Top Features to Look for in HVAC Dispatching Software

HVAC dispatching software has become a valuable tool for small service-based businesses and service contractors. It can eliminate paper, process faster payments from the field or the office, and make you more efficient.

To stay competitive within the HVAC industry, HVAC companies need software that can handle the complex needs of the demanding market. It’s also essential to make sure you pick an HVAC dispatching software that provides free implementation support after onboarding to ensure continued success.

With a rising interest in field service technology, there are numerous HVAC dispatching software options out there—so how do you choose one that’s right for your business? To help you get started, we uncover some top features and their benefits to help you simplify everyday field service operations, so you can focus on winning repeat business and driving new customers to your HVAC company.

HVAC Dispatch Software Must-Haves

If you set up your dispatching team with great HVAC scheduling software, you can win repeat business and gain long-lasting customer loyalty.

The time-saving technology is designed to increase your team’s overall efficiency while increasing value and customer satisfaction. With HVAC dispatching software, dispatchers can slice manual data entry by 50-75% when they move past the physical filing cabinets and go completely paperless.

If you’re on the market to digitally transform your HVAC company, here are some top features to look for in a great HVAC dispatching software:

• Scalable customer relationship management (CRM) for customer accounts, etc
• Digital invoicing, eliminating paper
• Seamless billing integration with QuickBooks
• Built-in communication between technicians, dispatchers, and customers
• Smart scheduling with drag-and-drop dispatch grid

Customer management that’s built to scale as you grow.

Many small businesses use light-weight and inexpensive software to get their operations off the ground. But what happens when you outgrow your current business software as you start to acquire more customers?

Unfortunately, most tools and software solutions that a lot of small businesses used when they first started isn’t scalable and doesn’t provide the features a growing business need to keep up with demands.

So when looking for affordable, performing HVAC software, it’s important to consider one that includes customer relationship management capability. Here’s what to look out for in a CRM:

• The ability to capture job photos in the field and upload them
• Create multiple customer contacts and service locations
• Set communication preferences and billing terms
• Track referral sources and create virtual sticky notes to customers accounts as you would with a physical file

Additionally, If your HVAC business is already using QuickBooks—why replace it? There are field service management providers out there that let you integrate seamlessly with QuickBooks, making it easy to transfer customer data and scale up your operations as your business grows.

Easy-to-Use Interface

Many field service software today have clunky and hard-to-use UI (user interface). It’s jam-packed with any and all features you might or might not need. This does your business no good to have field service management software with extensive, powerful features if you and your team have a difficult time understanding it due to a confusing interface.

RELATED ARTICLE: Can Dispatch Software Replace a Service Dispatcher?

Simple, intuitive interfaces like Service Fusion makes it easy for even tech novices to handle even if they’ve never dealt with HVAC business software before.

Excellent Technician Tracking Tools

Whether you have 5 or 25 technicians, it can be a challenge to keep track of everyone’s availability, job progress, and where they’re located. Using HVAC dispatch automation combined with GPS fleet tracking will make life easier for the front office, techs, and customers.

With HVAC dispatching software, it’s a breeze for your front office to manage the administrative aspects of the business. Not only will it allow dispatchers to see at-a-glance where your technicians are, but it will also enable them to monitor the routes technicians are taking to increase route optimization and save money.

Online Invoicing and Processing Payments

The days of stacks and stacks of invoices piling up on your desk are over. Never file paper duplicates and endure the associated headaches again. HVAC dispatch software helps with that by eliminating paperwork altogether. Your technicians can also get significant time back in their schedule by allowing them to handle invoices digitally while on the job.

The right HVAC dispatch solution puts all information, from work orders and invoices to payments and emails, in one convenient place. This means you can:

• Get paid faster with a native payment processing platform
• Assign jobs real-time
• Convert single or multiple jobs to invoices in just one click
• Put an end to paper cuts

Field Technician Mobile App

Today, a mobile app isn’t merely a luxury for technicians—it’s a necessity to ensure simple, intuitive tools to help make their jobs easier. An affordable, high-performance field service management solution is so much more than a way to eliminate pen and paper from field service processes. It’s about leveraging the technology to empower your techs to be productive, efficient, and rewarding with their work as possible.

Your chosen mobile app should feature:

• Real-time schedule notifications and SMS to communicate with team and customers
• Instant access to full customer work order details, repair history, service location, etc
• Estimate options and the ability to generate invoices without the need to call in the office

In short, a great field service mobile app allows field technicians to reduce idle time and manage their schedules more effectively. This is why it’s important for HVAC companies to equip their technicians with state of the art mobile tools to run everyday operations seamlessly in and out of the field.

Thanks to connectivity, access to existing customer data, and knowledge and familiarity through face-to-face interactions, many techs can meet the future needs of their customers and increase retention.

Once you delight your customers and make their lives’ easier, get ready to collect some great online reviews.