Should a Growing Business Hire Office Staff or a Field Tech First?
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?How Fast Do You Pick Up a Phone Call or Call Someone Back After a Missed Call?
Curious how everyone here handles this, because a new Jobber survey of recent homebuyers turned up a stat that stuck with me: 15% had to follow up repeatedly just to get a response from a contractor 9% never heard back at all Losing potential business due to something that is not a pricing problem or a skill problem should be a wake up call. In a world where 75% of new homeowners hire a pro within their first two years of buying, being the one who calls back first might be the easiest job you win all week! So, what's your business standard? Do you answer within a certain time frame or let it go to voicemail and call back same day? Are there systems set up so nothing slips through the cracks? 👉 Recent Homebuyer Report: It's got homeowner quotes on what made them trust (or ditch) a contractor, plus a breakdown of how each generation actually finds a pro.
How do HVAC companies improve their quote conversion rate and follow up with leads?
How do you get better at sales? I’m only turning over 20% replacement quotes. Do you have an automated follow up system? I also provide two different financing options. Is there a way to track to see if you’re bottlenecking in rejections vs following up?
Field note: I tested an automated lead-triage workflow to stop manual quote follow-ups.
I’ve been reading through the community lately, and two things keep coming up from business owners: the anxiety of "Where do I even start with AI?", and the absolute grind of chasing down silent quotes and following up on invoices at the end of a long day in the field. Most "AI automation" advice you hear is just hype. It tells you to "just plug in an AI chatbot," which usually ends up hallucinating, sounding like a robot, and annoying your customers. So, instead of just talking about it, I spent the last few weeks building and stress-testing a specific workflow to solve this exact problem. The Setup: Instead of manually typing follow-ups at 8 PM, this system reads the incoming inquiry, assigns it an "Urgency Score" (1-10), and only sends a high-priority alert for the hot leads (8s and 9s). Everything else gets a polite, professional auto-acknowledgment. It stops the dropped balls and gives you your evenings back, without the immediate overhead of hiring a full-time office admin. I know there’s a lot of skepticism (rightfully so) around AI workflows. So, I documented the whole process. I put together a free, plain-English breakdown of the exact wiring, prompts, and settings I used to make this work reliably. You can view the full blueprint here: Here If you’re tired of the manual follow-up grind and want to see how this is actually wired, take a look. If you have any questions about how this would apply to your specific setup, just reply below. Happy to share what I've learned.Jobber users how are you handling new requests that don't respond after the first contact?
Do you leave them sitting in New until they respond, archive them, or have some kind of process for keeping the request list clean? I'm curious how other service businesses are handling this, especially when you have a lot of incoming requests. What does your process look like?AI Receptionist vs Outsourced vs Owners
Hello everyone, New to the community here. Recently launched an HVAC business in Texas, after being in real estate development for nearly 2 decades. Would love to hear your insights on your experience with AI receptionist vs outsourced team vs you answering the calls yourself. I am personally finding our AI receptionist build via RetellAI perhaps isn't the best. But also, majority of calls now are sales calls....so I am really torn on what to do. Any advice and insights would be appreciated. Sincerely, AliceWhat Should Home Service Businesses Automate First to Save Time?
Small manual tasks start stacking up, catching up on follow-ups, re-adjusting scheduling, invoicing, review requests, the list goes on and on. Sound familiar? What’s one task you’re still doing manually that you know could be automated? What’s stopping you from setting it up?
Anyone managing multiple departments in Jobber? How do you track them individually?
We operate both a general contracting department and HVAC department, and it's difficult to track them separately. I am currently using a custom drop down on invoices, but am hoping they roll out a business unit feature soon.
