HVACBossPro Blog — Maintenance Agreements

Tagging HVAC Maintenance Plan Members So the Whole Team Knows

A member who calls with a no-cool problem in July expects to be treated like a member. That only happens if whoever answers the phone knows, in the first few seconds, that this person is on a plan. Tags are how you make that automatic.

Members Should Be Obvious

Once you have decided what goes in the plan, as covered in What to Include in an HVAC Maintenance Plan, the next job is making sure everyone in the company knows who gets those benefits.

In a small shop, the owner might know every member by name. That stops working at a few dozen members, and it never works for the new office hire or a tech on their second week. The membership has to live on the client record, where everyone can see it.

The Maintenance Plan Tag

HVACBossPro lets you add tags to clients. Common ones for HVAC shops are Maintenance Plan, Commercial and VIP, and you can add your own.

Tag every member Maintenance Plan the day they sign up, whether that is at the end of a repair call, from an approved estimate, or through the website sign-up form. Make it part of the same routine as setting the plan's days between visits on their address. If one step happens without the other, you end up with members who get visits but no benefits, or benefits with no visits.

What Tags Change in Practice

A tag is just a label, but it changes how people act:

• On the phone. The office pulls up the client, sees Maintenance Plan, and knows to apply priority scheduling and the member repair price.
• On dispatch. When the board is full on a hot day, members get placed first according to your priority policy.
• On estimates. Whoever builds the estimate adds the member price lines from your service list instead of the standard ones.
• In reports. Tags let you see how many members you have and which ones need attention.

The priority side is a policy decision more than a software one, and it is covered in Priority Service for HVAC Maintenance Plan Members: A Policy You Can Keep.

Custom Fields for the Details

Tags answer a yes-or-no question: is this person a member? Custom fields hold the details. Useful ones for an agreement program:

• Plan type — two-visit, yearly, commercial quarterly.
• Member since — the date they first signed up.
• Plan price — what this member pays, which matters if you raise prices for new members but hold them for existing ones.
• Preferred season — for yearly members, which season their visit belongs in.
• Cancellation reason — for former members, why they left.

Keep the list short. Every field someone has to fill in is a field that will be left blank. Pick the three or four you will actually use.

Plan type is the one most shops find they need first. Once you have a mix of two-visit, yearly and commercial members, being able to tell them apart at a glance saves the office from opening each address to see what plan is set there. Member since comes next, because it tells you who your longest members are when you decide who gets held at their old price.

Removing Tags When Members Leave

Tags only help if they are accurate. When a member cancels, sells the house or stops paying, take the Maintenance Plan tag off and update their plan. Otherwise they keep getting member pricing, and your member count in reports looks better than it is.

Some shops add a Former Member tag at the same time. That makes it easy to find people for a win-back offer later, and to see how many members you are losing over time.

Tags for Landlords and Commercial

A landlord with many rental homes is one client with many addresses. Tag the client Maintenance Plan if the agreement covers their properties, and add the Commercial tag for business accounts. Commercial buildings on a quarterly plan get both.

Because each address carries its own plan and its own equipment, the tag can sit on the client while each property still comes due on its own schedule on the Waiting List.

Make Tagging a Habit

The tag takes seconds to add. The trick is making sure it always gets added. A short checklist for every new member helps:

• Convert the sign-up or approved estimate into a client.
• Set the plan on the address: 180, 365 or 90 days.
• Tag the client Maintenance Plan.
• Fill in plan type and member since.
• Confirm the card is on file.

Do those five things every time and the whole team will know who your members are. To see how tags fit with the Waiting List, reminders and billing, visit the HVAC maintenance agreement software page.