Residential HVAC, DuPage County
In a July heat wave, the company that picks up wins.
On the hottest and coldest days of the year your call volume triples while every tech you have is already on a job. A homeowner sitting in an eighty-eight degree living room calls three companies in quick succession and books whoever answers, not whoever has the better reviews.
Where the year actually happens
Two months decide most of your year.
Illustrative pattern. Your own months are what the report measures.
The HVAC math
A changeout and a capacitor are not the same missed call.
A blended average hides the argument, so the replacement and the service call sit on separate lines. One missed changeout in July is worth more than a whole week of tune ups, which is why the share you set on the fourth line moves the figure so hard.
The defaults are a starting point for a two to four truck residential shop, nothing more. Type your own replacement price, your own service ticket and your own share over the top of them and the figure changes with you.
Peak season, run your own numbers
Blended value of one missed call
$1,632
Peak-season revenue walking away
$70,502
Eight peak weeks, thirty percent of answered calls booking. Shoulder season is on top of this.
The five HVAC calls you cannot miss.
No heat, single digits outside
The house is dropping degree by degree, so this homeowner books the first company that answers and pays whatever the after-hours rate is.
No cooling, over ninety
An eighty-year-old parent or a newborn in the house turns a service call into an emergency the caller will not sit on for an hour.
Water pooling around the furnace
They do not know if it is a condensate line or a failed heat exchanger, and the fear of the second one means they keep dialing until somebody picks up.
Landlord with a tenant complaint and a deadline
Illinois habitability pressure means this caller has a date on a letter, and whoever confirms a window today keeps the whole portfolio.
Second quote after somebody else came in high
This is a homeowner already holding a changeout number in the four or five figures, and the only thing standing between you and that job is a ringing phone.
What the system sends
This goes out before they dial the next number.
It names your company so the text is not mistaken for spam, it says out loud that no cooling in this weather is an emergency, and it offers the next two windows that are genuinely open on your board. Typing a reply is easier than waiting on hold.
Example text for a sample shop, sent right after the missed call
This is Northside Heating & Cooling, sorry we missed you. If your AC is out in this heat we treat it as an emergency. I can get a tech to you today between 2 and 4, or tomorrow between 8 and 10. Reply 1 or 2 and it is booked, or tell me what is going on and I will work it out.
Sent from your existing business number. Wording is yours to edit.
The three things HVAC owners say back.
My office manager already answers the phone.
She does, until the fourth line rings at 8:10 on the first ninety degree morning while she is already on a warranty hold with a distributor. This handles the overflow and the hours she is not at the desk, and every one of those conversations still lands in front of her.
We use ServiceTitan.
Good, keep it. Nothing here replaces your dispatch board or your invoicing. This sits in front of it and catches the caller who never became a record in the first place. The booking lands on the calendar in my system, and you move it into ServiceTitan the way you do now.
My customers want to talk to a person.
They do, and this does not pretend otherwise. It is not a replacement for a person, it holds the caller for the few minutes before your person gets to them so they stop dialing the next company. The text says a human is coming and then a human comes.
Pricing
Every number, on the page, including peak months.
Core
Nothing gets lost.
$397/mo
$500 setup
- An automatic text goes out the moment a call is missed
- Open times offered in the text, so the caller books without you picking up
- One inbox for calls, forms, and chat
- Appointment reminders
- Review request sent automatically the day after each appointment
- Monthly one-page report with an estimated value of recovered work
You still answer anyone who asks a question instead of booking.
Start with CoreThe one to pick
Pro
The conversation runs to a booked time.
$697/mo
$750 setup
On Core the system catches the call and books the people who are ready to pick a time. On Pro it handles the ones who have a question first, which in this trade is most of them.
- Everything in Core
- Conversations handled end to end until a time is picked
- Emergencies, price questions and anyone asking for a person get handed to you right away
- Ninety days of follow-up on anyone who talked to the system and never booked
- Call routing rules for after hours
You still take the emergencies and the price conversations.
Start with ProScale
The system works everyone you have ever served.
$997/mo
$1,000 setup
Core and Pro work the people contacting you now. Scale puts your existing customer list and your dead appointments back to work.
- Everything in Pro
- Maintenance and seasonal reminders to your existing customers, off the last service date you import at setup
- Cancelled and no-show appointments worked automatically until they rebook or say no
- A monthly call list of the leads the system could not close, and what each one asked for
- Multi-location or multi-crew routing, with each location's numbers broken out on the monthly report
You still take the emergencies. Nothing else waits on you.
Start with ScaleCore is $397 a month. Whether one recovered call covers that depends on your average ticket and your margin, and both of those are your numbers rather than mine. The calculator on this page runs them.
After the one-time setup fee, service runs month to month with no term contract. Phone, text and AI usage is included up to a monthly allowance for your tier. A peak month that runs past it is billed at cost, with no markup, and shown on your monthly report. Cancel in writing by email at least 14 days before your next billing date; the setup fee is not refundable once the build starts. Read the full terms.
Setup is not waived or negotiated. The only credit against it is the $97 missed-call report, if you move forward within 60 days. Setup covers the build. Your first monthly charge comes 14 days after the setup payment.
See your own July before you buy anything.
I call your business seven times over five days and show you what a customer actually gets. For $97 that includes an early morning attempt, an evening one and a Saturday, with an estimate next to the misses calculated from the average job value you give me. Eight business days, and the fee comes off your setup if you move forward within 60 days.
Older housing stock, harder summers.
This is built for the towns where the furnaces are twenty years old and the attics were never sealed right. Naperville, Wheaton, Downers Grove, Glen Ellyn, Lombard and Elmhurst, out through Aurora, Warrenville and Bolingbrook, and east into Oak Brook and Hinsdale. Setup runs over email and one screen share, so nothing about this needs a truck to sit still for an afternoon.