Ed. Note: Charlie Greer presenting a year-long series on running service calls, and how to maximize each call in an honest and professional manner. Here is Part 3. Find the first two columns in this series online, at bit.ly/CBBetweenCalls and bit.ly/RunningtheCall.
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The way to succeed in this business is to be thorough. The more you see, the more broken, filthy, and worn out stuff you’ll see. Consequently, a complete inspection on every single call is truly the road to a higher average service invoice.
Dentists are some of the best salespeople in the USA. They really understand the power and necessity of doing a complete inspection. You go in there with a slight toothache and expect to get one tooth filled. As soon as they check out the one tooth, without asking permission or skipping a beat, what do they do? They just nonchalantly start checking every tooth in the mouth!
Go to the immediate problem that prompted the service call and check it out.
Leave no stone uncovered. Make every effort to inspect the indoor blower, the indoor coil and the heat exchanger. The more difficult they are to get at, the higher the likelihood that you’ll find a filthy health hazard that needs to be eradicated.
Observe the condition of components that have not failed yet and do not requiring replacing to get the equipment running, but are in poor condition and will, in your professional opinion, fail at some point during the next year or so.
Leave no stone uncovered. Make every effort to inspect the indoor blower, the indoor coil and the heat exchanger. The more difficult they are to get at, the higher the likelihood that you’ll find a filthy health hazard that needs to be eradicated.
Some techs have a terrible time doing a complete inspection. They say their customers won’t allow them to. In this article, I’ll point out a number of things I’ve seen techs do to trip themselves up.
Don’t:
- Don’t joke around with customers. Techs that do usually have difficulties getting people to cooperate with a complete inspection.
- Don’t announce you’re going to do an inspection “to see if they’ve got any other problems,” and don’t stand there looking for approval to do it. Just start doing it.
- Don’t blurt out the first problem you see or they’ll want you to stop inspecting and start talking money. I can’t stress the importance of keeping your opinions to yourself until you’ve looked their entire system over and written up a prioritized list of every single deficiency you see in their system.
- Don’t write much while looking things over. Writing makes people nervous and they start asking, “How much is all this gonna cost?”
- When you see something additional that requires attention, don’t say anything. Just make a mental note of it.
- Don’t appear anxious to find problems and glad when you do. Take another clue from dentists. When they discover additional problems that go beyond just the one small filling you went there for, they always act very disappointed.
- Don’t do any little mini-sales pitches as you go along.
- Don’t quote prices as you go along or even bring up the topic of money.
- Don’t concern yourself with price, or it getting expensive to fix every deficiency you see.
Should they accompany you? That’s purely your discretion. It can work for you or against you.
If they’re not going to accompany you, say, “If I find any deficiencies, and I’m not saying I will; but if I do find any deficiencies, do you want me to call them to your attention?”
Check both the indoor and the outdoor equipment. When it’s a cooling call, it’s only normal to check the furnace or air handler.
When it’s a furnace or boiler call, it may seem a little unusual to check the air conditioner in the middle of the winter, so if they’re not going to be right there with you when you do, say, “I’m going to step out to your air conditioner and make a record of the make, model and serial number. This way, when you call for service on it we’ll know what we’re coming out to work on.”
When the customer declines an inspection:
That should happen no more than once per year, and there should be a very good reason for it. People with serious mental problems, such as hoarders, can be reluctant to allow people to walk around their home.
Once, when someone declined the inspection, I started writing it on my invoice. He asked, “What are you writing there?” I just said, “I document everything, and I’m documenting that you declined your inspection.” I wasn’t even trying to do anything fancy. I really was just documenting it.
He said, “Wait a minute. If you’re gonna be that way about it, go ahead and do it.”
