An answering service for HVAC companies that tells a no-heat call from a tune-up
Your techs are in an attic and the office is on another line. Here is what a missed call costs an HVAC company, and how each way of answering handles “my furnace just stopped and it’s 20 degrees out.”
No card needed. Keep your number. One code undoes it.
The problem
HVAC calls bunch up. The first hot week or the first cold snap, the phone rings all day, and the callers with no heat or no AC call the next company if yours rings out. Many won’t leave a voicemail. The quiet seasons bring different calls: tune-ups, quotes and questions about a maintenance plan.
These are the calls an HVAC company misses.
The calls you’re missing
- “My furnace just stopped and it’s freezing. Can someone come today?”
- “The AC is blowing warm air. Do you have anything this week?”
- “What’s your service-call fee, and does it go toward the repair?”
- “Do you have a maintenance plan, and what does it include?”
- “I smell gas near the furnace.” on a Sunday night.
What a missed call may cost
About $2,288 a month in missed revenue
An estimate, using the missed-call calculator’s sum with example numbers: 5 missed calls a week, 80% who never call back, 33% of them who would have booked, 400 dollars for the average service visit, times 52 weeks, divided by 12 months.
An average job of $400 is the calculator’s home-services example. Use your own average, and remember a maintenance customer often comes back every year. These are not your numbers and not a promise of what any service wins back. GotItDesk is $99 a month ($79 for our first 100 customers): at that average, 1 booking a month brings in revenue equal to the subscription price, before your own costs.
Your four options, side by side
| Voicemail | Answering service | GotItDesk | Front-desk hire | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Answers when your techs can’t | Records only | Depends on the plan | Yes, 24/7 | Office hours |
| Knows your service-call fee | No | If it’s in the script | From the prices you set | Yes |
| Books the visit | No | Some do | Yes: its own calendar, Google Calendar or Outlook | Yes |
| No-heat and no-AC calls | Waits in a mailbox | Passes it on, if scripted | Put through to the numbers you chose, or a message | Yes, in hours |
| Typical cost | Free | Per call or per minute: ask each provider | $99 a month, 1,000 minutes | Wages |
Answering-service prices vary a lot by provider and plan; check each one.
When another option is the better pick
- Voicemail is fine if your office is staffed all day and the phone is rarely missed.
- An answering service is the better pick if you want a person on every call and mostly need messages taken and passed to a dispatcher.
- A dispatcher or office hire is the better pick if you run many trucks and need someone to route them live. GotItDesk books visits; it doesn’t dispatch.
How GotItDesk handles the call
- Greets the callersays it’s the company’s virtual assistant
- What is the system doing?heating or cooling, and whether it’s a repair, a tune-up or a quote
- Listens for trouble“no heat”, “gas smell”, “carbon monoxide” go to your on-call numbers
- Gets the addressasks where the job is before booking
- Quotes your feethe service-call fee and any price on your list
- Books the visita column per technician, spells the name back and emails you the booking
Listen to the sample call: a recorded, scripted ceramic-coating call in the live voice. Your own business is one click away, below.
What’s particular to this trade
- No heat and no AC come first. “No heat”, “gas smell” and “carbon monoxide” are put through to the numbers you chose, or taken as a message if nobody picks up. It doesn’t send a technician. For a gas smell or carbon monoxide, callers should leave the building and dial 911.
- Your service-call fee, not a guess. It quotes the fee on your price list and what you wrote about whether it goes toward the repair. A repair it has no price for becomes a message for your team, not a made-up number.
- Repair, tune-up or quote. Add a service for each, with its own length, so a tune-up books differently from a no-cool call. It takes the system type and the symptom in the caller’s words, so your tech knows what to expect.
- Maintenance plans, in your words. It repeats what you wrote about your plan: what it includes and what it costs. It can’t sign anyone up or take payment, so a caller who wants to join becomes a message.
- The busy weeks. You forward only the calls nobody picks up: busy, no answer or after hours. In the first heat wave your office still answers first, and the calls it can’t get to are answered instead of ringing out.
Set up in about ten minutes, and the price
Paste your website and it suggests your hours, services and prices. You choose a voice, call your new GotItDesk number to hear it answer, and only then dial one code to forward the calls you miss. It says it’s a virtual assistant in its first sentence.
The free trial is your first 10 bookings, up to 14 days or 59 minutes, no card. Then $99 a month with 1,000 minutes ($79 for our first 100 customers). No overage bills. See pricing.
What it doesn’t do yet
Connections to field-service software (ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro and the like), texts to customers, payments and deposits, and sign-ups for maintenance plans are not live. Nothing is dispatched. Bookings go to GotItDesk’s own calendar or your Google Calendar or Outlook, and every booking and message is emailed to you. We’d rather you know now.