Reduce Truck Rolls for Commercial HVAC Contractors to Improve Bottom Lines

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What is a Truck Roll?

A truck roll is any time a technician is dispatched to a facility to perform service, maintenance, inspections, installations, etc. It may sound counter-intuitive to reduce the amount of truck rolls for a contractor who makes money from their skilled technicians’ time on site, but they are often unproductive.

Every time a technician is dispatched, the company incurs an expense estimated to be as low as $150 and as high as $1,000. After accounting for labor, time, vehicle maintenance & fuel, and additional opportunity costs, it becomes more difficult to have a positive return on that investment. Recent reporting has found that around 25% of all truck rolls do not add value and could have been avoided.

Reducing the unproductive truck rolls means less wasteful spending and better bottom lines. The best way to do this starts with implementing and maintaining remote diagnostic/control platforms. With visibility into systems before a technician is dispatched, you will optimize truck rolls, provide better service, increase your margins, and turn customers into partners.

Fewer Unnecessary Truck Rolls Conserves Efficiency Within Your Service Department

An efficient service department means waste is reduced in all areas that matter for your bottom line. Skilled labor hours, customer communication, and interdepartmental cooperation are all improved with visibility into the equipment being serviced. When support for the customer can be provided from afar instead of rolling a truck, an issue can be verified so the technician won’t waste time with false positives.

As an example, if one of your priority customers calls and says they need a technician because it is too warm in their space during the summer, you scramble to make sure they are taken care of. A dispatcher will grab the technician familiar with their equipment from another job and send them across town to take care of it. When they arrive, it is cool in the space and all systems are working properly. Turns out the customer called only 5 minutes after turning the stat down to 68 degrees from 80. That technicians’ skills were squandered on windshield time, the other job suffered with not having them there, and now you must bill a critical customer or swallow those costs when nothing was wrong. What a waste!

This situation is one dealt with every day by commercial HVAC contractors. Now imagine that when the customer calls for service, you log into a system and check real-time and historical data that shows they dropped the thermostat from 80 to 68 degrees five minutes ago. You check the supply air and relay status to see that the unit is cooling and just needs some time to catch up. Your service department can call the customer and say, “Our remote diagnostics show that the unit is operating correctly. We want to wait 30 minutes and then check back in with you.” Watching the temperature go down in the space, the customer is called back, and they are more comfortable and satisfied and cancel any call.

In this scenario, remote vision into the equipment reduced confusion over system performance, eliminated wasted hours transporting to and diagnosing the unit, and prevented any billing disputes.  Additionally, the customer is more likely to call you with any issues instead of any other company because you only charge them when they absolutely need service.

Improve Bottom Lines by Implementing Smart Maintenance Programs with Your Customers

Unnecessary truck rolls are not an inevitable cost of the HVAC contracting business. Partner with HYTECH and reap the benefits of reduced truck rolls. They assist with the installation, management, analytics, and reporting of smart devices so you have a seamless and lucrative transition into the predictive maintenance and service that keeps your service department efficient. HYTECH 24/7 can help make that possible. Visit HYTECH 24/7 online now to get started.