Hey everyone, Comfort Kings HVAC here, We opened our company this year in March and are rapidly approaching 500k in revenue. Me and my partner are running like crazy trying to keep up with demand and are curious when would be a good time to hire AND would it be wise to hire office first or field tech? We currently answer all the incoming calls on our cell phones while we are in the field working and do our best to get everything scheduled or just handled same day because tomorrow more calls will come. We would be able to do more in a day if we had another employee in the field. We would also be much more organized and structured without having invoices fall through the cracks with somebody in the office fielding the calls, making the schedule, and making sure we don't miss any billing opportunities. Anybody with experience in this wanna chime in and help us decide which way to go?

Are you and your partner out on the field a lot more and you're losing out on sales because you're not answering the phones or responding to leads fast enough? I think hiring a field tech first would be beneficial, give you and your partner more capacity to actually follow up with clients, process invoices and answer the phone. Your field tech can perform the work while you manage the business.

One thing to think about - hiring office people takes a lot of time and you won't be able to work in the field while you are doing it. I think the move is to replace yourself where you are at now, which is in the field. That's the place you have to get out of asap anyway. Find someone you can coach on how to do things your way. If you need someone to answer phones, you can pay a service in the meantime to at least pick up the calls until you can have the time to train someone on how to do it.

I always like the idea of hiring people who make you money vs those who save you time. I really could use someone who handles my phone calls, paperwork and invoices and all that, but I have 2-3 hours from like 8:30pm onwards when my kids are sleeping to deal with all that. I can't be in 4 places at once during the day to make money doing a service. I think hiring a tech would be a good start for you, it could free up your time a little more to step away and deal with what you need to. Once the new tech is autonomous, that would be a great time to get yourself into a admin role or hire for that position.

I’d look at where the bigger bottleneck is right now, and based on what you described, I’d lean office first.Another field tech gives you more capacity, but it also gives you another schedule to manage, more invoices to track, more customer communication, and more moving pieces. If things are already falling through the cracks, adding more production could actually make the problem worse.One of the biggest shifts in my own business was realizing that admin staff aren’t necessarily “overhead” if they’re freeing the owners up to do revenue-producing work AND making sure the revenue you already earned actually gets billed and collected.You also don’t necessarily have to jump straight into a full-time office employee. A strong part-time person handling phones, scheduling, invoicing, follow-ups, and basic admin could immediately take a huge amount off your plates.Then you can actually see your field capacity clearly and make the next hire from there.At almost $500k only a few months in, I’d be thinking less about “How do we personally keep up?” and more about “What infrastructure do we need so this can keep growing without depending on us to hold everything together?”

roselvaggio's point is the one I would build on, because there is a number behind it.A field tech adds capacity but also adds a schedule to manage, invoices to track and another line of customer communication. If the admin side is already where things fall through, the second tech makes the pile bigger, not smaller. You end up paying for capacity you cannot dispatch cleanly.The part that usually decides it: what is an hour of your own time worth in the field versus at the desk at 9 PM? If you bill $150 an hour on a truck and you are doing three hours a night of admin, that admin is costing you more than the office hire would, and it is costing it in the least visible way possible because it never shows up on a P&L.HUGEHomePros is right that hiring office people eats time. That is real, and it is the actual reason most owners keep putting it off rather than the salary. Whatever you decide, budget for the hiring process taking longer than the job posting suggests. I recruit for these office seats for a living, so weigh that, but the sequencing question is the same no matter who you hire through.

Should a Growing Business Hire Office Staff or a Field Tech First?

13 Replies

Ozi
Contributor 2
15 days ago
congrats on the growth, thats a great problem to have. one thing worth thinking about before you decide, a lot of what youd hire an office person for can be handled without a full salary. missed calls can go to an after hours setup that captures the job details, and the invoices falling through the cracks is the big one, that can be automated so every completed job gets an invoice drafted the same day instead of relying on someone remembering. sort that and you can put the hire in the field where it actually makes you money, and add the office person later when volume really needs a human. happy to explain how i handle the invoice part if its useful
DanG
Contributor 2
10 days ago
Congrats on the growth. With two owners both in the field and taking calls on cell phones, my vote is the office person first, or at least someone who owns the phone and the schedule. Here's the reasoning:

- A third tech adds capacity, but you two are still the bottleneck for booking, dispatch and billing. More jobs flowing through the same chaos means more invoices slipping.
- An office hire usually pays for themselves by catching billing you're missing now, and by freeing one of you to sell replacements instead of driving to every service call.
- Once calls aren't being answered from a ladder, close rates and reviews usually improve on their own.

If you're not ready for a full-time hire yet, a middle step:
- Part-time CSR or remote dispatcher during peak hours, with the main line forwarding to them.
- Something covering after-hours and overflow (answering service or AI) so no-heat and no-cool calls at night don't go to voicemail and then to your competitor.
- Have them run billing at the end of every day out of Jobber, not on Friday.

At your pace, plan the field tech hire maybe 60-90 days after the office person, once there's a real schedule to slot them into. For the after-hours piece, disclosure, I'm involved with an AI receptionist built for trades: https://firstdeploy.ai
judithvirag
Verified Community Coach
10 days ago
I would say tech first. You need to make money to afford office staff. Take a look at your numbers and see when it makes sense to get your office staff, how many techs you need to be able to afford it.

Forum Discussion

Should a Growing Business Hire Office Staff or a Field Tech First?