How do I remind customers when their next service is due?
Send the reminder before the service is due, using the date of the last job, so the customer hears from you first. Homeowners rarely keep track of when the furnace was last checked or when the last pest treatment went down, and your business is the one holding that date. A reminder that arrives before they notice a problem makes you the obvious call. One that arrives after may find them already searching for someone else.
Why do customers let a regular service slip?
Ask a homeowner when their air conditioner was last serviced and you will often get a guess. Nobody keeps a calendar for the furnace or the termite treatment, and the paperwork from the last visit is in a drawer somewhere, if it was kept at all. The date lives in your job history, and it only helps anyone if someone at your business looks at it.
A customer who misses a service usually meant to book it and never got a nudge. The need is still there after the date passes. The equipment keeps wearing and the pests keep coming back, and sooner or later the customer notices. The question is whether they hear from you before that moment or start searching during it.
Why should the reminder come before the service is due?
Take an HVAC company with a customer whose system was tuned up last spring. If a reminder reaches her before the first hot week, she books with the company that did the work and already knows her equipment. If nothing arrives, the first she hears of a problem may be warm air coming out of the vents on a ninety degree afternoon, and on that afternoon she calls whoever answers first.
Reaching customers early also gives both sides room. A reminder with time to spare lets the customer pick a day that suits them, and it lets you fill your schedule ahead of a rush instead of scrambling through one.
What does a service reminder need in order to work?
It needs the date of the last job and what was done, saved with the customer's record, so the reminder does not depend on anyone's memory. A reminder built from a guess goes out at the wrong time or to the wrong person, and the customer can tell.
It also needs an easy next step. A reminder that tells the customer a service is coming due and then asks them to call during business hours loses some of the people it reached. When customers can book online straight from the reminder, they can act on it while they are reading it. What the reminder says and exactly when it goes out depend on your trade and your customers, and that is worth working out for your own business.
How is a service reminder different from a newsletter or a sales email?
A service reminder is about the customer's own house. It tells them something they need to know about equipment or a treatment they already paid you for, which is why customers tend to welcome it. A pest control company letting a customer know the next treatment is coming up is doing them a favor. A general marketing email has to earn its place in a different way, because it does not arrive with that built-in reason.
Both have a place in a business that wants repeat work. The reminder brings back the work that is already due, and an occasional note keeps your name remembered in the long stretches between visits. How often that second kind should go out is its own question, covered in how often to email or text past customers.
What a fix looks like
When this is working, the tune-up calendar starts filling weeks before the first hot spell, with customers who booked straight from a reminder on their phone. The office keeps a short list of the customers who did not book, and someone calls each of them that week. A customer who has moved or replaced the equipment gets marked that way during the call, so next year's reminders go to the right people.
The Home Service Guild Marketing Operations System sends service reminders from the date of the last job in Housecall Pro, as part of Word of Mouth.
Questions owners also ask
What if a customer's next service depends on how much they use the equipment?
Then the tech's note from the last visit is the best guide. The person who saw the equipment knows whether it will need attention sooner or later than usual, and that note should set the date the reminder works from.
Should a service reminder go by text or email?
Use the way the customer has told you they prefer, since the point is for them to see it. Many homeowners notice a text faster than an email, but some would rather keep reminders in their inbox, so it is worth asking at the first job.
What should I do about customers who ignore the reminder?
Keep a list of them, because it is one of the more useful lists a home service business can have. A missed reminder does not mean the customer has gone elsewhere, and a short, friendly call from a person can turn up work that was about to go to someone else.
