Keep clients coming back · Every business
The Experience Library: Home Trades Edition
A homeowner who calls an HVAC company or a plumber is letting a stranger into the house on what is often a bad day, so the experience that brings them back is built from the arrival, the moment the technician shows what is wrong and the walk-through before the van pulls away.
At a glance
- The home trades Experience Library is the handful of moments a homeowner remembers from a service call: the arrival window, the knock at the door, the diagnosis, the price, the clean-up and the reason to call the same company again.
- In focus groups across six service industries reported in Sloan Management Review, reliability ranked first however it was measured; customers expect a company to do what it said it would do.
- In a survey of 400 homeowners by Clear Seas Research, reported by The ACHR News, 75% called HVAC maintenance agreements important and 87% said they would pay $100 or $200 a year for one.
- For an illustrative shop with 1,500 repair visits a year, offering a maintenance agreement on every call instead of three in ten adds about 158 members, worth $31,500 a year and 315 shoulder-season visits.
Part 1 | The homeowner judges what they can see
Most homeowners cannot judge a refrigerant charge or a sweated joint, so they judge the parts of the visit they can follow. Research on service expectations in Sloan Management Review found that customers rank reliability first, which in the home trades means arriving inside the window, fixing it the first time and charging what was quoted, because, as the researchers put it, customers expect service companies to do what they are supposed to do.
Visible work earns credit that invisible work does not. Field experiments in food service published in Management Science found that introducing operational transparency contributed to a 22.2% increase in customer-reported quality, and in a basement or an attic the closest equivalent is a photo: the cracked heat exchanger, the corroded fitting or the clogged filter shown on a tablet before any work begins, then the finished repair shown again afterward.
The ending matters most of all. Research on remembered experience, published in Psychological Science in 1993, found that people judge an experience largely by its most intense moment and its ending, and in a service call the ending is the minute when the technician walks the homeowner through what was done, wipes the floor and explains what to watch for, or simply hands over a tablet to sign.
Part 2 | The next visit is a season away, and the agreement holds it
A home trades company sees most customers when something breaks, while the equipment itself runs on a calendar. ENERGY STAR advises homeowners to have a contractor do annual pre-season checkups, the cooling system in the spring and the heating system in the fall, because contractors get busier once the peak seasons arrive, which gives every heating and cooling company two natural reasons a year to come back.
The owner's instinct is often Homeowners don't want to pay for a plan, though the homeowner survey reported by The ACHR News suggests otherwise. Three in four homeowners rated maintenance agreements important, the minimum expectation was two service visits a year, and 77% wanted priority service as part of the deal.
| Repair visits per year (Assumption) | 1,500 |
|---|---|
| Share of visits where the agreement is offered today (Assumption) | 30% |
| Additional visits where it would be offered (Calculated (1,500 × 70%)) | 1,050 |
| Share of homeowners offered who join (Assumption) | 15% |
| New members per year (Calculated (1,050 × 15%)) | about 158 |
| Annual price (Assumption; the most common price among contractors in the ACHR News survey) | $200 |
| Agreement revenue added (Calculated (157.5 × $200)) | $31,500 |
| Shoulder-season visits added (Calculated (157.5 × 2 visits)) | 315 |
Illustrative example; replace every assumption with your own numbers.
Part 3 | Seven moments, written in the trades' own words
Every service call runs through the same moments, and each one can be decided in advance rather than left to whichever technician catches the call.
| Moment | What the company does | Why it works |
|---|---|---|
| Booking | Give a two-hour window and say what decides the exact time | Uncertain waits feel longer than known ones |
| On the way | Text the technician's photo, first name and arrival time | Known waits feel shorter, and the homeowner knows who is knocking |
| At the door | Shoe covers on before stepping in, a drop cloth under the work | Reliability starts with the basics customers expect |
| The diagnosis | Show a photo of the problem before quoting | Visible work raises perceived quality |
| The price | Quote options in writing before starting work | A quoted price is the promise the homeowner checks |
| The walk-through | Show the finished work, wipe up and say what to watch for | Endings carry the most weight in memory |
| The next visit | Put the spring or fall checkup on the calendar, or offer the agreement | Seasonal checkups give two reasons a year to return |
The walk-through script, for the technician
- "Come take a look before I pack up. This is the [part] I replaced; here's the old one."
- "Everything's running at [reading or result]. If you notice [sign to watch for], call us and we'll come back out."
- "Your [system] is due for its [spring or fall] checkup in [month]. Want me to put you on the calendar now, or would the maintenance plan make more sense? It covers two visits a year and puts you first in line."
- "Here's the card with today's work and our number. Thanks for having us in."
The day-after text, sent by the office
"Hi [first name], it's [business name]. How is the [system] running after yesterday's visit? If anything seems off, reply here and we'll get [technician's first name] back out."
How you compare
- Agreement offer rate: count how many of last month's repair invoices show that a maintenance agreement was offered; the gap between that share and 100% is the opportunity in Exhibit 2.
- Arrival: check what share of last month's calls began inside the promised window.
- Callbacks: track how many jobs needed a second trip for the same problem, since a repeat visit erases the reliability a homeowner expected.
Questions to ask this week
What does the homeowner see in the last five minutes? Ride along on three calls and watch the ending.
Do we show the problem before we price it? If photos are optional, make them standard on every diagnosis.
Who offers the agreement, and on which calls? If it depends on the technician's mood, write it into the walk-through.
Which customers are due for a seasonal checkup? List last year's spring and fall customers and send each a short note with two open dates.
The next step is to add the walk-through script to every call for two weeks and count how many homeowners book their next checkup before the van leaves.
About this research: This article draws on focus-group research on service expectations in Sloan Management Review, a Clear Seas Research survey of 400 homeowners and 100 contractors reported in The ACHR News, ENERGY STAR maintenance guidance, field experiments in Management Science, an experiment on remembered experience in Psychological Science and a classic framework on waiting. The Sloan research is older than five years and is used as a foundational source. The worked example is illustrative.
Sources
- Parasuraman, A., Berry, L. L. and Zeithaml, V. A. Understanding Customer Expectations of Service. Sloan Management Review 32(3), 1991. Sixteen focus groups across six service sectors.
- Woerpel, H. Homeowners, Contractors Mutually Support Maintenance Agreements. The ACHR News, 2023. 400 homeowners (Clear Seas Research); 100 contractors.
- ENERGY STAR. Maintenance Checklist. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy.
- Buell, R. W., Kim, T. and Tsay, C.-J. Creating Reciprocal Value Through Operational Transparency. Management Science 63(6), 2017.
- Kahneman, D., Fredrickson, B. L., Schreiber, C. A. and Redelmeier, D. A. When More Pain Is Preferred to Less: Adding a Better End. Psychological Science 4(6), 1993.
- Maister, D. H. The Psychology of Waiting Lines. In The Service Encounter, Lexington Books, 1985. (Framework.)
Related reading: In-Home Etiquette for Technicians: Shoe Covers, Updates and Clean-Up · What to Leave Behind After a Service Call So Customers Call You Back · Arrival Windows Homeowners Trust: Scheduling for Home Service Pros · Maintenance Plans: How to Set One Up for a Service Business · Keeping Lawn Care and Landscaping Customers Season After Season
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