The ACHR News has a great article in this week’s issue about how HVAC companies are adopting mobile technology to increase productivity and operational efficiency. John Hall’s article, Mobile Office Changes How HVAC Business Is Done, explores how “a company’s ability to access on-the-spot information is vital to working efficiently and professionally” and how new developments in mobile technology makes that possible.

The article is great, not just because it features dESCO’s app ESC Mobile, but also because it demonstrates the importance of implementing the right mobile technology in an HVAC company. Here are a few choice quotes from the article about what ESC Mobile is doing for HVAC companies:

“Our app appeals to and is accessible to everyone,” said Jonathan Frei of dESCO LLC. “First, the app appeals to the computer illiterate in its ease of use. Most people who are able to operate the basic built-in apps on their smart phone, like the calendar and contact manager, will be proficient with our app in a matter of minutes.”

[…]

Frei said the key is being able to connect with customers. “Connecting with customers is and always will be the most critical function of mobile technology for businesses,” he said. “Other connections, such as communications with the office, suppliers, and web data, are important, but only in so far as they enable better connections with customers. The measure of value for any new communication technology is how well it frees up your staff to pay attention to and spend time with your customers.

[…]

“In the past, if a technician needed a phone number, the service history on a customer, or a customer’s service agreement status, he would have to call the office and have someone look up the information and give it to him,” said Frei. With the advent of mobile computing, the tech can look it up himself, getting the information quicker and leaving the person in the office free to talk to customers or to do other important work.

“The technology is turning many two-person jobs into one-person jobs. Therefore, I am comfortable asserting the technology saves at least 50 percent of the time spent communicating work information,” Frei said.

You can read the full article on the ACHR News site here.

You can learn more about ESC Mobile for iPhone/iPad, Android or Windows Phone 7 on our site or you can try the app yourself by searching “ESC Mobile” in you phone’s app store.

It’s probably safe to say that two of the biggest expenses in running your service company are your technicians’ pay and the cost of maintaining your vehicles. Where are your techs all day? Are they being efficient with their time? Where are they going with your vehicles? How are they treating the vehicles you let them drive?

ESC management software is a powerful tool for managing a service company, helping with scheduling techs, invoicing customers, and managing service agreements. However, some of your company’s most valuable assets (and largest expenses) are your vehicles and the pay for the people driving them. To help lower costs and increase tech productivity, ESC integrates with SageQuest for real-time vehicle tracking, using mounted GPS units. This means you’ll always know where your vehicles are and how your techs are using them.

Below is a video where Jack Westenbarger of Acree Air Conditioning, Inc. discusses how he uses ESC and SageQuest to manage his company’s operations and assets:

[Can't see the video? Watch it here]

If you would like to learn more about how ESC and SageQuest work together to help service companies generate more revenue and lower costs, please join us and SageQuest for a live webinar on how the integration between the two programs can do just that.

We are conducting two webinars on the ESC/SageQuest integration on August 9 at 2 p.m. EDT and August 10 at 11:30 EDT. Sign up for either date to discover how GPS vehicle tracking can make your technicians more productive and save you money.

Sign up for the webinar on August 9 at 2 p.m. EDT

or  

Sign up for the webinar on August 10 at 11:30 EDT

We hope you will join us for this event.

The ESC Mobile Smartphone App makes service technicians more efficient in the field by providing them with all the information they need to get their jobs done. For you and your technicians, it means less paper work and more paid work!

You wouldn’t send one of your technicians to a job without the right tools or parts to finish the work. Give them the critical customer history information they need to make good decisions and to perform more efficiently in the field.

Our customers that have been using ESC Mobile have seen great leaps in the productivity of their technicians, in the ability to service their customers well, and in the accuracy of their payroll. If you want to see what our customers think of ESC Mobile, check out these customer testimonials in the video below:

ESC Mobile Customer Testimonials

ESC Mobile works with ESC Service Management Software to save service techs’ time with features including:

• Full dispatch information
• Get customer history, equipment, and service agreement information
• GPS tracking and mapping
• Real-time job status updates
• Create invoices and quotes
• Process payments
• Customer signature capture
• View documents from ESC
• Attach pictures from phone’s camera
• Add new customer equipment

For a quick snapshot of what ESC Mobile is all about, check out this 30-second overview video:

30-Second ESC Mobile Overview

ESC Mobile is available for the iPhone, Android phones, and Windows Phone 7. You can get the free demo version of the app from your phone’s app store by searching “ESC Mobile.” Try it on your phone today, and call me at 800-226-7529 to see how it can make your company and techs more efficient.

ESC customers are very creative in the many ways they use the service software to manage their businesses. With the explosion of mobile and tablet computers now in the marketplace, ESC users are finding new ways to leverage the mobile power to get the most out of their ESC service software.

In the video below, ESC Customer Meah Hurley, from Hurley Heat and Air out of Asheboro, NC, demonstrates how she accesses and uses ESC from her iPad.

Meah show how she logs into her desktop computer and ESC using LogMeIn Ignition for the iPad, how she navigates the ESC Dispatch Board, how she add and edits notes in a dispatch, and how she can create invoices for dispatches her technicians have completed.

Please excuse the background noise in this video. It was recorded during one of the breaks at the Charlotte, NC regional training.

The ESC desktop client is not designed to run on the iPad and is therefore not supported, but programs like LogMeIn Ignition for the iPad and other remote access app like it can help you access your desktop applications from the iPad. Keep in mind that the experience of a desktop app from an iPad will be very different, so keep that in mind if you decide to explore the variety iPad apps that can help you access your office PC.

There is also ESC Mobile for techs to manage their dispatches on an iPad and ESC Web Front Office for managers and dispatches on an iPad.

ESC regional trainings, where this video was filmed, are the best opportunity to learn about using ESC from our ESC Trainers as well as from other ESC users who might be using the software in a way you hadn’t yet considered.

To Learn more about the ESC Regional Trainings click here for the remaining ones for this year. For all other ESC training opportunities, go to our training page.

There is a new webinar recording available that reviews how to use the ESC Mobile Smartphone apps. The webinar, presented by Vice President of Operation Eric Rausin and Support Technician Shelley White, reviews the major features of the smart phone apps as well as shows all the details of how to use them.

This webinar is part of the ongoing series of free webinars to help you get the most out of your ESC software.

The Webinar: Using the ESC Mobile Phone Clients – Time: 53:03 – In this webinar, Eric and Shelley show how to setup and use the ESC Mobile Smartphone apps. They demonstrate how to view dispatches, enter equipment in the field, take photos of the job site, change status codes, create invoices, accept payments, capture signatures, and send the resulting invoice via email.

The Webinar is broken into two sections: a segment focused on working with the ESC Mobile apps and a segment where Eric and Shelley answer the questions of the audience member of the live webinar. Be sure to stay tuned through the end where they answer questions from the participants of the live broadcast. During the Q&A session at the end, Eric and Shelley answer many common questions about the apps.

Watch the ESC Mobile Webinar

Even if you tuned in to the live webinar, you can watch it again here or share it with your co-workers or techs that will be using the apps. The webinar can help even a novice Smartphone user get up to speed with using ESC Mobile.

If you are interested in trying the demo version of ESC Mobile on your Smartphone, you can do so by searching ‘ESC Mobile’ in your app marketplace on your iPhone, Android Phone, or Windows Phone 7. You can also get more information about the apps on our ESC Mobile page.

dESCO also has many more free webinars you can view at your leisure. Our webinars cover variety of topics for using ESC effectively. We cover everything from effective quoting, dispatching to marketing and inventory control, and much more. Check out our webinar page for more.

If you have an idea for a future ESC webinar, please send it to jonathanf [@] desco-soft [dot] com.

Almost anything. For your business, when your technicians are sitting in traffic they are not making you money and they are not helping your customers. Fortunately, there are ways to get your techs where they need to be.

Many people have been enjoying the benefits of the GPS mapping and routing on their Smartphones, and now Google has released a feature to make it even better. They have begun considering real-time traffic data when creating routes with Google Maps Navigation (Beta).

Google Maps Navigation (Beta) now takes into account real-time traffic conditions when calculating routes.

The new feature shows up in the smart phone version of the apps:

“You don’t have to do anything to be routed around traffic; just start Navigation like you normally would, either from the Navigation app or from within Google Maps. Before today, Navigation would choose whichever route was fastest, without taking current traffic conditions into account. It would also generate additional alternate directions, such as the shortest route or one that uses highways instead of side roads. Starting today, our routing algorithms will also apply our knowledge of current and historical traffic to select the fastest route from those alternates. That means that Navigation will automatically guide you along the best route given the current traffic conditions.” (Via Official Google Blog: You’ve got better things to do than wait in traffic)

This can help save fuel if it keeps you from idling in traffic and plenty of time. Besides, by avoiding the congested areas, your customers will benefit from your company’s prompt service.

The Google Navigation app will not always be able to find a faster route, but it gets you where you need to go. Traffic data is not available everywhere yet but you can check out this real-time traffic data map to see if it is in your city.

However, ESC Mobile’s integration with Google Navigation, your techs will be able to get their dispatches and find the best route to your customers’ locations.

Joanna Turpin, editor of Contractor Excellence magazine, wrote a story in the Spring 2011 issue of the magazine featuring long-time ESC customer, Brothers Heating, Cooling, and Plumbing, of Rock Hill, South Carolina. The story talks about Brothers aggressive, technology focused growth.

The article covers the background of the company and some recent expansions, but then gets into the technology they implemented to reach and track their very aggressive sales and growth goals:

In order to track those numbers on a daily basis, Brothers Air made a serious investment in technology. The company is now essentially paperless, as dispatches are sent electronically, technicians use tablet-style PCs in the field, and customers receive invoices from printers located on each truck. After the service call is completed, the information is immediately transmitted to the office, so not only can sales be monitored hourly, but the barcode system can update any parts that need to be restocked.

“What’s nice about this system is that the technician on a service call can pull up the history of everything we’ve ever done for that customer,” said [CFO, Jamie] Robinson. “The technicians can also collect electronic signatures from customers and run the credit cards right in the field. If they get a declined credit card, they can handle it right there, before they leave the house. Virtually every aspect of each service call is now handled in the field.”

This type of close scrutiny is mandatory in order to understand what the profit margins need to be in order to move forward as a company. In fact, not understanding the margins is one of the big mistakes many contractors make in their companies, said Robinson. “If you’re not putting money on the bottom line, then you’re not growing the company, and you’re not going to be able to make the capital expenditures you need to keep everything going. If we weren’t paying attention to what our bottom line was, there’s no way we could’ve built the new addition.”

The story goes on to tell some of the lessons Brothers learned about the importance of tracking advertising dollars to sales, as well as using their accounting system to calculate the profit margins and contributions of each of their trucks and employees.

We’re happy to see that such a profitable and successful company is using our software.

[ Via Contractor Excellence: New Ideas Lead to Aggressive Expansion (and Higher Sales): http://www.contractorexcellence.com/4474]

A real challenge for service companies is convincing customers they’ve been servicing for years that it’s time for an upgrade. You customer possibly has trusted you for years as you service and maintain their equipment. However, there comes a time when you see that continuing to service the equipment is not in your customer’s best interest. Instead, you think they need a replacement.

The question then is how do you shift from the role of fixer to the role of replacer?

Many times your customer sees the quote and is afraid or unwilling to pay for what their business or home needs, but that mean’s it’s your responsibility to help them think about what’s important in the long run. You may know what your customer needs, but that’s because you are the expert. You also have to convince your customer of the benefits you’re offering.

Selling replacement equipment is easier after you have built up a relationship with your customer. However, if you haven’t yet come to that level of trust, then you need to point to your company’s history of similar work, how long you’ve been in business, examples of customers you’ve helped, testimonial statements, and references to call. You have to make sure your customer is confident that you know what you’re doing with replacement as well as with service. When talking about other replacements or installations you’ve done and other customers you’ve done work for, be sure that everything you say relates back to your customer’s situation.

Finally, when shifting the focus from service to replacement, don’t get hung up on price. And don’t let you customer get hung up on price. Instead focus on value and the long-term benefits of replacing their equipment. You know the value of what you are offering, but you must be sure your customer sees that value too. Otherwise, any price you quote will be too high. Also, focus on the positive benefits of what you are offering rather than the negatives of not buying.