Customer Success Story : Shafer Heating & Cooling
How this HVAC company grew 150% despite the pandemic
Who is Shafer Heating & Cooling, LLC?
Shafer Heating & Cooling LLC is a family-owned company with over 30 years in business, serving Hillsboro, Ohio. The company and its highly skilled team offer HVAC installations, geothermal systems, ductless mini-split systems, zoning, and air quality solutions.
BUSINESS CHALLENGES
- Increased competition necessitated new, more efficient, and profitable ways of doing business.
- A paper-based process caused significant redundancies in work and lost time making calls to the office from the field for information.
BENEFITS OF SWITCHING
- The transition to ThermoGrid led to more than 150% business growth in just over two years!
- The ERP solution gives field technicians access to everything they need to service the customer, with very little time wasted contacting the office or re-entering and rewriting information.
The transition from a paper-based to a digital business made all the difference
While the company has always been known for its exceptional customer service, until Shafer Heating & Cooling went live with ThermoGrid in early 2018, the company did nearly everything on paper. When the calls came in, they took the information and created a work order. That went on the clipboard, so each of the field technicians had a clipboard full of paper, and often, multiple clipboards filled with hundreds of papers for a day’s work. They would have to transfer that information to their work orders, and then when the work orders came back into the office, that information would again have to be re-entered into QuickBooks®.
Owner Nathan Shafer recalls how “There were a lot of redundancies and inefficiencies. With our paper-based system, we did things over and over, which slowed our processes down and left too much room for human error.”
Implementation of ThermoGrid is simple and straightforward and because it’s cloud-based you can be up and running in no time without any additional IT staff or expensive equipment. Our implementation team guides you through the process to ensure it is setup to your unique specifications.
RISE coaching enables every department to get quickly up to speed
Once Nathan and his team got started, Adam Cory and RISE Coaching helped to sharply ramp up their system expertise and utilization in short order. Being able to ramp up quickly is why we created our RISE Coaching that includes an extensive library of training courses, group, and one-on-one sessions which means that you and your team can learn new skills, adapt business practices, and grow your business.
“The RISE coaching has been a true blessing to us. It supports our whole business, including service technicians and the service support department, communications, management, customer service, and dispatch. Every position in our company is supported through RISE training, so we were able to get our staff up to speed very quickly.”
“ RISE training supports every position in our company, so we were able to get our staff up to speed very quickly. ”
Efficiency and productivity increases lead to 150% business growth
RISE has led to a re-engineering of how the business works, making everyone much more efficient and productive. The result: over 150% business growth, a trend line that is still pointing sharply up, even in 2020. “ThermoGrid has helped us to not only sustain our business while many in our industry were struggling, but we were able to continue growing through the pandemic! I do not think that would have been possible without ThermoGrid and Adam and the RISE platform.
Nathan is amazed at the many impacts ThermoGrid has had on every aspect of the HVAC business. “There are many companies that barely scratch the surface in utilizing all of the functionality the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system offers. There are many features in this comprehensive system designed to run every aspect of an HVAC business.”
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A broad range of features is innovating every aspect of the business
“Just some of the things we use daily include job costing, call-taking, scheduling and dispatching, managing club memberships, the DMR (daily manager reports), finance dashboards, and marketing campaigns. We use the load calculations: heat loss, payroll reporting, commissions, QuickBooks integration, custom documents, timesheets, maintenance/PM agreement; VolP: call recording, text and email messaging, Geo-location, GPS, and many more features. It has completely innovated every area of our business!”
“Our technicians use it to incorporate site photos into our customer folders. It does all pricing and billing in the field, so there is no wasted time calling back to the office for information. They can look back at job histories for each customer. That helps them to figure out the warranties on the replaced equipment and parts. They’re easily able to offer repairs with parts and labor; with a few clicks, the price is there and ready for them to start.”
Nathan finds the transition to a digital business remarkable. “One of the biggest impacts has been getting away from the paper trail. Everything is on laptops or iPads out in the field; we don’t have to call in to find out past service, whether warranty items or repeated failures.”
Service agreements and profitability mapping have been substantial growth drivers
Before ThermoGrid, each customer had a folder that would go out to the job sites each year, so the technicians had the previous records. Nathan says, “Now it’s so much easier to track when appointments are due, billing, renewals, customer notifications, and scheduling. It’ll even notify us when they’re due, so we don’t have to manually look through a pile of folders to see who needs renewal.”
The profitability map has also made a significant difference. “Being able to categorize our service calls based on job type, which technician is going out, and tech levels enables us to prioritize and organize for maximum profitability. We can also easily glance at the dispatch board and see our priorities for the day.”
“There are many features in this comprehensive system designed to run every aspect of an HVAC business. ”
ThermoGrid support is unrivaled, further adding to its value over comparable software
Nathan and his team did their due diligence before deciding on ThermoGrid. “Whether it’s the company’s willingness to adapt, striving to be better, adding more features to the platform, or making it easier to use, ThermoGrid is focused on helping its customers succeed.”
“From a customer service perspective, they always have open ears. They’re open to any feedback, suggestions, questions, or support needs. They’re always there to help us. 99% of the time, we can get right through to them on the phone. If we send an email, we get a quick response and resolution to any problems we may have. There have been many times I’ve even talked to them after hours on evenings or weekends. They are just always there to support you, whether it’s with marketing campaigns, better ways to track things in the business, building documents, or customizing things in our account.”
The overall value proposition is unmatched, according to Nathan and his team. “It’s an excellent value. They have pretty much everything a company like ours needs, and I highly recommend this software to other HVAC businesses like ours!”
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