HVACBossPro Blog — Maintenance Agreements

Filling Shoulder-Season Schedules From the HVAC Tune-Up Waiting List

The shoulder seasons are the mild weeks between the heat and the cold. The repair phone goes quiet, and the question every owner asks is how to keep the vans out and the techs paid. If you have members on maintenance agreements, the answer is already sitting on your Waiting List.

The Window You Have

The grace period that decides when a visit counts as overdue is covered in The 7-Day Grace: How Overdue Works for HVAC Maintenance Agreement Visits. This article is about the other end of the calendar: using the quiet weeks to get ahead.

In spring, there is usually a stretch after the last cold snap and before the first real heat when AC tune-ups make the most sense. In fall, there is a similar stretch before the furnaces kick on. Those are the weeks the tune-up van should be full, and the weeks your agreement program earns its keep.

Start With What Is Due

Open the Waiting List at the start of the shoulder season and look at the due pins. These members have reached their plan's minimum days since their last visit. Book them first, in clusters, so each day on the tune-up van covers one part of town.

• Pick an area with a good group of due pins.
• Assign them to the tune-up van for one day on the dispatch board.
• Auto-route Closest First or Furthest First from the shop, or set the order by hand.
• Repeat for the next area and the next day.

A week of routes can be laid out in one sitting this way. Members get reminders by text and email, then on-the-way and arrived texts on the day.

Pull Upcoming Visits Forward

Here is where the shoulder season really pays off. The Waiting List shows pins that are not due yet alongside the due ones. When the van has room on a route, pull nearby members who are coming due in the next few weeks onto the same day.

There are good reasons to do this:

• Fuller routes now. A day of tune-ups is better than a half day and an early trip back to the shop.
• Fewer visits in the busy season. Every member done in April is one fewer tune-up competing with no-cool calls in July.
• Members stay in the right season. On a 180-day plan, visits can drift later each cycle. Booking a little early pulls them back.

Keep it reasonable. A few weeks early is fine. Visiting someone far ahead of their due date just to fill a gap means their next visit comes due early too.

Work the Overdue Pins Down to Zero

If the last busy season left overdue pins on the map, the shoulder season is the time to clear them. Text those members from the office, offer a couple of days, and get them on a route. Members who waited a long time for a visit are the ones most likely not to renew, so a prompt visit and a friendly message go a long way.

Mix in Repair Leads From Tune-Ups

Shoulder-season tune-ups turn up things that need fixing: a weak capacitor, a dirty coil, a clogged condensate line, a blower motor making noise. Those findings become estimates, and approved estimates become scheduled repair jobs. In the quiet weeks, the repair van has room to take them.

That turns one slow week into two kinds of work: tune-ups for the members and repairs found on those tune-ups. How to turn findings into approved jobs is covered in Turning HVAC Tune-Up Findings Into Approved Repair Estimates.

When the Weather Turns

Shoulder seasons end suddenly. One hot week and the repair phone is ringing again. When that happens, the dispatch board makes it easy to drag tune-ups to another day or another van. Many shops keep one van on repairs and one on tune-ups as long as they can, so plan members do not get bumped every time a no-cool call comes in.

If you used the quiet weeks well, the busy season starts with most members already done and only a few due pins left. That is the whole point of running agreements through software: the work comes due on its own, and the office fills the slow weeks before they become a problem.

Of course, the Waiting List only has members on it if you sell plans in the first place. The best moment for that is covered next, in Selling an HVAC Maintenance Plan at the End of a Repair Call. For the overview of every tool involved, see the HVAC maintenance agreement software page.