Inside a Bohaus Sprint: An HVAC Contractor

The situation

The client is an owner-led residential HVAC contractor. Nine technicians in summer, fewer in the shoulder months, two install crews, a dispatcher, and a customer service rep who also handles the maintenance agreement program. ServiceTitan runs dispatch. QuickBooks runs accounting. A spreadsheet tracks which agreement members are due for spring and fall tune-ups.

The agreement program is the company's best answer to the slow season. Members get two visits a year. Those visits keep technicians busy in spring and fall and lead to a good share of repair and replacement work. But scheduling them is a phone job, and the rep only gets to it between other calls.

The owner has seen a demo of a marketing automation product and is ready to buy it.

What the sprint finds

In Discover, we start with the work, not the product. We sit with the rep and the dispatcher and walk through how a tune-up gets booked today.

The rep sorts the spreadsheet by due month, calls down the list, leaves voicemails, and books the ones who answer into ServiceTitan. Members who do not answer get another try if there is time. Renewals are handled when a member's card declines.

The map surfaces steps no one mentioned. Some members want the same technician every time. Some need a gate code or a call-ahead. Some have two systems and need a longer slot. Commercial members are booked differently. None of this is in the spreadsheet; it lives in the rep's head.

The handoffs show where visits slip. The spreadsheet and ServiceTitan disagree about who is a member. A member who moves never gets removed. Renewals lapse quietly.

ServiceTitan already tracks memberships and recurring services. The company is not using that feature; it is using the spreadsheet.

In Diagnose, tune-up scheduling ranks first. It fills the slow months, and the demo product would have missed most of the rules on the map.

What it builds

In Build, we move the agreement list into ServiceTitan's membership records and clean it as we go. Then we build outreach on top.

When a member's visit comes due, they get a message with a link to pick an open slot. The rules from the map are applied: preferred technician, longer slots for two systems, call-ahead notes. Members who do not book get a reminder, then a task for the rep to call. Renewal notices go out before an agreement lapses.

Replies with a problem, like no cooling, go straight to the dispatcher as a service call.

Hand over

In Hand over, the rep and the dispatcher learn the membership records, the booking rules and the reply queue. Technicians get a short session on updating equipment notes during a tune-up, since those notes drive the next visit. A playbook documents the rules that used to live in the rep's head. The rep owns the system.

The team gets a dashboard of visits due, booked and completed, and renewals coming up, plus a roadmap.

What changes

Tune-ups fill the shoulder season without a phone marathon. Technicians stay busy when the weather is mild. Members hear from the company on time and book when it suits them. Renewals stop lapsing by accident. The rep spends time on members who need a conversation rather than on voicemail.

The owner may also find there is no need for the product from the demo.

What this means for your business

Most failed automation starts with software. Start with the workflow. Sit with the people who do it, walk through a real example, write down every step and handoff, then automate what is repetitive and route judgment to people.

For an HVAC contractor, the workflow is often agreement scheduling. For a pool company it might be weekly service reports. For a home health agency, visit scheduling. The method does not change.

Every Bohaus Sprint begins with that map: six weeks, fixed scope, one live system, and a team trained to run it.