Ways to Help Your HVAC Business Connect with Millennials

The youngest generation of homeowners are millennials, those born in the 1980s and the first half of the ’90s. This tech-savvy generation embraces ride sharing instead of taxis, streaming movies instead of buying DVDs, and having food delivered to their door instead of carrying out.

How can the HVAC industry attract young customers the same way these services do? The answer is to modernize your business and emphasize convenience. Here’s how to connect with millennials like never before.

Build a Strong Website

Millennials find new companies to work with by conducting online searches. If you don’t have a robust, impressive-looking HVAC company website, you’ll fall through the cracks. After all, many people judge a company’s credibility by their web design alone.

Keep your website clean and simple, with an emphasis on your brand, colors, and logo. Include a link to your contact information and list your phone number on every landing page. Boost the user experience by making a mobile-friendly version, a must for reaching a younger audience. Become an authority by maintaining a blog, and include a testimonials section where prospective customers can read the feedback you’ve received.

Offer Online Scheduling

You will lose countless customers if you only book appointments over the phone. Millennials, in particular, want the option of browsing your website and filling out a simple form when they’re ready. Here’s what to include on your online booking form:

• Name
• Address
• Phone number (and/or email address)
• Requested service date
• Preferred time of day
• Service required
• Specific notes or requests from the customer

Once a customer submits the form, you receive it instantly through your scheduling system, allowing you to incorporate the request into your calendar with ease.

Provide Tracking Capabilities

Millennials aren’t content with the old scheduling method of “sometime between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.” They want to know when to expect you down to the minute. This is tricky in a service-based business where jobs can take longer or shorter than expected.

The solution is to schedule morning and afternoon appointments. Then, offer automatic text updates to customers when the technician is en route, as well as if there’s a delay. This sort of tracking plays a powerful role in customer satisfaction and appealing to the millennial audience.

Accept Onsite Credit Card Payments

No one pays with cash or checks anymore. Many customers also find it unnerving to have their credit card numbers read off over the phone to dispatchers who process the payment back at the office.

A modern solution is to offer credit card swiping with a tablet and card reader. It’s an inexpensive addition to your technician’s arsenal of tools, and it makes a big difference to your customers.

Offer Personalized Recommendations

Millennials are accustomed to having new products and content recommended to them based on their buying and web browsing habits. With cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) tools at your fingertips, you can pull up a customer’s profile with the tap of a screen.

This allows your technicians to recommend indoor air quality products, thermostat upgrades, and preventative maintenance plans based on their needs. Not only does this make the customer feel like they’re being catered to, but it also increases your chance of making another sale.

It’s All Possible with HVAC Software

The ultimate way to modernize your HVAC business and appeal to millennials is to streamline the whole operation with field management software. This is the key to providing your customers with convenient booking, tracking information, onsite credit card payments, and personalized recommendations. You can also use it to change technicians’ schedules in real time when emergency requests reach your dispatchers.

There’s no better way to manage customer relationships, build your team, and bolster your bottom line than with 3C Connect! Our HVAC software makes it easy to modernize your business with Cost Recovery Plus, a feature that absorbs your setup and ongoing membership costs into your pricing system by increasing the cost of every job by a few dollars.

Ready to try 3C Connect for yourself? Contact us today to request a free demo of our field management software.