Here at CI Web Group, we’re all about data-driven home services business growth, minus the guesswork. Your website is being visited by hundreds or thousands of prospects on a daily basis. Now what?
Staying a Jump Ahead of the Competition With Powerful Conversion Tools
An old Chinese proverb says: “May you live in interesting times.” And 2020 is certainly the most ‘interesting’ time in human memory, especially for small local businesses like plumbers, electricians and HVAC contractors.
Exciting opportunities appear as lockdown eases
For the home services sector, it’s been a tough summer. After plummeting almost 20% in April, sales are recovering slowly. However, this pandemic is opening up fresh horizons for HVAC technologies, particularly for local contractors pursuing creative approaches curbing the spread of COVID-19 while protecting their bottom lines.
It’s already quite clear that our post-lockdown world will be more virtual than ever before, and sales techniques must follow suit. Smart business owners are taking advantage of this time to upgrade their websites with a range of sales-boosting add-ons. Here’s a sneak peek at five state-of-the-art cyber-resources that steer casual web-searchers smoothly along your sales funnel to that vital SCHEDULE NOW! button.
TEXT & LIVE CHAT
Text Messages & Live Chat Services Skyrocket Customer Confidence
In customer relations, text messages and live chats today outnumber telephone calls. For reasons of convenience, culture, privacy or simply personal preference, people are opting for more modern technology that provides a permanent record of queries and responses. Particularly for home services businesses – where personal contacts are crucial for building up trust among consumers – it’s vital to interact with the public through these preferred channels.
Adding a Talk to Us Now! option to your website is a fast and easy decision that establishes more channels of communication with current and potential customers. Visitors browsing your website can see when your chat room is staffed and clear up doubts instantly.
With so many employees already set up to work from home, it’s easy to draw up an on-call duty roster that extends your business hours through this virtual reception desk, particularly if you limit your texting and live chat services to just the geographical areas that you serve.
An Ever-Expanding Database So You can Get Clients Without Ads
Better still, all interactions with your hvac marketing company can be stored safely in your database, regardless of the communications channel used: telephone, live chat, text messages and clicking on calls to action scattered strategically throughout your website. Registered, collated and instantly retrievable, this data makes it easier to convert leads, extend sales through additional items and even upsell equipment and services.
After the initial SMS and chat room contacts, these channels are perfect for follow-ups like customer satisfaction surveys and employee performance assessments. They are also great channels for seasonal promotions, maintenance reminders, emergency alerts and other marketing strategies.
Online Scheduling System adds round-the-clock income stream
Booking appointments is a crucial step for any home services business. A labor-intensive and time-consuming task on the telephone, it takes only a few seconds through an online scheduling system. Tucked neatly into your current website structure, SCHEDULE SERVICE calls to action placed strategically throughout your website pay rich dividends in increased business.
Instead of having to remember to call during business hours, customers simply log onto your website whenever they want, and confirm the appointment times most convenient for their families.
Every transaction is confirmed instantly to the client through an email or text message, with all this information stored permanently in your database. Next, the technician is advised, and can build the appointment into an efficient work route that saves time and money every day of the week.
Virtual Sales & Service
Virtual Sales & Service To Kick Your Conversions Into Top Gear
As business practices shift rapidly from real life to virtual channels, sales techniques are following suit. Through a one-step decision, you can protect your bottom line by working through a Virtual Sales Service section added to your website.
Flexible enough to handle a wide variety of demands, this multi-function platform slots seamlessly into your current website framework. A user-friendly add-on that requires no up-front investments, it offers monthly or annual subscriptions, starting at a risk-free $60.
Tailored to our new world where close personal contacts are feared rather than welcomed, these virtual contacts also lessen the possible health hazards for everyone involved. Staying in constant but not intrusive contact with leads, prospects and customers is easy, while saving time and money on unnecessary and often repeated visits to their homes.
Planning ahead pumps up productivity
Virtual inspections allow technicians to check out problems well in advance, preparing accurate quotes and scheduling their routes and work days more efficiently. This means that less effort is needed to maintain, repair and install HVAC, electrical and plumbing systems, through virtual diagnostic solutions based on remote inspections of customers’ homes and their problems.
Alerted by an about-to-arrive message, careful homeowners can make sure that other family members stay away well away from repair or installation areas, for added safety. Properly prepared for every call, with all the necessary parts, spares and tools required for each specific job, service technicians work faster and more efficiently, completing their work with minimal risks of exposure.
As a marketing bonus, a Virtual Sales Services add-on is a great new digital marketing channel for spotlighting seasonal promotions, special offers, discounts and customized financing plans, communicating directly with target markets.
AI CHATBOT
AI Chatbots keep your business open 24/7
Personalized to reflect the needs of each business, an AI (Artificial Intelligence) chatbot is simply a computer program that simulates human responses to verbal or written prompts. These chatbots interpret incoming phrases (rather than just individual words) and reply with pre-set sentences.
Often located at the bottom of every page, these calls to action provide consumers with huge amounts of information instantly, ranging from product specifications to troubleshooting and the ability to book an appointment.
This user-friendly feature can be quickly embedded in contractor websites, and used through most major messaging applications, using flexible webhooks and robust Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). As they are easily scaled, even a one-man business can be available to its customers day and night, although the owner may be sound asleep!
Easy to tweak, with fast personalization
Through deep learning and neural networks, smart chatbots are fast studies. This ability to learn is vital, so chatbots can start to recognize patterns in the data that they receive, responding to consumer queries in the most appropriate ways. Flexible and designed for easy adaptation, chatbot ‘conversations’ can be customized freely, adapting responses to the specific needs of each plumbing, electrical and HVAC business.
These chatbot conversations are automatically recorded and stored in centralized databases for future reference, with easy retrieval. A digital marketing goldmine, all this information can be used in many different ways, boosting sales for years to come.
MERCHANT ACCOUNT
Merchant Accounts streamline sales straight from your website
Before beefing up your sales funnel with all these state-of-the-art channels for communicating with leads, prospects and customers, you need to open a merchant account. This allows businesses to accept payments in various ways (usually debit and credit cards) for direct sales, straight from your website.
Sometimes known as a clearant merchant account, this financial facility provides secure handling of electronic payments. Set up through an agreement between an acceptor and a merchant acquiring bank, it serves as an intermediary between your home services business and the many financial institutions that provide your customers with their credit and debit cards.
Financially secure and easy to use
Whenever a service or product is paid for through a card, the related funds are initially deposited into your merchant account. From there, they are subsequently transferred to your business account at your local bank, at your order.
Taking only a couple of days to open, these merchant accounts handle just one kind of transaction: credit card payments. Naturally, you must provide proof of your own identity and the legitimacy of your business, as part of the Know Your Customer (K YC) regulations in the financial sector.
Totally secure for both buyer and seller, merchant accounts streamline website purchases, meaning that your virtual ‘store’ is open for business right around the clock. Your competition might be dozing, and you can relax too – as your website never sleeps!
Talk to the experts about turning your HVAC, electrician and plumbing website into a 24-hour profit center
If you’d like to discover budget-friendly ways of expanding your business through
upgrading your website, get in touch with our team today.
CALL ANSWERING SERVICE
24/7 customer service so you and your team can have the work/life balance that everyone deserves. Live agents will answer incoming calls, text messages, chats, and forms.
