Heating season in DFW: hire for the phone, or cover it?

The first real cold front of the fall comes through North Texas, people flip the thermostat to heat for the first time since spring, and a good number of them find out the furnace doesn't want to start. By the next morning, every HVAC shop in DFW is getting calls again.

A lot of owners respond to that by thinking about hiring someone to answer the phone. Before you post that job, it's worth looking at which calls you're actually missing.

A note from Logan

I live and work in Prosper, and I talk to HVAC owners around Collin County most weeks. This time of year the same question comes up: "Should I hire somebody for the phones before it gets cold?"

It's a fair question. Summer was loud, and nobody wants to go through that again on the heating side. But when I ask owners to walk me through when they miss calls, the answer is almost never "all day." It's after 5. It's Saturday. It's the hour they're on a roof with a heat pump, or in an attic with a furnace. It's the morning after the first cold night, when four people call at once.

That's a different problem than "I need a full-time person," and it has a different fix.

What the first cold snap does to your phone

Here's what tends to show up after the first cold night:

• No-heat calls from people whose system hasn't run since March
• "It smells like something's burning" calls, which are often just dust burning off, but you can't know that from a voicemail
• Heat pumps that run but blow cool air
• Pilot light and ignition problems on older furnaces
• Calls from people who aren't your customers yet, because their usual company didn't pick up

Most of those come in the evening, when people get home and the house is cold. That's exactly when the office is closed and you're finishing the last job or eating dinner.

And a family with a cold house and kids at home isn't going to wait until 8 the next morning. They'll keep calling down the list until somebody answers.

What hiring for the phone actually buys you

If you hire someone to answer calls, you get a real person who can learn your business, book jobs, and handle the customer who wants to talk. For a lot of shops that's the right call, especially once the office work is a full-time job on its own.

But think about what you'd be paying for. A daytime hire covers your daytime hours. The calls you're losing in heating season mostly come after hours and on weekends, which is when that person goes home too. So you either pay for evening and weekend coverage on top, or you're back where you started at 6 PM.

Hiring also takes time. You have to find someone, train them, and hope they stay. If you start that process when the first cold front hits, you won't have help until the rush is over.

None of that means "don't hire." It means hire for the work that needs a person, and handle the overflow another way.

Covering the overflow instead

This is what we set up for HVAC shops. When you don't pick up, the call forwards to a line that answers in your company's name. It takes the caller's name, number, address, and what's going on, and texts it to you in about a minute.

If the caller says something that sounds urgent, like no heat with someone elderly in the house or a gas smell, the text is flagged so it's the first thing you see. Your number stays the same. Calls you do answer work exactly like they do now.

It won't diagnose the system, quote a price, or promise a time. Those stay with you. What it does is make sure the person with a cold house talked to your company instead of your voicemail, and that you know about them before they call the next shop.

We walked through what happens to the call you miss in What happens to the HVAC call you don't pick up. Heating season is the same thing, with colder customers.

A simple way to decide

Before you write a job post, spend one week writing down every call you miss: the time, the day, and whether they called back. Then look at the list.

1. If the misses are mostly during business hours, and the phone is a full-time job, a hire may be the right move.
2. If the misses are mostly evenings, weekends, and the hour you're on a job, an answering line covers those for less than a part-time person.
3. If it's both, you might want both. A person for the daytime, and a line that catches what they can't.

Either way, you'll be making the call from your own numbers instead of a guess.

Why Logan sets it up himself

Logan sets up every line himself, and owners reach him on his cell, not a help desk. He's local to Collin County, and he tests every tool himself before he recommends it. Setting this up takes a phone call and a forwarding code, which is a lot easier on a calm October afternoon than the morning after the first cold night.

Missed-call and after-hours answering is $250 a month, and the first 14 days are free. No contract. If it isn't worth it, cancel and turn forwarding off with one code.

Try it before the cold sets in. Start your 14 free days and Logan will call you to set it up.