If you own an HVAC business, you already know that growing your client list and upping your team’s efficiency can be a constant battle. Managing your fleet’s daily operations can take up your entire business’s bandwidth—which doesn’t leave you any mental margin for tackling value-adding activities.
So how do you balance growing your HVAC business with the modern stressors of managing fleet-based operations?
Much of the advice you’ll encounter is very general and doesn’t speak to actual day-to-day problems. But here’s a solution that can transform the way you think about your HVAC business. If you have a fleet, your fleet management needs to be in order before anything else is. Once it is, you’ll find the benefits go far beyond simply streamlining your fleet! Fleet management can help you increase your team’s safety, improve your peace of mind, boost your reputation, and earn more profits.
Comprehensive fleet management software and associated tools—such as GPS tracking devices and AI-enabled dashcams—can help you level up your HVAC business by:
All of these are essential actions that can contribute to your HVAC business’s growth, and they’re all actions that directly stem from top-tier fleet management strategies.
We’re not the only ones saying this. For example, Bay Climate Control—one of our HVAC clients in northwest Florida and southern Alabama—found they could streamline fleet maintenance, simplify customer billing, improve customer response time, and stop overpaying their staff. And that’s just the beginning of the benefits they’ve experienced:
“If we get one of those high-priority emergency calls, we need to shift people around on the fly. The ClearPathGPS service lets us know—at any moment of the day—which techs are stationary on job sites, which are traveling between job sites, and which are the closest to the emergency job. That saves us so much time because we don’t have to call a bunch of techs and ask, ‘Where are you right now?’ We can dispatch the right person very quickly. And that means we’re able to provide better service to the customers who need us most.”
—Bethany Martinez, Office Manager, Bay Climate Control
Are you interested in reaping these same benefits? Here’s precisely how you can make that happen.
See if any of these sound familiar to you:
Unsafe driver behaviors can include speeding, harsh braking, cornering, and distracted driving. Vehicle maintenance struggles can also constitute hazards for your company.
Do you have difficulty knowing exactly where each of your vehicles and assets is at any given time? You don’t need to chase techs down with phone calls or stress over sending the wrong vehicle; GPS tracking can help.
Managing the sudden loss or theft of a vehicle can be incredibly stressful. Knowing where your vehicles are at all times can help you recover stolen vehicles quickly—but that’s just the beginning. Fleet theft can also refer to less overt but still impactful “leaky” business practices such as side gigs, timecard padding, and inefficient driving. Fleet management can help you resolve both of these challenges.
Do you struggle with handling customer disputes? Are you just trying to get your team paid? Either way, you need immediate solutions that pull in real data in a useful way. With our accessible reports, you can streamline payroll, identify issues such as timecard padding, and get the information you need when you need it.
Fuel waste can lead to increased vehicle-associated costs and reduced profitability. Fleet management solutions help you monitor fuel consumption and identify inefficient behaviors that ramp up consumption; they also help you ensure optimal fuel efficiency through maintenance, more helpful driving behaviors, and more.
Are your drivers tackling unauthorized side jobs? This can lead to a decreased level of quality in work as well as lost revenue. Fleet management tools can help you monitor vehicle usage and location to ensure your vehicles are used for your business’s projects alone. This contributes to better scheduling, reduced downtime, and improved productivity.
HVAC businesses across the nation are having a difficult time finding skilled technicians and drivers. By optimizing vehicle usage, ensuring proper maintenance, and creating a company culture centered around accountability, trust, and visibility, you can make the most of your current team’s time—and have more bandwidth and resources to grow your team as needed.
Whenever you try to grow a business, chaos can ensue. Having a system that allows full visibility into every corner of your business can help you determine where you have room to grow without undue stress—and where your business could use more support.
You need a solution that makes managing your fleet accessible, automated, and easy. Finding a comprehensive solution for HVAC businesses that truly speaks to these challenges can be daunting.
West Coast Air—a California heating and air conditioning business—rose to the occasion by leveraging fleet management software to improve service, pay their techs more accurately, provide better information to their customers, and even resolve billing disputes.
“We have the ClearPathGPS real-time map up all day on a huge screen in the office, so we can always see where everyone is. Plus, it helps you hold your employees accountable and encourage them to be on their best behavior whenever they’re out in the field representing your company. That’s good for everybody.” —Jim Haase, West Coast Air Service Manager
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By investing in your company’s real-time visibility, you’ll enhance your ability to oversee dispatch and respond to customers. This will help you improve your customer service and your reputation. You’ll also be able to reduce unhelpful or unsafe team behaviors like taking on side jobs, distracted driving, and time card padding.
Accountability goes hand-in-hand with visibility. Think about it: if you can see when the two-hour lunches and longer-than-necessary routes are happening, you’ll be empowered to create actionable accountability policies within your company. Even better, you can enjoy real-time visibility with our automated text and email alerts and reports, This allows you to take action immediately before small issues become big problems.
No one likes spending more time than necessary on admin and paperwork. You can leverage our fleet management software to ensure payroll accuracy, mitigate time card padding, resolve customer disputes, and ease customer billing—all while spending less time on administrative tasks.
Preventative maintenance can have incredible effects, especially when deployed across an entire fleet. You’ll be able to reduce your vehicles’ downtime, keep your assets and drivers safer, and glean data based on miles tracked that can help you keep your fleet healthier and safer for longer.
Stellar fleet management can help you ensure you’re making the most of your team’s time, paying your team accurately, and using your vehicles as efficiently as possible. This can help you streamline payroll, reduce fuel costs, and even result in lower insurance premiums.
Better yet, by selecting a field management software solution that allows you to integrate the tools you love (such as Service Titan) in an all-in-one environment, you can check one app and be on top of everything related to your business. This saves up your headspace to concentrate on value-adding activities.
But at ClearPathGPS, we take it a step further. Our team can always help you get the absolute most out of your software investment. We work hard to ensure our tech is as simple-to-use as possible and we provide consistent guidance to help you use the data from your system to make real, actionable changes to boost your business.
“ClearPathGPS was so helpful and patient walking us through using the system. And when we call with a question, there’s always someone there to help us right away.” —Mandy Souza, Polar Bear HVAC Services
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Not all HVAC businesses are the same! Consider what challenges your unique business is experiencing, and what data or services could change the game for you. Our team can help you brainstorm ways to boost your business with fleet management, too.
Do your homework, read customer reviews, and ensure you feel comfortable after interacting with your prospective fleet management provider.
Check to see whether your prospective provider offers a comprehensive suite of business-boosting solutions—AI dashcams, GPS tracking, HOS/ELD, and easy-to-access integrations with the management solutions you already use every day.
When you’re ready to learn more about the power of thoughtful fleet management, ClearPathGPS is here to help. Request a demo today to see exactly what we can do for you.
