HVAC Reputation Management: 10 Ways to Win Customers

In the HVAC industry, reputation management refers to managing customer reviews and SEO (search engine optimization) so that when people search for your services or brand online, your business comes out on top. It also relates to how you engage with existing or potential customers via marketing activities — like email and direct mail — as well as your overall customer service. 

As a matter of fact, recent consumer surveys show:

• 85% of buyers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations

• 71% of consumers would not consider using a business with an average rating below three stars

With all this in mind, managing your HVAC company’s reputation so potential customers choose your business over your competitors has never been more important.

In our experience of working with hundreds of HVAC businesses, there are 10 ways you can build and manage a good reputation that attracts and engages customers and grows your HVAC business.

10 Ways to Build & Manage a Good Reputation for Your HVAC Business

1. Generate more customer reviews by automatically sending out review requests after each job.

2. Respond to reviews quickly so issues don’t escalate.

3. Consolidate all of your reviews in one place so you can keep on top of customer feedback without logging in and out of different review sites.

4. Track and match your reviews to individual techs and jobs so you know what’s driving positive and negative feedback and can take action accordingly.

5. Keep service business listings updated so you don’t miss out on any reviews.

6. Optimize your HVAC website for SEO to increase online visibility. 

7. Promote your Google Business Profile to boost your online presence and credibility.

8. Master Google Local Services Ads to create awareness in your community.

9. Leverage marketing activities such as email and direct mail to build trust with customers.

10. Deliver awesome customer service to get more reviews, customer loyalty, and referrals.

In this post, we’ll discuss each factor and explain how ServiceTitan’s reputation management software helps HVAC business owners optimize their customer reviews along with their other HVAC marketing activities to boost their HVAC company’s online reputation and win business. 

1. Generate More Quality Reviews by Automating Review Requests

The most important aspect of online reputation management is getting as many positive reviews as possible. It’s not often possible to remove negative reviews, so if you keep accumulating positive reviews every week, the negative reviews will be less significant.

To help, ServiceTitan’s reputation management tool lets you and your techs send automated review requests to each customer by text or email immediately after the tech marks the job as complete on their mobile app. This makes it easy for customers to share their experience on an online review site (Google, Yelp, etc.) while it’s top of mind. 

ServiceTitan Strategic Project Manager Heather Donaldson says, “We've seen an increase in reviews coming in to our clients because we're asking at the right time and it's fresh in the homeowner's mind. We’re closing that loop between when they start the journey with the customer to the end of that job. They're getting all of their review requests and every communication with the company within that same text thread, and so it’s connecting the dots.”

How ProSkill Services Uses ServiceTitan to Drive 5-Star Reviews

ProSkill Services, which offers HVAC, plumbing, and electrical services in Arizona, has more than 7,000 Google reviews with a 5-star rating and nearly 800 Facebook recommendations. Co-owner Travis Ringe says there’s more to getting high-quality, positive reviews than simply asking customers for one.

“If you want to drive reviews,” Ringe says, “you have to deliver a full experience worthy of writing a review.”

You also need to make it easy for customers to leave a review by, for example, texting the review link directly to the customer before leaving the job site. 

ProSkill uses ServiceTitan’s built-in messaging tool to customize a personal message and ask customers to leave a Google review.

2. Get Review Notifications Sooner & Respond Quickly

The second most important thing is to ensure you respond to reviews quickly — especially if it’s a negative review. If you’re not aware of a review for several days and the customer is waiting for a response, an issue that could have been addressed swiftly could escalate and hurt your company’s reputation. 

“What you tend to find with consumers is a company with nothing but 5-star reviews is usually a little less trustworthy than a company that has 5-star reviews and a couple 3-stars and 2-stars in there as well,” Donaldson says. “Because consumers tend to look at bad reviews first and how a company resolved the issue before they'll just look at nothing but shining reviews.”

Because ServiceTitan software automatically sends out review requests as soon as each job is completed, users are notified immediately of any new customer reviews and can respond rapidly to any negative feedback, before further problems arise.

3. Consolidate Review Management Tools in One Place

Keeping on top of all your reviews (and star ratings) when they are posted on different review sites can be difficult and time-consuming as you have to go into each service provider separately to follow up on them. 

ServiceTitan’s Reputation Management feature consolidates reviews collected through third-party products such as Yelp, Facebook, and Google into one cohesive system. 

You can also set up alerts so you're always notified when a new review has been posted.

So, instead of logging into the various other review sites to respond to reviews, users can respond directly from the ServiceTitan dashboard. This saves time and helps you manage your reviews more efficiently from one place.

As Ann Collias, Growth Marketing Strategist for Ease Air and Roland Black HVAC (both Griffin Brothers Companies) says, “We are very hyper-focused on online reviews. What is out there online speaks a lot about your company. If we get a bad review, it's really just an opportunity to build a better relationship with that client.”

4. Track & Match Reviews to Technicians, Customers & Jobs

Something that is often overlooked about reputation and online review management by service businesses is figuring out who each review is about — especially the negative reviews. 

Although you can’t do much about a negative review after the fact, knowing which of your techs is generating more negative reviews helps you address personnel issues more proactively to help prevent future negative reviews. This can be done by talking to that tech, doing more training, or any number of other interventions.

ServiceTitan’s robust reviews data allows HVAC business owners to easily match customer reviews to technicians and provides data about specific HVAC jobs so you know exactly which technician performed the job, who’s driving the most reviews, and each technician’s rating. 

Data can be viewed via the technician scorecard where ServiceTitan users get real-time updates on dozens of metrics including customer reviews, generated revenue, memberships sold, and more.

This means you can reward good performance, identify problems, and provide coaching, if required. You can also use the data to incentivize techs to ask for reviews and easily track their progress.

Brian Choate of Choate’s Air Conditioning, Heating and Plumbing says his company discussed implementing a rewards program for a while, but ServiceTitan’s Reputation Management made it possible. They use a points system for positive reviews and hand out awards at the end of the month.

“We have all their stats on-screen,” he says of Choate’s technicians. “They’re always following what place they’re in, and we like a little friendly competition.” 

5. Keep Service Business Listings Updated So You Don’t Miss Reviews

Most social media and business listings sites — Yelp, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Yellow Pages, etc. — are consumer or search-engine aggregated, meaning if your company doesn’t manage and update business listings consistently, consumers may find incorrect data online. 

Not only is there the risk that customers won’t find you and leave a review, but if your listings are inconsistent (for example, you’re listed as “XYZ HVAC” on one site and “XYZ HVAC Inc.” on another, there’s a risk that the review won’t be attributed correctly to your business. 

ServiceTitan ensures your company name, address, and phone number are accurately listed across 60+ business listing sites. This saves HVAC contractors the time and hassle of keeping the listings up-to-date themselves and reduces the chance of you missing out on reviews because of an avoidable error.

6. Optimize Your HVAC Website for SEO

While customer reviews are, in today’s review-heavy world, the most important part of your online reputation, SEO (search engine optimization) is also an extremely important component as it dictates what people see when they Google your brand. 

SEO is when you optimize your website to show up on Google for certain search queries. In short, when someone searches for your HVAC brand online, you want to control the message, and you want your website to show up first. 

Having solid SEO fundamentals helps you do this. Beyond reputation management, strong SEO practices can also help get your website to show up in the search results of more general queries that don’t involve your brand (e.g. “furnace installers Los Angeles”). This increases your online visibility, builds trust, and helps attract potential customers.

Here are four ways to optimize your HVAC website:

• Master local SEO so you can draw customers searching locally for HVAC services. Optimize your website for local search words such as, “Charlotte heat pump” or “HVAC companies near me”. Then, people searching for those terms will find your HVAC business.

• Ensure your website is mobile-friendly. It’s how most customers will find your HVAC services and read your customer reviews.

• Use relevant keywords across your site. Choose ones that consumers might use when searching for your services (e.g. “A/C repair”). Then, you’ll stand a good chance of coming up on top when potential customers search for those terms. 

• Build authority by writing a blog. Share your expertise with your target audience on your blog and increase organic traffic for your HVAC company. 

7. Promote Your Google Business Profile Page

Similar to SEO, another relatively easy way to build your HVAC reputation online is to verify your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business). It’s completely free and, once you’ve set it up, it will help you appear on page 1 of organic Google results when a customer in your area searches for your services. 

Basically, it’s an easy way to help with your SEO efforts since Google often carves out a chunk of its page 1 search results space for a list of Google Business pages: 

8. Master Google Local Services Ads

Buy Google Local Services Ads to make it even more likely that your company appears at the top of Google search results. 

You pay only when a customer contacts your HVAC business through the ad, so it can be a cost-effective way of getting new customer leads. 

ServiceTitan integrates with Google Local Services Ads so customers can directly schedule online appointments with your HVAC business, and provides business owners with ROI metrics on every campaign. This means the whole process is smooth for the customer and improves the chances they will book an appointment with your company. 

9. Leverage Marketing Activities to Build Trust

Finally, an often overlooked aspect of managing your online reputation is to just maintain a good relationship with your entire book of past customers and stay top of mind with prospective customers. 

The more your brand is a known entity in your community, the more trustworthy it will feel to potential customers, which helps when it’s time for them to write about you. And, if you have a growing list of customers who know and like you, they are more likely to leave reviews and help contribute to your online reputation rather than detract from it. 

Two of the most powerful ways of maintaining this contact and loyalty with past customers is through email marketing and direct mail marketing. This doesn’t always need to be an obvious sales pitch. You can build trust by sending out a seasonal check-in with tips on how to avoid winter weather problems, for example, and include a gentle reminder to get their HVAC system checked, too.  

Here are two ways ServiceTitan can help:

Targeted Email Marketing

Targeted email marketing is one of the most effective marketing channels of communicating specific messages with the right audience, and it’s cost-effective, too, if you are a small business with a tight marketing budget. 

ServiceTitan's email marketing feature, Marketing Pro, allows you to send tailored email campaigns by segmenting your email audience by ZIP code, age of equipment, date of last service, new homeowner, and more. 

Using data already collected in ServiceTitan, you can target previous customers with a “We Miss You!” email campaign, follow up with existing customers on unsold estimates, or offer a discount to new homeowners.

With Marketing Pro, you can choose from our huge range of email templates, adjust the text to fit your campaign, and deliver to your chosen audience. 

Delivering super-specific emails to a carefully chosen audience attracts higher open rates and more calls. With ServiceTitan, you can also monitor the exact ROI for each campaign by tracking the email performance and the revenue attribution within the ServiceTitan dashboard. Then, you can tell if your campaigns are working (or not), and adjust accordingly.

Direct Mail Campaigns

Successful direct mail marketing combined with digital marketing activities like the ones we described earlier can help improve your HVAC company’s bottom line. 

You can easily produce creative fliers or marketing postcards to get your message across, so customers remember your company next time they need HVAC services.

ServiceTitan has a library of postcards that businesses can use to execute their direct mail campaigns. Set-up takes minutes — simply choose your design, adjust the text, then print and mail your postcards to your chosen audience. 

Direct mail campaigns cost a set fee per postcard, so you only pay for the number that you send. And, as with email campaigns, you can track the results of each campaign so you can see exactly which ones are driving revenue.

10. Deliver Awesome Customer Service

Above all, nothing helps maintain a good reputation (online or offline) more effectively than delivering excellent customer service. That’s how HVAC businesses get more 5-star reviews, more leads, and more loyal customers. You could do everything else on this list, but if your customer service falls short, all that effort could be a waste of time. 

Barry Palmer, co-owner of All Pro Air in Riverside, California, trains his HVAC techs to treat every customer like they’d treat their grandma. It’s a simple, old-school HVAC marketing method that works.

“We've always had tons of 5-star reviews. People call us because of that. They use us because of that,” Palmer says.

ServiceTitan’s customer experience software helps you deliver awesome customer service with these features:

• A call booking tool so you can greet customers by name and ask all the right questions using customized prompts

• Scheduling & dispatching tools that match the right technician to the right job and ensure they arrive on time

• Automated texts with links to their tech and a GPS tracker so customers know who is coming and when

• Estimate and proposal templates that techs can build with up-to-date pricing information and show to customers via a mobile app

• Financing options so customers can choose what suits their budget

• Payment processing tools with flexible and convenient payment options for customers

• And more

All of these integrated features work together with no need to jump in and out of different software tools, spreadsheets, or paper files. And, if your customers feel like they’ve received stellar customer service — the technician communicated well, showed up on time, and did a great job — they're more likely to give you a great review and a personal recommendation.

Ready to Manage Your HVAC Company’s Reputation with ServiceTitan?

Not having a reputation management service in place to manage customer reviews and attract new business can limit your HVAC company’s profitability and inhibit growth. 

ServiceTitan’s reputation management software helps HVAC business owners optimize their customer reviews, execute strategic marketing campaigns, and deliver outstanding customer service. 

“It’s really about building reputation into your overall marketing strategy,” concludes Heather Donaldson. “The customers who do that are going to have an easier time converting customers.”