HVAC answering service: handling the first hot week of summer

What the phone has to do that week

In the first hot week of summer an HVAC answering service has one job. Get every no-cool call down in enough detail that you can sort the day without calling anyone back to ask what's wrong. Name, address, what the system is doing, who's in the house, when someone can be home. If the phone does that, you can triage from the driveway. If it doesn't, you spend the hottest week of the year playing dispatcher from somebody's attic.

It goes wrong because of timing. Every system that limped through spring quits in the same few days, usually starting the first afternoon it gets properly hot. The capacitor that was weak in May gives up. The condensate drain nobody flushed backs up and trips the float switch. And all of those homeowners call between 7 and 9 the next morning, while you're loading the truck.

A no-cool call, taken properly

None of this is diagnosis. It's what you'd ask if you picked up yourself, written down in the caller's words. Get the six things below onto the page and you can often guess what needs to be on the truck before you've turned the key.

You're still the one guessing, though. The line never tells a caller what's wrong with their system.

• What it's doing. Blowing warm, not blowing at all, running and then cutting out, or a blank thermostat.
• The outdoor unit. Is the fan turning? Humming but not spinning? Silent?
• Water or ice. Water near the indoor unit or on a ceiling under the attic. Ice on the copper line.
• The equipment. Central split, heat pump, package unit on the roof, mini split. Roughly how old.
• The house. Address, gate or access notes, and whether anyone there is elderly, very young or unwell.
• Your customer or not. Have you been out before, and do they say they're on a maintenance plan?

No-heat calls are the same problem in a coat

The first cold snap is the mirror image. Furnaces that haven't fired since March. Heat pumps blowing cool air. The intake swaps a few questions: gas, electric or oil, whether the blower runs, whether the thermostat is calling for heat, and whether there's a light blinking on the furnace (and how many flashes, if they can see it).

One firm line here. Callers sometimes mention a smell, or an alarm going off. Our line doesn't give safety advice of any kind, on any call. It doesn't reassure anyone and it doesn't tell them what to do with their equipment. It takes the details and follows your instructions for that kind of call, which for most contractors means telling the caller the owner will ring them straight back. What you say when you call is your trade and your license.

Maintenance plan questions arrive at the worst time

The same week, your plan customers call too. Am I still on the plan? Does it cover this? You were meant to come out in spring, did that happen? Do I get priority?

The line can explain what the plan is: what's included, what it costs, whether members move up the list. All of that comes from what you've written into its instructions. What it can't see is your customer records, so it doesn't tell anybody their membership is current or that a repair is covered. It takes the name and address, notes that they say they're on the plan, and you check. If you want plan customers treated differently from the first ring, add their numbers as approved or VIP contacts, and the line knows who they are when they call.

People without a plan ask about one in a heat wave, by the way. Put the price in the instructions. It may be the easiest sale of your year, and it usually goes to voicemail.

Decide what an emergency is before the week starts

In a heat wave every caller says it's an emergency, and for them it is. You still have one truck, or three. So write the rule down in plain words while it's cool out.

It might read like this. No cooling with someone elderly, an infant or someone unwell in the house: urgent, I call back first. Water coming through a ceiling: urgent. Everyone else gets their details taken and an honest promise of a call back today with a time. Be clear on what urgent buys, though. The line can't put a caller through to you. It takes the address, what's happening and a callback number, tells the caller you'll ring them back, and the written summary reaches you as soon as the call ends. You make that call first, knowing what you're walking into.

The honest promise matters. The line won't invent an arrival time, because it doesn't know your day. It says what you told it to say. The home services page has a starting set of instructions with the blanks marked.

A Tuesday in July, 7:10am

An example, and only an example. Say you run a two-truck shop. Graham, the owner, is strapping a ladder down when his phone goes. He lets it forward, and Lloyd, the assistant, answers as the company.

The caller says the house was 84 when she woke up. Lloyd asks what the system's doing. Air's coming out of the vents but it isn't cold, and the unit outside is humming without the fan turning. No water anywhere she can see. The system is about ten years old. Her father lives with her and he's 81. She's home all day.

That meets Graham's rule, so Lloyd tells her Graham will call her back himself, and soon. That isn't the same as being put through, and Lloyd doesn't pretend it is. The written note reaches Graham as the call ends, with her address and everything she said. He reads it at the tailgate, rings her, says he'll be there before ten, and already knows what to check first. Four more calls come in before eight. None of them meet the rule, and each one becomes a note with a callback promised for today.

Set it up in April

Nobody rewrites their phone setup during the first hot week. Do it in spring, when the worst call of the day is someone asking what size filter they need.

Write the rate card: diagnostic fee, after-hours fee, tune-up price, plan price. Write the emergency rule. List the towns you cover. Then set your mobile to forward the calls you miss. On Verizon that's *71 plus the line's number. On AT&T and T-Mobile it's *61*1 plus the number, then #. Our guide to forwarding missed calls has the rest, and after-hours answering covers nights and weekends.

Then call it yourself and be a difficult customer. Read the note. Fix what's missing. By the time the forecast says 95, the phone should be the one part of the business you've already tested.

Common questions

More on home services

• An answering service for plumbers that takes the whole job down
• Answering service for contractors: quotes, callbacks and site visits
• Answering calls as a one-truck electrician
• Roofing calls after a storm: what to do with all of them