How to Handle Negative Reviews

November 11th, 2011 by Tim No comments »

It takes only seconds for a disgruntled consumer to risk your HVAC company’s reputation. Unfortunately, some companies act like ostriches. Stick their head in the ground and pretend it doesn’t exist.  However, if your business is sound, you don’t have to fear complaints. In fact, embrace them and you will be a better service provider. Here’s why:

Make sure you have an avenue for complaints. Allow an area of your web site for complaints or make sure that with every job you d, your business card is left there (or the owners card) so people know there is someone real who wants to help. If you don’t allow an avenue for complaints, they will find their way to places you can’t control.

Negative feedback may actually be less common than you think. Often, customers who feel wronged don’t address their complaints; they just take their business elsewhere. But, you want to know why a customer leaves you for a competitor. Negative feedback helps you strengthen your service and retain customers.

Complaint resolution can reassure potential customers. They can see ahead of time how you react to and solve a difficult service situation. It can put their minds to rest, knowing that if there’s a problem you’ll make things right.

You can manage negative comments on your own turf. People are already commenting on your HVAC business, whether you know it or not.  When the criticism appears on your site, it’s easier for you to monitor it and respond.

Criticism provides authenticity. Without it, your comments forum could seem like a sham.

Here are some tips for responding positively to negative reviews:

  • Monitor comments regularly.
  • Don’t auto post every comment. Spam will find its way to your site, and you’ll receive comments that are just plain odd. Make sure you read them all.
  • Address complaints promptly. Act quickly to make the situation right for your customer and contain the damage to your reputation.
  • Keep a respectful tone in every response. If a comment angers you, cool down before responding. Look past the customer’s language and consider whether he may have a point, despite his tone.
  • If you’re in the wrong, apologize. It’s no fun to admit to screwing up a job, but deep down we all know we do it on occasion.
  • Avoid finger-pointing and excuses. It just sounds (and is) juvenile. Address the problem, state the facts, and make things right for the customer.
  • Ask satisfied customers to post positive reviews. Keep the forum genuine, but there’s nothing wrong with ensuring your praises are sung as well.
  • Realize that even with stellar service you’ll have customers that God himself could not please.
  • Don;t be afraid to fire your customers. Yes, I said it. If there are customers who are stopping you from providing excellent services to other customers, fire them.

I’m interested in your experience with customer reviews. How do you handle negative feedback? Has it ever changed your business for the better?

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Posted in Small Business Marketing

Deliming. Descaling. Whats De Difference?

November 4th, 2011 by Tim No comments »

Nothing. Whether you call it deliming, descaling or scale removal it’s the process of removing lime scale buildup from your heat exchange system.

Whenever a heat exchange process occurs, whether cooling or heating, calcium in the water become attached to the components around it, mainly tubes or heating elements or cooling elements. This is known as limescale (or lime scale, or simply lime) and it is a killer to heat exchange efficiency. Just a small coating of lime scale can reduce the efficiency of chiller tubes, or a hot water heating element by 10%. Add more lime scale and that efficiency drop increases. You get the idea.

So, whether you need to maintain a tankless hot water heater or clean chiller tubes, boiler tubes or heat exchanger tubes, getting rid of limescale is a top maintenance priority. How do you do that.

For hot water heaters , tankless water heaters or boiler tubes (water side), one of the best ways is with a chemical treatment. Using a pumping system, like Bucket Descaler, a chemical cleaner is circulated throughout the system for a period of time that will dissolve or delime the calcium lime scale buildup. For a tankless unit or domestic hot water heater this can take only about 20-40 minutes using a Descaler Liquid like SpeedyBright, classified by UL to NSF/ANSI Standard 60. Other chemicals are available but be careful when using on potable water systems.

For chiller tubes and heat exchanger tubes,  a rotary tube cleaner is best. This type of tube cleaner uses a rotating brush, flexible shaft and integrated water flush to go down the tube and clean it manually of the scale, dirt and debris.

No matter what solution you decide to use, make sure that it is safe, effective and most of all, done on a continuing basis.

If you are interested, check out our Bucket Descaler below.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPGCXml8Pi4[/youtube]

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Posted in Tube Cleaning

Meet SpeedClean’s New Tube Cleaner: SC-TC-50

November 1st, 2011 by Tim No comments »

Even a scant layer of fouling slashes efficiency in your chillers and heat exchangers.  The solution? Clean those tubes regularly with SpeedClean’s SC-TC-50 Tube Cleaner. The Tube Cleaner is lightweight, portable and powerful, and it’s designed to keep your chillers and heat exchangers at peak efficiency.

SpeedClean Chiller Tube Cleaner

SpeedClean Chiller Tube Cleaner

Its bi-directional foot switch offers reversible shaft rotation for precision cleaning. The powerful integrated water flush feature washes out debris as it’s loosened during cleaning. This gets debris out of the brush head’s path for maximum effective scrubbing power. The high performance nylon-covered shaft promotes deep cleaning of your smooth bore tubes, leaving them free of fouling.

The chiller tube cleaner’s sturdy metal casing and compact design make it easy to transport and easy to store. Its extra-long power cord gives you access to awkward spaces. Now you can clean tubes anywhere!

For portability, power and performance, the SpeedClean SC-TC-50 is the HVAC professional’s choice. It’s your ticket to getting the job done quickly and efficiently, all in an affordable tube cleaning system.

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Posted in HVAC Trends, Tube Cleaning

Lost in translation: HVAC/Plumbing and Tankless Water Heaters

October 18th, 2011 by Tim No comments »

Recently I’ve been pondering the continue convergence of plumbing and HVAC. You see it everywhere. Many plumbers have added, HVAC to their trucks, while a few HVAC guys have added some plumbing services. What got me going on this was a new product we’ve developed called the Bucket Descaler. It’s designed to clean tankless heaters. If your interested in it check it out.

But that’s not the point of this post. The real point is that the whole tankless market seems a bit lost. Who’s realm is it? The plumber, the HVAC guy or both? What about maintenance vs. installs? These things need annual maintenance flushes. Who’s taking care of that for the homeowner (and grabbing some PM revenue too?).

I recently posed the question on a LinkedIn group called HVAC professionals and the answers were interesting. A few said it was a plumbers domain because it’s domestic heat. Others said it was open territory. Still others said tankless wasn’t a worthy technology to even discuss. To me, many missed the point.

When you install a tankless, or tanked unit for that matter you do it once every X years. Install done. Revenue achieved. Bam, done. But as a service company, how could you maximize the revenue on the unit you just installed while delivering excellent customer service and customer piece of mind? Oh yes, offer a preventative maintenance (PM) program.

To the HVAC contractor this should be a piece of cake. Your company is built around PM, or at least a large part of it. Offering additional services like a tankless unit flush or tanked hot water heater purge is a no-brainer, plus you are generally at your customers place twice a year for HVAC PM. Wouldn’t you want to add an incremental service there? If your answer is yes, annual flushes of hot water heaters, more specifically tankless hot water heater annual maintenance is a gift. What are your thoughts?

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Posted in HVAC Trends

Bucket Descaler Promotion. It’s on!

October 4th, 2011 by Tim No comments »

Get a $50 VISA gift card in October with purchaseSpeedClean and Johnstone Supply have teamed up in October to offer a great promotion on our award winning Bucket Descaler. Purchase a Bucket Descaler AND a 2 pack case of Speedy Bright UL listed descaler liquid and receive a $50 VISA gift card via mail in rebate.

Yep, simple and straight to the point. So, check this months Johnstone flyer, head to your local branch and get $50 VISA gift card with the qualifying purchase.

Full information on the BucketDescaler is on the SpeedClean.com website and you can download the rebate form here.

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Posted in Coil Cleaning