Customer service can make or break a business and the same is true for the HVACR industry – happy customers are the backbone of success. Offering exceptional customer service is crucial for business growth while setting the business apart from its competitors. It allows businesses to foster relationships with returning customers and creates an improved ability to organically attract referrals.

HVACR professionals are always on the move, making it difficult to create consistent and memorable customer experiences. However, there are five specific things businesses at all stages should be doing to ensure their customers are receiving a great experience.

Provide a Timely Response

When customers have a problem, especially when it comes to their homes or a potential emergency situation, they’re looking for the fastest response time possible. The businesses that respond the fastest are likely to have a significant leg up over the competition. There are a few specific ways that you can ensure customers are receiving quick responses:

• Allow customers to submit detailed work requests online: You can offer a seamless, convenient work request experience by adding a simple online booking form to your website.
• Keep customers informed: Once the job is scheduled, make sure customers stay ready for your visit with updates provided via email or text message.
• Send Reminders: Leading up to the visit, send automated appointment reminders to ensure customers are ready for your arrival. This gives customers even more visibility around the status of their requests.

Personalize Each Experience

Providing a highly personalized experience for each customer builds a stronger relationship that allows them to better trust who’s working in their homes. It’s also a natural way to increase the number of repeat customers.

Start by remembering the unique details of every client and job. This often starts with your client relationship management platform, where you can keep track of details, such as job notes, images, who is providing access to the property, or any pets to be aware of. Interactions should be as seamless as possible so saving all of the details can help avoid re-asking questions or causing unnecessary friction.

Additionally, consider making personalized recommendations for premium packages or add-ons. For instance, you might notice an air filter needs replacing while at the site and offer to replace it.

Give Customers Convenient Options

Offering flexible and convenient service options removes stress from the customer and creates a positive experience from the very beginning. Three easy ways to do this include:

• Use each customer’s preferred communication method: Find out if they prefer email, text messaging, or phone calls to get job updates and questions from you.
• Let customers review and approve job documents online: The days of passing physical paperwork back and forth are over. Give customers online access to job documents.
• Make it easier to pay, online or by credit card: Offer online credit card processing and let customers save their preferred payment methods. You can also help your repeat customers make automatic, recurring payments with saved cards.

Show Your Work

Homeowners want to know where their money is going, and they need to trust that you’re doing the best work you can. Be sure to show customers what they’re paying for with the following actions:

• Provide itemized quotes: You can better earn a client’s trust with service quotes that display services and prices. To take this a step further, be sure to add images to each line item to help customers fully understand what you’re providing. Additionally, consider adding optional line items that offer good, better, and best pricing packages they can select directly in the quote before approving.
• Send images of finished work: Take photos of your finished job to show that you’re proud of the work and that you’ve done quality work. Being able to see the before and after differences will go a long way to giving customers peace of mind.

Seek Out Feedback

Asking customers for feedback shows you care about their experience and builds more trust in the relationship. Be sure to incorporate this practice with the following:

• Follow-up notes: Send a follow-up email or text message after every job thanking your customer for choosing your business and asking if they’re happy with the work that’s been done – something that can generally be automated.
• Create a survey: Build a customer feedback survey that’s shared as part of a follow-up that can help to identify your biggest strengths and potential learnings for future jobs.
• Update your policies: When a customer shares feedback, focus on what’s constructive – brainstorm with your team about how you can improve the service experience, and make sure to update your processes and policies to reflect this change.

Providing a great customer experience doesn’t have to be a big lift, but there’s a good number of tools available to help you both ensure a positive interaction and automate customer service. By incorporating each of the steps above, you can build a stronger reputation that beats out the competition, grows the number of repeat customers, and ultimately allows you to focus on winning more work.