NYSE: WSO Doing business in the 21st century means catering to your customers. Being able to offer them solutions that are flexible, efficient, and with immediate availability are vital to being successful in a crowded industry like the heating and cooling services, and that’s exactly why Ductworks Heating & A/C Services joined forces with OnCall Air.
Located in Southington, Connecticut, Ductworks is celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2022. Co-owner Tom Nichols has always been into tech, and a few years back was part of a presentation for the OnCall Air sales platform during a Carrier Dealer Meeting. By the end of the presentation, Tom was sold on the online platform as the future of his business.
“OnCall Air was exactly what we were looking for,” Tom recalls, citing the platform’s biggest advantages as giving Ductworks higher closing rates, higher margins, and professional proposals that give users a competitive edge. “It has helped grow our business and made us more profitable.”
Quoting Efficient Systems
That proposal enhancement is the real linchpin for both Ductworks professionals and their customers. OnCall Air has the ability to provide customers with up to four options of quality for proposals; typically along the lines of ‘Good, Better, Best’ in terms of how efficient the system is, its typical shelf life, and how much it costs.
Efficient systems are not only great for customers, they are fantastic for the environment. The more efficient they are, the less energy they consume and thus release fewer emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Ductworks’ technicians can build these proposals on their smartphones within a few minutes of inspecting a customer’s current system and asking a few questions about their goals and wants. The platform also allows the techs to give customers a visual component of the products’ features and benefits with images, diagrams, and videos.
This is a tremendous advantage to getting customers educated on the technology behind the exterior of a unit, and helps guide them towards the best decision for their needs.
It’s also light years ahead of Ductworks’ old way of doing business.
Efficient systems are not only great for customers, they are fantastic for the environment.
Getting Time Back
“We used to write a proposal by hand and give it to our office manager, who would type it up. Next, we’d have to review the proposal and assemble the order literature. Then, put it in a large envelope and postage stamp it, or personally deliver it to the home,” Tom recalls.
That lengthy paper process would see his team needing 3-7 days just to draw up the proposal. By the time they got it to the customer, they’d find their top three competitors had already given quotes, and way too often, one of them had been chosen for the bid.
“Our entire company uses Oncall Air,” Tom says. “Our technicians are encouraged to use OnCall Air because they have higher close rates than a salesperson going out to a home.”
Not only are Ductworks’ close rates and sales margins up as a result, but the company can offer more flexibility to customers, like financing options that make systems that might have seemed out of reach suddenly much more affordable.
Better customer relationships, more efficient processes, more high efficiency equipment sales and end-to-end flexibility. It’s what better business in the 21st century is all about.
