Home maintenance contracts, often sold as service agreements or club memberships, generate guaranteed, recurring revenue for home service businesses. Maintenance agreements provide homeowners with the peace of mind that your company will show up if something breaks and maintain their equipment to prevent major problems.
For HVAC, electrical, plumbing, and other types of contractors who perform repairs and routine home maintenance, an annual or monthly preventive maintenance contract guarantees future billable work in a market that's hard to predict (and very competitive). It’s also a way to book more time in a customer’s home, build brand loyalty, and give homeowners discounted or exclusive access to your services.
Is your home service business properly utilizing service agreements? Could your field technicians sell more of them? Does your team know how to successfully pitch memberships and contracts to customers?
In this guide to home maintenance contracts, we give tips on how to sell service agreements and examine the ways modern service agreement software can help your business revamp its approach.
Then, we’ll explain how our software, ServiceTitan, helps commercial and residential home services businesses:
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In simple terms, a maintenance agreement sets out the steps a contractor will take to maintain, repair, and service a customer’s equipment or property. The terms are agreed between the two parties to ensure the equipment continues to operate satisfactorily.
Maintenance agreements typically include clauses referencing:
Field service management software means your techs know the right time and the right way to pitch a service club membership, while having mobile technology that makes signing up and setting recurring payments quick and easy.
There are two key areas where service maintenance agreements help:
As a service provider, you already know there are busy times when the phone rings off the hook and other slower periods when jobs become scarce. In some service industries, like HVAC and plumbing, these peaks and lulls change with the season, but every business must weather slow periods when revenue can rapidly dwindle.
Maintenance contracts help stabilize revenue during these slow times and grow your customer base. By scheduling routine maintenance and checking in on existing customers, you can maintain a stream of billable preventive services—even when homeowners aren’t calling you with an urgent issue.
Train your technicians to catch potential problems that homeowners should take care of immediately—before they become a larger, more expensive issue in the future—and discover opportunities to upsell accessories or additional services.
Annual maintenance service agreements mean your company must stay aware of your customers' needs, and that kind of attentive customer service gives you more opportunities to impress, service, and satisfy homeowners.
Train your technician team to engage with customers and listen to their questions and concerns during scheduled check-ups and maintenance. Time spent talking face-to-face with customers provides extremely valuable feedback and reassures them that your company cares. A monthly maintenance contract generates more of these opportunities to build a good rapport with homeowners and inspires loyalty to your brand.
Whether you want to revamp your current service agreements or introduce home maintenance contracts to your customer base for the first time, keep in mind these specific principles to ensure these offerings mutually benefit both you and your customers:
Generally speaking, it’s best to fully examine the working condition of a homeowner's HVAC technology, plumbing, electrical system, etc. before extending a service agreement to the customer. Too many service visits to remedy repeat repair and breakdown issues won’t be cost-effective for your company. Consider setting a limit of appointments per contract period and specify what services the maintenance plan covers.
Your field technicians bear most of the burden of pitching and selling a home maintenance contract to your customers. Many techs entered the skilled trades because they enjoy working with their hands and helping people—not because they wanted to be salespeople.
However, you can give your on-site team the mobile technology and sales tools to approach this process with confidence. Build in a discount so techs can easily show the customer a digital estimate that calculates how much money the membership potentially saves them on service calls and equipment deals.
“I’d hate to be offering a membership program and not have my company on ServiceTitan,” says Joshua Campbell, co-founder of Rescue Air Heating & Cooling in Texas. “You hit a button and put it on recurring payments. it’s about getting those visits. Those customers build trust in you.”
Keep your pitch simple and short. Neither your customers nor your techs want to be burdened with an awkward, prolonged sales situation, so make sure your techs know how to speak about your maintenance programs with a succinct sales presentation that highlights homeowner benefits.
You also want your team to identify the ideal opportunities to pitch your company’s club membership or maintenance contract. Not every house call presents an opportunity to sell a service agreement, but techs should be aware of situations where they do appeal to homeowners and make financial sense for the business.
For instance, if your company offers free inspections on initial visits, use these thorough inspections to help uncover current or potential issues the homeowner may not know about. Advise solutions to help them remedy over a period of time or stay on top of the problem with a monthly maintenance contract.
With an intuitive, cloud-based mobile app in the field like ServiceTitan Mobile 2.0, you can utilize a customizable service agreement template with just a few quick taps on a tablet and make the membership forms a mandatory part of certain service calls—ensuring your techs always know the right time and situation to pitch a home maintenance contract to a customer.
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