The competition in the HVAC business can be intense, with a lot of saturation of HVAC businesses offering the same products and services. Working on your HVAC customer satisfaction can be helpful to have an edge over the competition.
What is customer satisfaction? Customer satisfaction gauges how content your customers are with the services provided. Clients will likely return and refer other potential customers to your business when satisfied with your services.
Let’s look at how you can stoke the fires of customer satisfaction, heating up your reputation and profits.
- Give outstanding customer service skills. Be proactive, respectful, honest, and timely with your customer service. Respond to emails and phone calls within 24 hours. Try not to put them on hold for more than a few moments. Besides using basic manners (i.e., please, thank you, excuse me, etc.), take a genuine interest in their concerns. Listen respectfully without interruption, ask questions, and don’t make assumptions. Offer valuable, motivated solutions to inquiries and issues that can arise.
- Communication. Be clear and concise in communicating with customers and potential customers about what is and is not included in your pricing. List out what customers can expect as far as itemized pricing, and how long a service will take. Also, any preparation work that should be done to make the process flow smoother will help make it easy for your client to understand the final cost, process, and will ultimately lead to customer satisfaction.
- Be humble and kind. Correct mistakes promptly, apologize when things go wrong, and thank your customers for bearing with you. Customers will easily forgive an occasional mistake if dealt with quickly and humbly. Thank them for the opportunity to make things right and take appropriate action—express appreciation for their patience and understanding and the experience to gain knowledge and provide better service.
- Feedback. Request feedback after an order or service is complete, as it can dramatically boost your HVAC customer satisfaction. Also, find out what areas are the strongest and which need improvement. ServiceWorks has a built-in customer satisfaction survey feature that automatically sends a survey after completing each service.
- Customer rewards. Everyone loves a well-earned reward. A delightful way to keep customers returning is by rewarding their loyalty to your business. These rewards could be promos, such as a discount for customers who schedule years of system maintenance in advance. It can also be in the form of gifts, like gifting them a gift card to a local coffee shop or restaurant when they have new equipment installed.
- Stellar job performance. Ensure your HVAC work goes above and beyond the call of duty to give the best output. This can be achieved by providing a checklist of operations and procedures to each employee for reference at each job. Thereby creating consistency and ensuring that everything needed for a particular job is done. Providing the correct tools and equipment for each job can also fortify accuracy, efficiency, and consistency, which also helps with HVAC customer satisfaction.
- Consistent Operations. Make it uncomplicated for customers to pay bills, book appointments, and more. Websites with integrated features, such as online scheduling portals, make it a breeze for customers to schedule maintenance services and equipment installs. The simpler you can make it for your clients, the more likely they will return again and again. Apps like ServiceWorks have an online scheduling app and the advantage of your HVAC service technician sending the invoice from their phone to the client immediately after a job is complete. Your customer can then pay that bill online quickly, eliminating the need for a paper invoice and the inconvenience of waiting for a check in the mail.
- Dependability, reliability, and predictability. Providing reliable and predictable services to every client is imperative so they gain trust and keep hiring your business back. This is more than just the servicing or repairs; it involves arriving at the scheduled time every time, consistency in services provided and protocol, sending invoices out consistently, and more.
- Be kind to your employees. Treat your staff with the kindness and courtesy you show your HVAC clients. Unhappy employees who feel overworked, underpaid, and unappreciated will lack the desire to provide stellar customer service. Your staff represents you and your company and needs your backing, guidance, and respect to do their best job.
Now, you have a clear direction on what you can work on to improve your HVAC customer satisfaction. It doesn’t have to be a considerable undertaking; with simple changes and practices and help from an app like ServiceWorks, you’ll be the best in the HVAC biz. But that’s not all! ServiceWorks offers a free 14-day free trial to check out all its handy features, such as automated customer satisfaction surveys, automatic invoicing after a job is completed, integration with accounting apps like QuickBooks, route optimization, and online scheduling to make it as easy as possible for your clients to book HVAC services easily. So why not try it today?
