In our last article, we laid out the three best field services management software solutions based on whether you need a budget solution, something for a small business or something for a mid-market operator. As an HVAC business though, you’re no doubt wondering whether it’s a good fit for your unique challenges. So, in this article, we’re going to delve into how Optsy solves the problems you face and why you’ll find it’s the best HVAC field service software solution.
What is Optsy, and why is it the best option for small HVAC businesses?
Optsy is an all-in-one piece of software that automates a huge amount of the manual administrative tasks HVAC businesses need to complete on a day-to-day basis. This frees up administrative staff, so they can provide better customer service, and frees up technical staff, so they can spend more time on income-generating tasks, like installing and maintaining heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems.
Here are just some of the things you can do with Optsy’s HVAC field service software:
- Set up common services and their required parts, so you can create estimates and quotes with just a few button clicks. This means you can be the first to respond to a potential customer’s request for a quote, dramatically increasing the chances that you’ll win their business.
- Enable your service techs to send customer invoices as soon as they finish each job, with just a click of a button (or even take a payment there and then), so you get paid faster and don’t have to spend your weekends putting together invoices manually.
- Automatically send customers a receipt and update your accounting software when you receive a payment, so you don’t have to deal with customers chasing receipts or spend hours tallying up your income at tax time.
- See at a glance the best time to schedule each customer’s job based on where they are, the availability of the technicians who have the skills for that work and your team’s existing schedule. This will stop your technicians zigzagging across town and cut your business vehicle costs.
- Automatically dispatch the best tech for a given task when emergency jobs come in, so your customers rave about your prompt service.
- Automate ETA messages, so your customers know when their technician will arrive.
- Save money by combining multiple business software subscriptions into one.
In a nutshell, Optsy is the best option for small HVAC businesses like yours because it enables you to win more customers without working harder or increasing your overhead expenses. In fact, it can even help you save money!
The top benefits of Optsy for HVAC businesses
Running even a small HVAC business is never a walk in the park due to the many responsibilities involved and because the industry is so competitive. Here are just some of the reasons you’ll love Optsy.
1. Lower overheads
Overhead costs are a huge challenge for most small HVAC businesses. If not controlled properly, they can easily consume most of your profits.
Optsy comes to the rescue in three key ways:
- Detailed, fully customizable, reports on daily spending, productivity and anything else you need to know, help you ensure your limited funds are being spent in the most useful way
- Completely flexible automations ensure your employees focus more on income-generating work
- By providing all the functionality you need to run your HVAC business, so you don’t have to pay more for multiple software subscriptions
2. Less time spent on admin
How much time to you and your team spend on the following important administrative tasks:
- Creating estimates or quotes?
- Invoicing customers?
- Chasing customer payments?
- Producing receipts?
- Looking up past client service history?
- Scheduling SLA jobs?
- Updating your accounting software?
- Reviewing timesheets and calculating contractor pay?
- Rescheduling jobs because the necessary tools have been double-booked?
- Managing parts inventory?
If you could halve that time, how much more time would you have to spend with your family? How many more customer jobs could your team do? What if reduced your admin time by 75% or 90%?
Optsy can put all those tasks almost entirely on autopilot, drastically reducing your administration hours.
3. Better customer service
Poor customer satisfaction is among the top reasons why small HVAC businesses fail, which is unsurprising when you understand that 91% of consumers are more likely to buy again from the same business if they received good customer service from them, while the same percentage will stop doing business with a brand as a result of poor customer service without even making a complaint. The question is, how do you provide great customer service without investing heavily in a dedicated customer service team — something most small HVAC businesses can’t afford.
We’ve previously outlined five great ways to improve customer service without breaking the bank. Here are some examples of how Optsy’s HVAC field service management software can help you accomplish those ideas:
- Respond promptly to customers — by automating estimates, quotes and scheduling, Optsy enables you to rapidly respond to customer enquiries
- Deliver on your promises — by giving you an instant understanding of when you can schedule jobs, Optsy enables you to make realistic promises and fulfil them
- Go the extra mile to make your customers feel valued — by giving you an ‘at a glance’ overview of your customer details and interactions, Optsy makes it quick and easy for you to use your customer’s preferred name, check their work order history when you’re on the phone with them, and let them know when your staff are on the way to their job
- Be proactive — through reminders and SLA automations, Optsy makes it easy to schedule tasks you need to do as part of your service-level agreements before your customers think to call you about them
4. You’ll gain a competitive advantage
In an industry that’s as competitive as HVAC is, it can seem impossible to differentiate yourself and gain a competitive advantage. Don’t despair! Your business doesn’t have to engage in a race-to-the-bottom pricing war to remain competitive.
Three great ways you can gain a competitive advantage are:
- Provide the very best quality field service
- Increase the value for money you offer your customers
- Improve your customer service
Now, we’ve just outlined above how Optsy can help you improve your customer service, so let’s look at ways Optsy can help you with the other two.
Provide the very best quality field service
Not all your staff are equally skilled at performing all the services your business offers. But sometimes you feel you have to assign less-than-ideal staff to jobs just so you can get them done quickly enough. Optsy can solve that problem by constantly ensuring your work schedule is optimized so that the best technician for each job is assigned — without sacrificing timeliness or making your techs drive back and forth across town to get to each job.
Increase the value for money you offer your customers
Ask your customers what they value most from HVAC businesses, and then let Optsy help you deliver that value.
Maybe they need help understanding how to keep their heating costs low. If that’s the case, use Optsy to automatically deliver a helpful guide with every invoice. You might even offer a heater maintenance package and use Optsy to automatically schedule each maintenance visit.
Maybe they’re worried about germs building up in their cooling towers. If that’s the case, you could prepare a couple of guides to reducing the risk of legionella and other serious illnesses in cooling towers. One could spell out what needs to be done at installation and Optsy can automatically deliver those with relevant cooling estimates and quotes. The second could spell out what needs to be done once a cooling tower is installed, and again, Optsy can automatically deliver that with invoices.
It’ll take a little effort or maybe a small financial expenditure to produce those kinds of guides, but once you’ve got them, it won’t cost you a cent to deliver that value to your customers. And if you create a maintenance package, it could even increase the lifetime value of your customers!
Is Optsy a good investment for your HVAC business?
Obviously, we think Optsy is an excellent investment for any HVAC business, otherwise we wouldn’t be selling it. But an objective look at the pros and cons of Optsy’s field services software also reveals that it’s a worthwhile investment, especially if your goal is to outshine competitors and improve your brand in a short period.
Optsy automatically handles plenty of complex administrative work to ensure technicians focus on revenue-generating tasks, which by itself makes Optsy a good investment. But if you’re currently using other subscription software tools, like Office 365, Optsy makes an even better investment because it’ll save you money in the long run, especially if you choose to pay a single fee for lifetime access.
Why is Optsy is the best HVAC field services software?
Your HVAC business offers a valuable service to consumers — you’re improving their lives by ensuring they can live and work in a comfortable environment. In some cases, you may even be saving lives by preventing people from overheating and succumbing to heat-related illnesses. Given all that, you shouldn’t have to scrounge around trying to find ways to cut costs just so you can keep your business afloat.
Here at Optsy, we’ve developed a tool that’ll help you maintain and grow your business. That in and of itself doesn’t make it unique. But the fact that you can make one, affordable payment to access its benefits, and that it’s super easy to use (we’ll even help you load in all your existing data and customize it to your exact needs), makes it the best choice.
We don’t expect you to take our word for it though. Try a free demo and see. Plus, if you still need more information to help decide whether Optsy is the software for you, check out our post on how much Optsy can save your business per year.