By Nikole Smith, Director of Product Management, Successware

Small business owners in the home service industries are on a constant quest for the tools and resources that will help them streamline and grow their operations. Two areas of potential growth that can help increase revenue with the right business management software: managing maintenance and service agreements, and closing the deal on opportunities that generate new sales with existing customers. Let’s take a look at a few ideas for each and some best practices to consider when choosing a platform to manage them.

Maintenance and Service Agreements

Maintenance visits can be used to fill the dispatch board during slower periods, and servicing customers’ equipment proactively ensures it’s less likely to malfunction during peak times. This is why maintenance and service agreements are essential ingredients of a consistent revenue stream.

Encourage your team to once a month reach out to customers who have unscheduled maintenance agreements. The customers will appreciate a proactive approach, and your team can fill in jobs on the dispatch board, creating a steady flow of work. Consider printing labels for a direct mail campaign or creating an email blast if you do not have the manpower to call them. Both are cost-effective ways of marketing to customers and reminding them they have a service due.

When agreement renewal dates approach, it’s a good time to reach out to the customer and ask about extending their agreement. You will want to pull a list of those who have expiring agreements and create a renewal document that can be mailed or emailed. The renewal document should include the coverage period and price of their agreement, as well as a renewal slip. Consider also including a marketing incentive that will entice the customer to continue doing business with your company, such as an opportunity to save 10% if they renew by the end of the month.

Managing agreements and marketing to these customers needs to be easy and time efficient so you can get the information you want without the hassle. This is where a robust business management software will help when it comes to searching and filtering agreements. You want to be able to view visits due by a particular date range, sort by equipment age, or filter by scheduled or unscheduled agreement visits.

Envision pulling up the customer record screen and having access to the related agreements right there without having to manually search. You can see if the customer is past-due for a maintenance agreement visit or if they have one coming up, then schedule it while on the phone with them. When a customer decides to renew, an invoice can be quickly generated and payment taken right there on the phone to make the agreement active. These are the types of platform features that will help your business get the most out of maintenance and service agreements.

Opportunities for Future Work

When technicians are at a job-site, they have a first-hand look at your customers equipment and can help identify any potential repairs or replacements they may need completed. These opportunities can help drive future sales and can range from necessary tasks like equipment repair to recommending optional purchases such as extending a warranty or signing up for a service agreement. Better yet, anyone on your team can identify them. From calls with new clients to finding sales leads on the job site, call takers and technicians alike should be getting in on the action.

After that, it’s up to the sales team or your back-office to follow through on these identified opportunities. Tracking follow-up dates is vital to ensure timely communication with the customer and simplify the sales team’s prioritization efforts. Again, this is where the right software with a flexible and well-appointed central hub can work wonders to streamline the process.

Consider creating custom opportunity codes in your platform to help organize opportunities. These codes can describe the nature of the opportunity and the customer’s specific needs and allow them to be tracked by job type or potential revenue. They will come in handy when you want to filter customer records based on follow-up requirements or job type. You also want space for making notes about customer interactions – what was spoken about and direction for future follow-up.

The right software will help create a sales job from the opportunity once the customer agrees to an estimate or to have the job completed. A good software system will also help track employees who had a hand in getting the opportunity to a booked job. The employee who identified the opportunity and the salesperson who reached out to the customer should be on the opportunity/sales job and carry over to the invoice, ensuring the proper people get a commission for the jobs they convert.

Managers need comprehensive reporting capabilities to track their team’s performance and get a snapshot of how much additional revenue is being brought in from opportunities. When these reports are segmented by opportunity codes, it’s easier to identify which opportunity types have the highest closing rates and which need improvement. Effective reports can help monitor employee productivity, showing the number of calls being made, appointments converting to jobs and what is being sold and billed to customers.

When you have access to reports that show how many opportunities each technician is identifying in the field, that information can be used to coach them on how to better identify things that may need to be repaired, replaced, or offered to customers.

Choosing the Right Business Software

Managing agreements and opportunities doesn’t have to be complicated. With the right business management software, your team can easily track these customers and market to them, as well as identify and pursue new jobs that are there for the taking. It’s a win-win-win for you, your employees and your customers.

Nikole Smith is an experienced Product Management leader with more than 20 years in the software and technology space. As Director of Product Management at Successware, Nikole leads diverse projects and initiatives from strategy development to implementation. Nikole is a master when it comes to analyzing critical business requirements and identifying gaps and potential opportunities. She has vast experience in both the hospitality and technology industries. Prior to Successware, Nikole worked for Choice Hotels International for 17 years.

Advanced electrode boilers are being installed to replace outdated, inefficient fuel-burning equipment in district heating applications as part of broader effort to meet ambitious International Energy Agency decarbonization goals.

District heating—the generation of heat in a central location and distribution of it to local residences, businesses, and industry at greater economies of scale than individual heating systems—plays an important role in helping the transition to clean energy in the fight against climate change. The challenge, however, is that district heating, used to provide hot water and heat within buildings through an insulated pipe system, must soon pivot from burning fossil fuels to cleaner forms of energy.

“District heating networks offer great potential for efficient, cost-effective, and flexible large-scale use of low-carbon energy for heating. However, the decarbonization potential of district heating is largely untapped, as 90% of the heat supplied in district networks is produced from fossil fuels …,” according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), a Paris-based autonomous intergovernmental organization that provides policy recommendations, analysis, and data on the global energy sector. The 31 member countries and 13 association countries of the IEA represent 75% of global energy demand.

Aligning with the IEA’s Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario requires significant effort to rapidly improve the energy efficiency of existing networks, switch to renewable heat, integrate secondary heat sources, and develop new high-efficiency infrastructure.

Fortunately, innovation in the form of the latest, high voltage immersed electrode or jet type electrode boilers makes district heating much greener, particularly when the electricity comes from renewable sources like solar, wind, and hydro power.

Municipalities and businesses relying on district heating are already pivoting away from often inefficient, outdated equipment that produces excess carbon emissions in favor of economical electrode boilers that can quickly, flexibly rival the output of large gas or oil-fired boilers in a much smaller footprint, The advanced electrode boilers do not have a high minimum operating level to make them immediately available and offer much faster start-up and shut down time while being safely and easily maintained.

The Renewable Promise of District Heating with Electrode Boiler Technology

District heating systems offer substantial potential for improving energy efficiency, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and integrating renewable and waste heat sources, particularly within urban centers.

In this effort, an increasing number of district heating plants are turning to high voltage, electrode boilers to absorb excess power production, quickly provide grid service, and cost-effectively balance out fluctuations. A growing number of municipalities are also installing new or retrofit high voltage electrode boilers that are compact, economical, and produce no emissions. The upgrades often entail retrofitting or replacing boilers (the heat source) with cleaner, more efficient electric alternatives, along with the heat distribution network (pipes/ heat exchanger stations).

Electrode boilers utilize the conductive and resistive properties of water to carry electric current and generate steam with great responsiveness and efficiency.

“An A.C. current flows from an electrode of one phase to ground using the water as a conductor. Since chemicals in the water provide conductivity, the current flow generates heat directly in the water itself. The more current (amps) that flows, the more heat (BTUs) is generated, and the more steam produced for use in district heating,” explains Robert Presser, Vice President of Acme Engineering, a manufacturer of industrial and commercial boilers with operations in the U.S., Canada, and Europe.

When supplying district heating, electrode boilers are much more responsive and flexible than fossil fuel burning units.

“With electrode boilers, the energy input and adjustment are very precise and virtually immediate. In contrast, increasing or decreasing the temperature in a gas fired boiler is a slower process because it takes time for the heat in the boiler to rise or dissipate before reaching the targeted output,” says Presser.

Advanced high voltage electrode steam boilers like Acme’s CEJS also have a 100% turndown ratio, the ratio between a boiler’s maximum and minimum output. Most gas boilers have a ratio of 10:1 or 5:1, which means the units take a significant time to reach full capacity.  The CEJW and CEJS immersed electrode hot water and steam boilers have a minimum output level of 7-8% of rated capacity, still far better than a modern gas-fired boiler.

“With a 100% turndown ratio, you can leave the boiler in standby at low pressure and bring it to full capacity in about 90 seconds as needed, which no other boiler type can achieve today,” says Presser.

“Communities and businesses utilizing district heating also appreciate the eco-friendly nature of electrode boilers. Without combustion, these boilers are clean and emission free. The design also eliminates many environmental issues associated with fuel burning boilers such as fuel fumes, fly ash, and large obtrusive exhaust stacks,” says Presser.

The energy efficiency of electrode boiler technology, however, is one of its most remarkable characteristics.

“For district heating, the extraordinarily efficient power-to-heat generation capability of electrode boilers, in which almost 100% of the electrical energy is converted into heat with no stack or heat transfer losses, combined with an ability to use and balance intermittent renewable energy, makes the technology crucial today,” says Presser.

As an example of energy and design efficiency, Acme’s CEJS electrode steam boiler produces maximum amounts of steam in minimal floor space, with boiler capacity from 6MW to 68MW. The electrode boiler operates at existing distribution voltages, 4.16 to 25 KV and is up to 99.9% efficient at converting energy into heat. The boiler can produce steam in capacities up to 270,000 pounds per hour, with pressure ratings from 75 PSIG to 500 PSIG. All CEJS boilers are designed to ASME Code or EU Pressure Vessels Directive and are certified, registered pressure vessels. Electrical standards meet CSA, UL, or CE requirements.

According to Presser, there are additional reasons for municipalities and businesses to use high voltage, jet type electrode boilers for district heating. “Electrode boilers can match the heating output of fuel burning boilers while converting almost all the energy to heat. Electrode boilers also are much smaller than fossil fuel burning boilers so are easier to use in smaller structures,” he says.

For residential or commercial property owners, electrode boilers also lower costs for installation, operation, and maintenance. Gas-fired boilers require fuel lines, storage and handling equipment, economizers, and emission control equipment. Advanced jet type electrode boilers have a minimal number of components and electrical controls, with fewer parts. Under normal operation, the absence of excessive temperatures and electrode burnout also assures long operating life.

In addition, the units further lower operating costs with automatic controls that reduce the need for operating personnel.

The most advanced types of these boilers, such as Acme’s CEJS or CEJW, also offer greater safety than traditional fuel burning models. “With the electrode boilers, there are no combustion hazards because there are no flames, fumes, fuel lines or storage tanks. There are no problems with heat buildup or electrode burnout even if scaling should occur, and thermal shock is eliminated. Also, there is no low water danger since the current cannot flow without water,” Presser explains.

Unlike fossil fuel burning boilers, electric boilers require minimal maintenance since there is no burner, no material burned, no soot created, no chimney, and no wearing mechanical parts, says Presser. With fewer parts than more complex fossil fuel burning units, electrical boilers are also more compact and simpler to install than conventional systems.

Finally, the electric units are exceptionally quiet compared to fuel fired boilers. Unlike gas-powered burners that throttle like turbine engines almost continually, electric boilers keep operational noise levels down.

With all the advantages of high output jet type electrode boilers, in addition to their value in balancing out the use of intermittent renewable energy in the power grid, it is evident why a growing number of communities and businesses are selecting them for district heating.

As the effects of climate change become more severe, the urgency of switching to clean energy and decarbonizing the energy sector will only increase across the globe. In this effort, district heating paired with electrode boilers will be a vital part of the solution, as member countries strive to meet the IEA decarbonization goals.

By Del Williams, a technical writer based in Torrance, California.

By Heather Ripley

If you’re like most home service business owners, you understand the need for a strong marketing budget. Getting your company’s name and services out in front of potential customers is a necessity if you want to grow and scale your business.

But if you’ve never considered how adding a powerful public relations plan to your budget would sharpen your marketing message, 2024 might be the time to consider it.

Solidify Your Brand

While advertising your services helps get your name out to your target audience, nothing solidifies your brand in their eyes like a steady and consistent message. Whether you’re telling your company’s story or simply creating campaigns that boost your reputation, PR helps you refine your presence.

Public relations, simply put, is the art of building relationships so that you can tell your story to the people you want to hear it. A marketing campaign is great for telling others about yourself, but it takes a PR campaign to get others to talk about you.

For example, you may be running a special on furnace installations for the winter months, and you’ve purchased several ads that promote this special. People might be attracted to your company because of the special but they’re more likely to hire you based upon your brand reputation.

If you want people to trust your team with their HVAC needs, you need an expert PR team who can pitch your expertise out to your local media. Imagine how much consumer interest you’ll obtain if you’re seen on the local news talking about the energy efficiency of new furnaces.

Maintain a Positive Reputation

If you’ve worked in business for any length of time, you know that a crisis could happen at any time. It’s really a matter of “when” instead of “if” one occurs.

And it’s during these business crises that many home service companies hire a public relations professional. Having an expert in communications is often the best move if you’re trying to regain public trust.

But it’s even more appropriate to hire a PR team or have a communications strategy before you have a crisis.

Ongoing PR can help you build a relationship of trust within your community. Whether you’re asked to share tips on how to keep your pipes from freezing during a cold snap or you are working locally to support a worthy cause, associating your home service business brand with good news builds a positive reputation.

If you’re already seen in a good light, it is easier for the public to forgive any transgressions. This makes your job much easier when a business crisis occurs.

In-House or Agency

No one knows your business like you do. That’s just a fact.

But, just because you know your team, your business budget and the way to get your customer service representatives to charm the customer doesn’t mean you understand PR.

Public relations is about building relationships and it’s a multi-faceted task. It requires media outreach, well-written press releases that have a news angle and a flair for reputation management.

That doesn’t mean you can’t do it yourself. If you already have some established relationships within your local media or within the trade publications that cover your market, you can always pitch yourself. Just be sure that any communications you send to the media use proper grammar and, preferably, are written following Associated Press style.

No matter if you decide to handle your own PR or if you decide to hire a public relations agency, the fact remains that PR should be a part of your marketing budget.

Incorporating PR into your existing marketing strategy should never be considered an expense. Good PR is as much an investment into your company as purchasing new equipment or hiring trained technicians is.

So, if you’re looking to grow your home service business to reach the next level in 2024, make sure there is a healthy line item in your business budget for PR.

Heather Ripley is founder and CEO of Ripley PR, an elite, global public relations agency specializing in the skilled trades, franchising and B2B tech industries. Ripley PR is recognized as the top PR agency for the home service industry. It also has been listed by Entrepreneur Magazine as a Top Franchise PR Agency six consecutive years and was named to Forbes’ America’s Best PR Agencies for 2021. Ripley is the author of “NEXT LEVEL NOW: PR Secrets to Drive Explosive Growth for your Home Service Business,” which is now available on all audiobook platforms. For additional information, visit www.ripleypr.com.

HVAC control helps the Chub Cay private island resort cut energy use in half

Chub Cay is a resort in the Bahamas with sustainability at the heart of its operations. The operators have worked hard to transform this private island paradise into an ecotourism destination: they installed an 8-acre solar farm, which they use to both harvest energy and convert saltwater to fresh for drinking and utilities. They also grow a significant amount of the fruits and vegetables consumed by both guests and staff on the island.

All of these good works aren’t just for green brownie points, however: Chub Cay is completely disconnected from any larger power grid. The operators must produce every watt of power used on the island, either from solar collection or via diesel generators. Fuel is expensive, heavy, and difficult to transport.  In addition to limiting their carbon footprint, Chub Cay very much wants to achieve energy independence from fossil fuels for purely practical reasons. There’s just one problem: their high-end clientele doesn’t want to sweat.

Chub Cay needed to drastically reduce energy consumption while preserving guests’ comfort. Upgrading the HVAC control systems throughout the resort was crucial to that effort – but finding the right mix of technologies was no easy task.

The Challenge

Even in the early stages of Chub Cay’s sustainability efforts, it was clear that HVAC control could play a massive role in reducing the island’s reliance on diesel-generated power. By simply establishing a higher temperature set point in unoccupied zones, Chub Cay could ensure they weren’t wasting money cooling empty rooms. Automated occupancy detection can be tricky, however: motion sensors often read a room full of sleeping occupants as “empty.” Having the resort’s exclusive clientele wake up drenched in sweat because the thermostat thought they were furniture was not an acceptable outcome.

In addition, both the resort’s own sustainability requirements and HVAC efficiency regulations in the Bahamas mandate the use of highly efficient mini-split units. However, connecting these modern units, including mini-split, Inverter, and VRF units, to third-party IoT control devices such as smart thermostats or building automation systems can reduce their efficiency. Why?

It’s a little-known gotcha: IoT devices and HVAC units don’t use the same communication protocols, so they’re incapable of two-way communication on their own. If you connect a smart thermostat (or other IoT control device) directly to an Inverter/VRF unit, it will no longer be able to vary its speed and output in response to environmental conditions. It becomes a single-speed unit—and often, winds up being even less efficient than a traditional HVAC compressor.

For Chub Cay to achieve their sustainability goals, they needed a smart thermostat and occupancy sensor solution that could automate different temperature set points for occupied and unoccupied rooms without relying on motion as a trigger. They also needed a control interface between the automation system and the HVAC units. And finally, they needed a platform to allow the Chub Cay staff to centrally monitor and manage the entire system.

The Solution

Richie Renaud, owner of Coconut Point Cooling and Chris Pearson, owner of Pearson AC and Refrigeration, tackled upgrading the Chub Cay Resort’s HVAC system as a joint project. They started from the challenge of occupancy detection and worked their way forward from there.

“The ecobee thermostat was the first piece of the puzzle for us,” says Pearson. “Their integrated smart sensors use Passive Infrared Radiation (PIR) to detect if someone’s in the room, not just motion detection. Even if the occupants are sleeping, ecobee is smart enough to remember that one or more of the PIR sources in the room is a human and maintain the set point accordingly.”

Through ecobee, Pearson and Renaud seemingly had a solution for two of their three design challenges. Not only does ecobee offer an occupancy-sensing thermostat with a luxury finish to match Chub Cay’s sophisticated aesthetic, but they provide the ecobee SmartBuildings app for centralized thermostat management.

However, Pearson and Renaud still needed an interface to bridge the gap between the ecobee thermostats app and the Mitsubishi mini-split units used across the resort.

“Mitsubishi does make a thermostat adapter, but we would have needed multiple shipments to source enough of them for this project,” says Pearson. “Because we had to freight all the equipment for this project to a private island, we decided to look for additional options. Our ecobee representative, Chris Vosburgh, introduced us to Airzone.”

Airzone has spent decades cultivating relationships with Inverter/VRF manufacturers. Their Aidoo Pro control device provides a bridge between IoT and HVAC devices by using the HVAC unit manufacturers’ own proprietary protocols to facilitate true, two-way communication. Aidoo Pro solved the control interface issue, but there was still one final missing link.  This product was created for residential applications; when the project started, there was no integration between the ecobee SmartBuildings App and the Aidoo Pro.

As Pearson and Renaud installed thermostats, sensors, and control units across the island, ecobee and Airzone worked together to develop the necessary integration. Within three weeks, they developed a custom integration that allows Chub Cay’s owners to control over 40 ecobee thermostats via either the ecobee SmartBuildings app or the Airzone Cloud web interface.

The Results

When this project started, Chub Cay was already using mini-splits across the island. With these efficient units, you might expect only incremental improvements from Renaud and Pearson’s work. You’d be wrong.

“Chub Cay’s manager installed meters to monitor kilowatt usage and gauge the success of this sustainability effort,” says Pearson. “He’s seen energy usage drop by close to fifty percent.”

Where did this dramatic reduction come from? The new system puts in fail-safes for very predictable human behaviors.

“Before these upgrades, Chub Cay guests would check in and immediately crank the HVAC down to 70 degrees Fahrenheit,” says Pearson. “Staff might not notice for two to three weeks, and the resort would be burning diesel to refrigerate those rooms all the while.”

Automated set points for occupied and unoccupied spaces remove the possibility of rooms staying set to an absurdly low temperature. In addition, Pearson and Renaud trained the staff to help avoid this behavior in the first place.

“We showed staff how to use the ecobee SmartBuildings app and Airzone Cloud to pre-cool rooms before guests arrive,” says Pearson. “That way, they’re not as tempted to put the AC on blast the moment they get there.”

This cloud-managed approach also allows Chub Cay, Renaud, and Pearson to detect and troubleshoot issues before they impact guests. A room exceeding its maximum set point can alert management to a potential HVAC issue. Using Airzone Cloud, Renaud and Pearson can even view error codes and arrive on Gekabi Chub Cay with exactly the right parts and equipment to address the problem.

Chub Cay no longer uses its diesel generators at all in the daytime, relying instead on the Bahamas’ 340 days of sunshine to power the island.

“This is an approach we could replicate all across the Caribbean,” says Pearson. “Upgrading HVAC control netted a massive energy savings for Chub Cay, and majorly simplifies operations for the island resort as well.”