HVAC businesses see an influx of regular installation and scheduled maintenance requests. On top of that, customers often request emergency services when they are facing a dire equipment problem. This creates a flurry of service requests at the last minute that may need to be added between already scheduled installation and maintenance appointments.
You could hire more technicians to handle the shifts in demand, but you may end up with idle staff if the work levels off. That is why it is beneficial to maximize your current technician productivity before you decide to increase your workforce.
Improved productivity allows you to absorb the rapid influx of scheduled jobs without drastically increasing your overhead once it settles. And that is where field service management comes in.
A strong field service management strategy combined with a best-in-class software, helps you identify the areas in your business that could be streamlined to save time, such as reducing travel between jobs and automating steps in your current workflows. Here at Zuper, we have found that customers who implement our field service management software save an average of three hours per day.
Advanced Route Optimization
Many customers wait until the last minute to switch on their HVAC system before an incoming change in weather and are then left to frantically call for help if the HVAC does not work. When this happens, your customers will not want to wait long for service. For many, a broken furnace or air conditioner can quickly become an emergency.
As a result, HVAC businesses need scheduling and dispatching tools that are adaptable and user-friendly. You never want to leave your customers waiting because of a poorly organized schedule.
With field service management, you can improve your response times by assigning work based on your technicians’ availability or GPS location. Using real-time location data, your staff can immediately identify the technicians in the surrounding area and filter based on availability. As well, advanced automations and workflows can help to keep travel to a minimum while guaranteeing a swift response for your customers.
Zuper’s AI-assisted dispatching tool further refines your scheduling based on the technician’s skill set. You can also gauge the job efficiency of your technicians based on their job completion history. So, if you have two technicians in the area, you can choose the one with the most suitable skill set for the job to amplify both productivity and customers served.
Plus, your technician in the field will receive an automatic notification when their schedule changes so that their current workflow is not interrupted by constantly checking their schedule for updates.
Flexible and Customizable Workflows
The sooner you get your customer’s HVAC in working order, the happier they will be. And the sooner you get your field service management in place the happier you will be!
Because Zuper’s field service management software enables the non-technical user to create no-code workflows, including custom fields and checklists that empower you to run your business without restrictions, it results in a quick time to return on investment. Plus, improving your work order management will enable you to track job statuses and updates to prevent projects from running too long and improve your operational efficiency.
Additionally, integrating with a premium CRM or ticketing solution such as HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho, and Zendesk, will allow you to connect technicians to customer support and sales. Streamlining the end-to-end work order process will result in a smooth end-to-end customer experience setting you up for increased repeat business, referrals and customer loyalty.
End-to-End Asset Management
A maintained HVAC system lasts longer and reduces unnecessary emergency calls that throw off your schedule. Unfortunately, your customers aren’t always as proactive, and they often overlook maintenance needs. A field service management system can enable asset tracking and planned preventative maintenance services for your customers.
Proper asset management lets you schedule follow up with customers and automate reminders and other proactive communications. Preventive services take less time than urgent service calls, where your technician might spend hours searching for the problem. If you can schedule recurring maintenance, you will likely see increased recurring revenue and a boost in technician productivity.
Efficient Customer Management
Archaic customer management and manual communications can negatively affect technicians’ productivity. If your customers constantly call your office or technician for updates, next steps, or misplaced paperwork, you need to upgrade your customer management workflows.
Ideally, your customer communication, including emails, calls, call notes, and texts should be in a central location. Otherwise, communication becomes unorganized, resulting in duplicate outreach that wastes time and frustrates customers. So, you want to ensure your technician can view every previous customer interaction within the job record to prevent repeated conversations.
The Zuper customer management module enables all job and customer details to be stored in one, central location. You can also integrate Zuper with the CRM of your choice to ensure that you have a single source of truth for the entire life of the customer. As well, you can integrate collaboration and communication apps that enable you to send out automated emails and text messages to your customers. Zuper integrates seamlessly with Slack and Teams as well as messaging solutions like MailChimp, Twilio, RingCentral, ClickSend, Infobip, MessageBird, GupShup, and many more to help you send job request updates as well as promotional marketing messages to your customers.
Even better, consider automating regular communications, such as estimated job arrival times. This may seem trivial but can save minutes from each job, which adds up. You can also use customized email templates that are integrated with Zuper to automate regular, ongoing customer communications.
Contract Management and Accounting Processes
Many HVAC businesses have ongoing or long-term maintenance contracts in place with commercial building owners. These can bring in steady recurring maintenance revenue. The billing and invoicing for these jobs are handled differently than one-off jobs and your field service management solution needs to account for these as well.
If your HVAC business treats contract management, payment, and accounting workflows as an afterthought, you likely need to work on automating your process. You need a system where you can maintain all your updated contracts in one place and trigger workflows based on them as needed. Along with that, you also need an accounting and invoicing process to handle payments for all kinds of jobs.
It’s helpful if your technician can create a simple estimate in just a few minutes from a pre-designed template, then use that estimate to auto-generate an invoice and collect payments. The entire process becomes simplified so that your technicians can stop tacking on unnecessary administration work at the end of each job. Additionally, when recurring contract jobs are marked completed by your technicians, an invoice should automatically get generated and sent to your client. If you have their payment details on file, Zuper can also auto-charge their cards.
Zuper integrates with top accounting software solutions and payment processors–QuickBooks and Stripe–so that your technicians can collect digital customer payments on the spot and cut out the back-and-forth that comes with traditional paper invoices, including providing receipts via text or email. Even if your customer is not ready to pay at the time of service, you can automate customer payment reminders without interrupting your team. For commercial clients, you can automate payment processes by auto-charging your client’s credit card approved and stored in Zuper.
Why Zuper
]Zuper Field Service Management provides your HVAC business with solution to streamline your processes from end-to-end so you can increase your teams’ productivity and improve your customer experience.
Zuper supports your team from scheduling and dispatching to end-to-end work order management and customer management. With added automation and integrations for communication and payment collection, our field service management software ensures your team never misses a step.Discover why our customers get more done and schedule your demo today.
