HVAC systems are crucial for maintaining the right temperature and humidity levels in plants and facilities. However, they can become problematic if not properly maintained. Goodway Technologies is sharing best practices for implementing proactive maintenance, which is essential for ensuring the effectiveness and efficiency of HVAC systems. Despite time and cost constraints, facility managers can use various tools and products to make routine maintenance quick and easy.

Here are five tips to help optimize a facility’s HVAC maintenance plan.

• Use the right tools for each maintenance task. Using improper tools can cause more harm than good. For example, using a pressure washer to clean coils can damage delicate fins, leading to costly repairs. Instead, invest in a coil cleaning machine designed specifically for this purpose. Some tools even incorporate clean-in-place maintenance to minimize downtime. By using the right products, it can save time, money, and prevent damage.
• Provide proper training for employees operating maintenance equipment. Include training on how to conduct HVAC maintenance and cleaning in the onboarding process for new employees. Correct usage of maintenance equipment not only saves time but also reduces the risk of accidents caused by operator error. When purchasing new equipment, consider requesting on-site training from vendors.
• Develop a maintenance plan for each HVAC system. Investing in regular HVAC maintenance can prevent costly repairs and extend the lifespan of equipment. Create a maintenance plan that includes scheduled maintenance at least once or twice a year, depending on usage. Sticking to this plan helps prevent unexpected breakdowns, outages, and repairs. Regular cleaning and maintenance also improve energy efficiency, making it a preventative measure.
• Keep an operating log. Operating logs are invaluable tools for plant maintenance. They help track the system’s operation by monitoring temperature, pressure, and fluid levels. These logs are especially useful for chillers. By regularly reviewing the log, facility managers can anticipate when maintenance or repairs may be necessary based on abnormal readings. Additionally, operating logs facilitate trend analysis, performance measurement, and year-over-year comparisons.
• Measure efficiency improvements. Measurement is often overlooked or skipped due to the time and complexity involved. However, it is important to measure the energy efficiency gains resulting from regular chiller cleaning. HVAC systems contribute significantly to operational expenses in plants. Measuring the cost savings and energy efficiency improvements achieved through maintenance work provides meaningful data for upper management.

By ensuring the facility management team is equipped with the right tools, adequately trained, maintains an operating log, and adheres to scheduled maintenance, the HVAC systems will yield positive results. For more tips, tools, and best practices in facility and plant maintenance, visit www.goodway.com.

At the Taco Comfort Solutions booth at this year’s AHR Expo, the company had a new twist—a virtual reality (VR) demo and a glimpse into the future of training. Mechanical Hub caught up with Dave Holdorf, Product & Application Instructor – East for Taco. Here is what Dave had to say:

With the success of the Taco training department in the residential and commercial realms, as well as our webinar series of Taco Tuesday and Taco After Dark, what could be next? We have asked customers over the years what can we do to make the training experience better? The number one answer has always been more hands on. I would then ask, “how do we do that, you mean like installing a circulator and zone valves, joining pipe and flanges and tightening bolts … you mean like work on a jobsite you were at earlier in the week?” VR gives us that ability now—building a system, repairing the seals and bearing in a split case commercial pump, things like that.

Imagine maintenance on that split case pump is coming up and you have never, ever taken one apart much less seen one in the wild, but it‘s now your responsibility to do the repair in an effective and allowable timeframe. What are the proper steps … is there a YouTube video you can watch the night before … so much pressure to get the job done right.

Now imagine a call to us and we can meet you in the “mechanical room” with that very pump in front of us. We’re standing right next to each other virtually, but you’re in Walla Walla, Washington and we‘re in Cranston, R.I. rebuilding it with you—greatly improving your confidence level, and ready for the next day. With this capability, you know the sequence, you know the names of the parts, what to look for and what not to do.

In the end, attendees of the show were surprised, but not too much. I mean, the training department has been up to  so much over the last decade bringing content online and in person that it wasn’t surprising that Taco would try to increase out reach even further.

Of course, we’re just scratching the surface of where we can go with this!

By Heather Ripley

Most humans are resistant to change. But in order to keep up with the times, change is nearly always necessary. That goes for your home service business’s appearance and messaging.

If you’ve been in business for a decade or more, your logo and website may look dated. Or maybe you’ve become more specialized in your services and want to convey this message to new customers.

Either way, it could be time to consider a rebrand.

But don’t make this decision lightly. A rebranding is more than just a change in your logos, the colors you use, your truck wraps and your website.

Rebranding should be about overhauling your business’s look, its attitude and the way it communicates its new vision to current customers and the new customers you want to attract.

One of the best ways to successfully rebrand is to tap a public relations team to help you with your market research and strategy, and to assist in developing the right message that encompasses your new look, attitude and vision.

The Reasons for Rebranding

Rebranding isn’t a task to take lightly. While it may be prudent to upgrade your logo to incorporate more modern icons and pull your website out of its 2000s doldrums, cosmetic changes won’t solve the problems you may be having attracting your target customers.

In order to make your rebranding a success, you need to take an impartial look at your current mission and value statements and see if they align with who you are as a company now. Your mission statement may be outdated or simply not reflect what your business has evolved into.

If you started as a plumbing company but now offer HVAC and electrical services, for example, your message needs to be more inclusive of your updated service offerings. Or maybe your company started more than 50 years ago and is now run by the grandchildren of the founder. Not only has the ownership changed in that time, but the vision has, as well.

But whatever the reason, you need to strategize with experts on how to successfully  update your brand. A PR team that knows the home service industry will understand your issues and have experience in helping other companies with their rebranding efforts. If you already have a PR team, don’t forget to include them in your strategy sessions. Their knowledge of your company, the industry, and even your customers, is invaluable.

The Right Audience

For many plumbing and HVAC contractors, one of the best ways to scale their business growth is to attract customers who have never used their services before.

To bring in those new customers, you have to get your message out to where they live. While truck wraps and websites are still relevant, they are passive ways to reach customers. In today’s world, you need to be active on social media and you need to be putting your expertise on display.

If the weather is turning cold, writing a press release about how to protect your pipes is one way to reach out, but a PR team can carry that further. Not only do most of their content experts know how to write a release in Associated Press style, they also have media relations people who will pitch your press release to  local and trade media journalists.

If you’ve ever turned on the news only to see your biggest competitor interviewed about weather-related problems in the home, chances are they weren’t just lucky – they probably had a PR team pitching their experts.

PR teams also know when the audience you want to reach is online and where they are spending their time.

As an owner, you should be writing your business plan and holding training sessions instead of spending your time pitching your expertise to journalists or engaging with customers online. Hire a PR team to do that for you. Especially one that knows your industry.

The Right Message

If your current brand no longer tells your story or doesn’t tell customers why you’re different, it’s time to rebrand.

But if you don’t have a handle on how best to tell your story or explain why customers should hire your crew, it’s time to call in the experts.

PR agencies hire content writers for a reason. These professionals know what resonates with audiences and can wordsmith your message so that it stands out from your competition. Just as you know the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of the latest refrigerant, a PR writer knows what words work with a particular audience.

Bringing in a public relations agency to help you nail the message is just good business, according to companies like Peterman Brothers, which rebranded from Peterman Heating, Cooling & Plumbing in the spring of 2021.

The company had been known as Peterman Heating, Cooling & Plumbing, but once brother owners Chad and Tyler Peterman began leading the company, they wanted a new name, look and vision to celebrate their family history and honor their father’s mission.

“Ripley was critical in our rebranding efforts made back in 2021,” said Peterman Brothers President Chad Peterman. “While our new brand had a similar feel to our old one, the main difference was in the story behind the brand. Ripley helped promote the new brand in the communities we serve, and that allowed people to make a connection. Building a brand story is critical to any business. Ripley helped us tell our unique story.”

Protecting Your Message

Once you’ve researched your avatar customer, updated your marketing assets and crafted the right message for the right audience, the rebrand isn’t done.

Now is the time you need to create a strategy to protect the rebrand.

If you’re like most home service business owners, you know that a crisis isn’t just possible, it’s most likely inevitable. You have team members that physically go inside customer homes and work on equipment that is essential to their daily lives. This could create many problems.

Let’s say you may have made a poor judgment call and hired a rude service technician or installed a system that broke down within a few days of service. No matter what the issue is, you shouldn’t be caught flatfooted.

That’s why it’s essential to have a crisis communications plan in place for when these events occur. You’ve spent a great deal of time and money updating your assets and developing a new message that better reflects your company’s new vision. You don’t want that ruined because of a human mistake.

A PR team can help you craft a crisis communications strategy to protect your new brand. This will include detailed steps about who can represent the company and speak about the issue, what message you need to convey and a protocol for keeping the right people in the know.

An experienced PR agency unlocks the doors you need to reach more people, improve your credibility, give you an edge over your competitors, and protect your company’s reputation during and after a rebranding effort.

So, if you’re thinking about rebranding, don’t forget to include the very experts who can help your rebranding stick the landing. PR helps you flesh out the values and legacy your organization needs to scale the growth a rebranding should provide.

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, and it has also been listed by Entrepreneur Magazine as a Top Franchise PR Agency for six consecutive years. Heather 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.

By Scott Bohannon

Home service company owners will be some of the first small businesses to truly visualize the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as its use becomes more widespread.

But company owners should be wary not to expect a miracle and concentrate more on how AI, and applications like ChatGPT, can help reduce tasks and enhance performance. Right now, you should be a fast follower rather than an early adopter.

While it’s true that ChatGPT can help our home service companies reduce the time it takes to perform some tasks like scheduling, composing documents and performing simple tasks, it’s a technology that will still require training to become the powerful tool it is destined to become.

At CEO Warrior, for example, we’ve identified several unique ways that ChatGPT can help reduce the time it takes to perform tasks and other ways that it can enhance your work. It can be used to help your team improve customer correspondence, interact with vendors and even provide insights on predictive maintenance.

The key is to understand that the capabilities of AI will vary depending on your individual business and that there is no one-size-fits-all solution.

The Heavy Lifting

The most effective way to view AI is to consider its capabilities as a task-specific tool. Larger businesses perform more tasks, so their early adoption allows them to reduce the time their people spend on tasks or enhances the quality of the tasks they perform.

But smaller companies may need to begin their experimentation by using AI to help them develop the very processes they may want help with in the future. It’s these processes that you will eventually use to grow and scale your organization.

Let the larger companies and the technology providers continue to do the heavy lifting for now. The technology has to be better trained, and, unless you want to spend precious time away from your customers and your business, don’t be afraid to wait.

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t experiment with AI. Home service companies are poised to benefit tremendously from this technology if they use it correctly.

Customer Service

By now, we have probably all experienced using a chatbot. But, if you’re like most users, you spend most of your time interacting with a chatbot in an attempt to have it get you to a live person.

It may be tempting to think that AI can solve your customer service issues, but even larger companies have discovered that AI’s customer-facing tech isn’t all that great for their customers. It cannot be used to replace a professional customer service team and is best used to enhance their role by providing them with answers to specific questions. It can also generate and deliver customer data that your team can use to improve a customer’s experience.

Applications like ChatGPT have to be trained. If your goal is to use it live to replace your customer service team, you need to know that it will only learn by experimenting with customer trends. That’s not an ideal use for this powerful tool.

Customer service representatives are there to ensure your clients have a positive customer service experience. So, for now, we need to keep our people talking to our customers and focus AI on other areas within our businesses where it can do its best work.

Business Processes

While AI and ChatGPT may have more learning to do before they can seamlessly interact with clients, using their applications for backend work is already proving indispensable. There is almost no business process that can’t be improved by using these tools.

In fact, one of the earliest uses of this technology for smaller home service providers might be in process development.

Many smaller organizations don’t have the resources to hire high-powered consultants to help them develop these processes. But, with ChatGPT, they can simply tell the application the process they use, and it can help them to develop written policies that can be used companywide. Its comprehension of human language and capacity allows it to produce responses that are both coherent and appropriate for the occasion.

ChatGPT can help the home service business owner in other ways, such as with reporting and data analysis. It can then turn this reporting and analysis into visually stimulating graphs and charts and summary information about your datasets that you can use to scale your business.

Marketing Assistance

Harvard Business Review suggests that small businesses stand to gain the most from using AI in their marketing efforts.

Many small businesses can’t afford to hire an external marketing team, and they probably don’t have an expert on staff to help write ad copy or run market research. This is where a product like ChatGPT or CopyAI can be the most beneficial.

Home service companies thrive on personal relationships and quality service. AI can help these companies create more personalized marketing campaigns while collecting and analyzing the data a small business owner needs to make the most effective advertising decisions.

One of AI’s most beneficial features is its ability to help create content. Business owners can use it to generate several drafts of an ad campaign or copy for social media or email marketing. Its ability to provide you with new ideas or alternative content is already very well developed.

These tools are especially helpful in checking your work. If you write an email campaign, ask it for feedback. If you write ad copy, ask it to make the copy more dynamic. If you need data analysis to know the best places to invest your ad dollars, let AI help you develop this research.

What AI in marketing won’t do is make you a marketing whiz overnight. Remember to focus on what you do well and stick to it. AI can help you get better, but it won’t do everything a full-service marketing agency can do.

In the hands of someone with practical experience in marketing, it’s an advantage. But if you don’t have this knowledge, it can be overwhelming. With this in mind, don’t be afraid to ask your marketing company if they’re using AI. Get them to explain how they’re using it to better market your company and save you money.

The Smart Home

But where home service companies will probably see the biggest changes is in how they interact with a client’s home comfort systems.

AI won’t replace HVAC technicians, for example, but it will revolutionize how these technicians serve your customers while servicing the home.

The home of the future will have home comfort systems equipped with AI features that can communicate with the technician or allow the homeowner to envision how a new HVAC system can be more efficient.

From predictive maintenance to educating the homeowner, AI’s potential will help home service providers and technicians do a better job of improving the customer experience.

Be Practical

As AI is used more frequently in the home service industry, business owners should keep in mind that AI is a tool and not an employee. Many companies that have eliminated positions in the hopes that AI can perform their tasks haven’t always been satisfied with this decision.

AI will eliminate the need for people to do some tasks, reduce the time it takes to do tasks and enhance the efficiency of the tasks that need to be done, but it should not eliminate whole jobs. If you look into purchasing an AI application with the hopes of reducing your workforce in mind, right now, you’ll be disappointed.

AI will certainly change the way jobs look five years from now, and it’s a skill we’ll all need to become familiar with in the future. Like using the internet for work functions, AI will become a seamless part of our working experience. As more big tech companies begin to integrate AI into the platforms we already use – like Microsoft Word or Excel – we’ll need to develop the skills to be able to use it effectively.

So, go ahead and start using it, but let the tech companies continue to do the heavy lifting of developing and training it. Once it becomes as commonplace as the internet, you’ll be ready to use it effectively in your business.

Scott Bohannon is the CEO of CEO Warrior, where he supports entrepreneurs and their teams in the trades by helping them improve their business performance. Bohannon previously served as the president and CEO of the Center for Creative Leadership, CEO of AchieveForum, and CEO of Info-Tech Research Group and McLean & Co. Before entering into the corporate world, Bohannan practiced law in Washington DC, advising telecommunications and energy clients throughout the United States, Asia and Australia. He received his bachelor’s degree in public policy from Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. He later received a master’s degree and Ph.D. in economics, as well as a J.D., from the University of Virginia. For more information about Bohannon and CEO Warrior, please visit https://ceowarrior.com/.