Customers want to be kept in the loop. They want to know about your business before they give you a call, so they research your website and online reviews. When they call in for heating or AC repair, they want to know what their potential issue might be and how you can get their equipment back up and running properly. And even more so, customers want information immediately before, during and after their interactions with your company.
We’ve become accustomed to dropping off a package at the post office and being able to track it throughout its entire journey. We’re used to receiving notifications when we purchase something online - we know if it’s been shipped and we’re able to contact the seller if there are any issues. And HVAC companies are now expected to provide similar information. Here are the 5 emails that all HVAC businesses should be sending to their customers.
Appointment confirmation
Sending appointment confirmation emails to your customers is helpful for both you and your business. Once you have an appointment on the books, the customer will want to have it in writing just in case they forget about the time frame you provided or what services will be performed. And not only that, an appointment confirmation email (when using a mass email solution such as MailChimp or SendGrid) will allow your customer to Confirm that appointment. This helps your office manager, because they won’t need to call the customer and make sure that the time they selected will still work. The customer is just able to “click to confirm” within the email itself and they can save that time to their phone calendar or a calendar on their computer.
Automated reminders
These types of emails can come in a few different forms, but typically, businesses will send these out a day prior to the scheduled appointment and then on the day of the actual appointment. These are helpful for when the customer has scheduled an appointment further in advance and then has the potential of forgetting about it. Customers like to receive a friendly reminder that they had something on their calendar. And as the service provider, it ensures that your customer will be ready for you to stop out.
Arrival notifications
These can be automated as well, but they become increasingly more important if a service tech is running late. According to Software Advice, a website that reviews field service software, 64% of customers would never rehire an HVAC company if the tech arrived an hour or more later than scheduled. However, 73% of customers said they WOULD rehire if they were notified if the tech was running late. So in the event that you are going to be running later than scheduled, you can retain a large majority of those customers, simply by sending an email.
Completion email
Customers appreciate knowing that the work they scheduled is completed. For some HVAC jobs, you might have a multi-day project. Your customers might be confused as to whether or not you’ll be coming back for another day of work. These types of emails can tell your customers what work was performed and can also give them a detailed invoice, so there are no questions regarding what they’re paying for.
Satisfaction survey
This email is more for your business' benefit, but it still shows your customers that you’re interested in knowing how your techs did. The information that you can get from satisfaction surveys are incredibly valuable. You can learn a lot from your customer’s perception of their entire interaction. How did they find you? Was it easy to set up an appointment? Did the tech fix the issue on the first trip? You can learn from their answers, improve upon what wasn’t working and continue with what is.
Want to learn a bit more about keeping customers happy? Of course you do! Download our free eBook, 20 Ways to Improve Customer Loyalty! 