app and immediately available to the team back at the office.

» Related: HVAC Van Organization: Tips & Strategies for Better Efficiency

4. Provide On-the-Spot HVAC Payments, Quotes, and Financing

If an HVAC tech visits a homeowner to address an air conditioning system or furnace repair, the customer might become frustrated if forced to wait hours or days to receive a cost estimate. Provide your field staff with mobile technology to give customers on-site estimates and job quotes, explain warranty information, and allow them to sign off on the work on the spot.

Quickly Build Estimates, Allow Payments and Offer Financing with ServiceTitan Mobile

By using ServiceTitan Mobile, your HVAC techs can quickly build accurate estimates without worrying that prices might be out of date. You can easily manage your HVAC pricebook and keep it up to date using our cloud-based system, which is easily accessed in the office and in the field. Techs can view photos, manufacturer videos, and the latest product information so they can easily build a range of estimates for your customers.

ServiceTitan Mobile also gives your techs a tool to give customers a professionally-styled presentation of each of the estimates they are putting forward. Customers can browse the presentations on the tech’s tablet and make a choice at their leisure, just as if they were shopping on the internet.

Finally, ServiceTitan Mobile also allows techs to capture payments while still on the customers’ premises. Checks and credit cards are captured via the tablet’s camera. Credit cards can be used in combination with a swiper, or you can send customers a link to a personalized payment portal. This convenient tool improves your cashflow as it shortens the time it takes for checks and other payments to clear. With ServiceTitan, payments are deposited in your account the next day. 

If customers need finance to cover the cost of the service they choose, ServiceTitan can also give them a range of on-the-spot options through our partnerships with leading financing providers.

ServiceTitan’s financing integration pulls customer details from their profiles and you can complete a financing application right then and there. Techs can easily show customers their monthly payment plans and terms, and give them instant access to the funds they need. This gives techs the chance to close bigger sales at a faster rate than the typical process of waiting a day (or more) for financing approval.

5. Build an Ongoing Customer Relationship

Create a relationship with your customers by providing seasonal tips and incentives throughout the year. Through email marketing, text messages, or even phone calls, your HVAC customer service team should provide homeowners with friendly reminders for when it’s time to change furnace filters or schedule an annual tune-up on their HVAC systems. Easily send customers digital coupons for getting maintenance service performed during the slow season.

Communicating with customers throughout the year with consistent email marketing keeps your HVAC business top of mind, so the customer reaches out to your company first when they need services.

Keep in Regular Touch Using ServiceTitan’s Marketing Pro

ServiceTitan’s specialized marketing add-on service, Marketing Pro, helps HVAC businesses keep in touch with their customers through email marketing campaigns. With Marketing Pro, it’s easy to target your existing customers based on their profile, all while keeping you top of mind when they need your services.

For example, our software can deliver an automatic drip campaign to customers in your database who have unsold estimates. The email will remind them about the estimate and provide a specific phone number to call back (making it easy to track which email campaigns are most successful). This reminder can be the nudge that’s needed to turn cold leads into real jobs.

Customers who installed a furnace or A/C with you can also be reminded by a targeted email that their equipment is due for seasonal maintenance. These customers are more likely to respond to your contact because they have a real and identified need for your services.

ServiceTitan also allows you to track ROI for each email campaign in your dashboard.

ServiceTitan provides you with a library of pre-filled email templates, as shown in the GIF above, where you add your business logo and adapt the suggested text. These professional email templates look great without the expense of hiring a designer or coder.

6. Look and Act like an HVAC Pro

Your company’s HVAC techs represent your brand, and as such, they should show up clean and in full uniform. Provide booties they can slip over their work boots before stepping foot in a home and train techs to be respectful of a customer’s personal belongings.

In addition, tablets or other digital mobile technology looks a lot sharper when presenting estimates and invoices than loose papers on a clipboard. ServiceTitan allows techs to give quick pricing presentations and digital forms for customers to sign electronically.

Give HVAC Techs Modern Customer Service Tools with ServiceTitan

ServiceTitan Mobile gives customers a great impression throughout. It’s a slick, professional tool that gives techs everything they need to provide an ultra convenient, professionally-styled, and hassle-free service experience.

Improve HVAC customer service at every touch point with a combination of traditional CSR methods, and advanced, automated technology. By implementing ServiceTitan’s comprehensive HVAC software system to support your business goals, your company will not only increase customer satisfaction but grow a repeat customer base and profits. To see how ServiceTitan can help grow your HVAC business and provide amazing customer service at the same time, sign up for a free demo now.