HVACBossPro Blog — Maintenance Agreements

Priority Service for HVAC Maintenance Plan Members: A Policy You Can Keep

“Plan members go to the front of the line” is one of the easiest promises to make at a kitchen table and one of the hardest to keep on the hottest day of the year. A good priority policy is one your office can follow every time, even when every phone line is lit.

Priority Starts With Knowing Who Is a Member

You cannot give members priority if the office does not know who they are, which is why Tagging HVAC Maintenance Plan Members So the Whole Team Knows comes first. With the Maintenance Plan tag on every member, the office sees membership the moment the client comes up. The rest is policy.

Decide What Priority Actually Means

“Priority” can mean several different things. Pick one, write it down, and make sure your techs and office describe it the same way. Common versions:

• Booked ahead of non-members. When two calls come in for the same day, the member gets the earlier slot.
• Reserved slots. A couple of openings each day held for member calls during peak weather.
• Same-day or next-day effort. A promise to try for same or next day on no-cool and no-heat calls, without guaranteeing it.

Avoid promising a specific number of hours. In a heat wave, a promise like “within four hours” breaks quickly, and a broken promise does more damage than a modest one kept.

Write the Policy for the Worst Week

The test of a priority policy is not a quiet Tuesday in April. It is the third day of a heat wave with every van booked and the phone ringing nonstop. Ask yourself whether you could honor the promise that day.

If you have a hundred members and a bad week brings a lot of member calls on the same day, can you handle them? If not, soften the wording. “Members are scheduled before non-members on the next available opening” is something you can do every time. Members appreciate honest promises more than big ones.

How the Office Applies It

The policy lives in people's heads unless the workflow supports it. In HVACBossPro:

• The tag shows on the client. Whoever answers sees Maintenance Plan right away.
• The dispatch board shows each van's day. The office can see where a member call fits and drag a non-urgent job to another day to make room.
• Crew GPS on the office map shows which van is closest, which helps squeeze in a member near an existing route.
• Two-way texting lets the office tell the member when to expect the tech, without a long phone call.

Make sure every person who books calls knows the policy word for word. A short line on a sticky note by the phone works.

It also helps to decide ahead of time who makes the call when two members want the same slot. Usually it is first come, first served among members, with a no-heat call for an elderly member or a family with a newborn going ahead of a noisy fan. Whoever runs dispatch should have the final say, so the person on the phone is not stuck making promises on their own.

Keep Tune-Ups From Getting Bumped

There is a second kind of priority members care about: getting the tune-up they paid for. When repair calls flood in, the easy move is to pull the tune-up van onto repairs. Do that for a day and it is fine. Do it for two weeks and the Waiting List fills with overdue pins.

Many shops protect at least part of the tune-up schedule even in busy weeks. One van on repairs, one on tune-ups is a common setup. If you have to pull the tune-up van, text members whose visits are being moved so they know they have not been forgotten.

Tell Members What They Get

Put your priority policy in the plan description in your service list, on the sign-up page, and on the invoice for each tune-up. When a member calls during the busy season, the office can say: “You're on our plan, so you're ahead of non-member calls. The earliest we can get there is tomorrow morning.” That is a clear promise, kept.

Members who get what they were promised renew. Members who were promised more than they got cancel, often with a story to tell their neighbors.

Review It Each Season

After each busy season, look back. How many member calls came in during the worst stretch? Were you able to honor the policy? If you fell short, either adjust the policy or adjust capacity, such as adding a tech before next summer or holding more slots for members.

The next guide covers the money side: Auto-Charging HVAC Maintenance Agreement Visits to the Card on File. For the full set of agreement tools, see the HVAC maintenance agreement software page.