Frisco AC Repair Service Owner Shares Ideas on Quality of Service
Frisco AC Repair Service owner Steve Lauten, President of Total Air and Heat Co. in Plano, Texas, often speaks to industry groups about the importance of training.
“The way you treat your employees is the way they treat your Customers! Keep that in mind when it’s 105 degrees outside, and you ask your techs to run another service call, or your installers to do another job. All I am saying is to make sure your employees know you appreciate what they do for your company and its customers. Tell them Thank You!
- Keep a call log for Call Backs-record every call back by employee. Review the call back and see if it shows an opportunity for training? The purpose of the log is find opportunities to support your employees. Speaking of call backs, the typical call back requires 2.5 visits to correct it. We typically send the same person back at least 1 time, probably 2 times, and then we finally get round to sending a top tech or a manger! Another opportunity for training!
- Call Backs cost more than any single item you do-Call backs are avoidable, and mainly are due to a lack of procedures. Good examples include poor communication between the salesman and the installers, improper material lists, poor communication between the salesman and the customer, being in a hurry, don’t have the right tools on the job, lack of written procedures, and no drawings to show the installers what to do.
- Have you considered a picture based install manual for repetitive jobs?
- Do your installers know what the job should look like if it’s done to your standards? This applies to service calls too.
- do you have a check list of all required tasks on a PM call?
- Ever wondered if all those boxes checked off actually got done? One way to make sure is to use a set of gauges that records all the readings. Testo has a new digital gauge set that can record all refrigerant pressures/temperatures, plus transmit wireless reading to the gauge set for the Delta T across the cooling coil, and then……send all the readings to a wireless printer with actual sub cooling, superheat, Delta T and it prints out the date and time the readings occurred.
- I bought a set of these gauges to try out with my installers. It’s my opinion I can save about 30 minutes per install with a 2 man crew on the job. That’s 5 man hours per week x 49 weeks per year x $50 per crew hour (just a guess of what the bare minimum costs run) =$12,250 reduced labor paid. This gauge set with everything I mentioned has a cost around $2,200. I have not applied any reduced call back savings, or the fact your crew can now do more installs or reduced overtime costs! If you factor in that this gauge set does all refrigerants including ammonia, that it is a temperature gauge and pressure gauge combined I think the cost is worth the investment.
- Answer your telephones like you’re glad the customer called-It disarms upset customers and reinforces happy customers as why they do business with you.
In closing, I have talked to you many times about training, I am sure you are getting tired of me talking about it. As you plan for next year ( I know all of you have budgets), please set aside a percentage of your revenue for training, and put that money in an account so that when you are slowest you can have the funds to pay for training. P.S.-be sure to put set aside some funds to pay for your employee’s wages while training.”
Frisco AC Repair Service, Total Air and Heat, is owned by Steve Lauten, the second generation owner. Founded in 1957 by Steve’s dad, Fred Lauten, Total Air and Heat is proud to have received some of the highest awards for quality and service that are offered in the Industry. Among those awards are the Readers Choice Awards from the Collin County Newspaper, the Trane Pacesetter Award in 2002, and designation as a Trane Comfort Specialist.