When Should You Hire A Dedicated Maintenance Tech?
An HVAC contractor in Nevada asked:
How many service agreements should I have in place before I hire a dedicated maintenance tech?
EGIA faculty member Weldon Long began his answer by first asking how we should define a maintenance call, and what a company includes as a part of that service.
“I’m also working with clients that are doing multi-services,” said Long. “So it’s not just a plumbing tune-up anymore, it’s a heating and cooling, then there’s plumbing, electrical, I’ve got a client who does security and smart home as part of their platform.”
Long continued that with so much involved in maintenance for some companies, that it is extremely important to outline the terms of a standard service agreement, how many visits that entails, and most importantly— what the company would be obliged to take care of as a part of the agreement.
Assuming that the question came from a heating and cooling company, performing two tune-ups per year as apart of their agreement, Long supposes that a single tech can do four tune-ups per day.
“If you take a four tune-ups per tech per day, multiplied by 50 weeks, that’s about 1,000 tune-ups in a year,” said Long. “From there it’s simple math.”
Fellow faculty member Gary Elekes also jumped into the conversation, saying how he budgets approximately 900 hours of service agreements for every one tech in a given year. Faculty member Drew Cameron also chimed in, explaining that the question shouldn’t be how many service agreements one has in place, but how many tune-ups one is doing in a give time frame.
Our faculty members have also answered questions on other topics related to sales in the contracting world, including Grow Your Business with Service Agreements and Plumbing Service Agreements.
Hear more from our “Ask The Experts” faculty members on “Cracking The Code,” our weekly web series.
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