A CRM for installers, from request to maintenance

An installer in HVAC, electrical, security or renewable energy has a commercial rhythm that differs from most B2B companies. Requests come in through the website, the phone, a main contractor or a regular client. Almost every request needs a site survey: someone goes out, measures up and takes photos. Then comes a quote, often with materials, labour and a maintenance option. Then the waiting, the follow-up calls and sometimes a second version.

After the order comes the work itself, with scheduling, materials and handover. And then comes the work that carries an installation company over the long run: service contracts, periodic inspections and faults. That recurring revenue makes the difference in a bad year.

You will know this week. On Monday eight requests arrive. The planner books three site surveys, the other five stay in the mailbox. The project lead who does the surveys keeps his notes on paper. A quote goes out on Thursday, and nobody follows up. Two weeks later the client asks whether they will get an answer, because a competitor has already signed.

With maintenance it goes wrong in a different way. A client with a service contract calls about a fault. The engineer goes out, fixes it, and the invoice is sent. But nobody notices it is the third fault in two months at the same client, and that the contract ends in three months.

Lumo puts the commercial side and service in one system. A website request becomes a lead with an owner and a status. A site survey is a meeting in the calendar, linked to the client. The quote goes out as a quote with e-signature. And a fault becomes a ticket in the helpdesk, on the same organization as the contract.

The biggest gain is in follow-up. A quote nobody chases is a quote for the competitor. Automations in Lumo react to a new lead or deal, a stage change, a won or lost deal, a completed activity, or a deal or lead that has been stale for a number of days. They create an activity or note, update a field, assign an owner or add a label. They do not send email. You test them with a dry run first.

Rules installation companies often switch on:

• Lead created: assign it to the planner and create a task Schedule survey for today.
• Deal stale for five days in Quote sent: create a call for the salesperson.
• Deal won: create a task Schedule installation for the project lead.
• Deal lost with reason Client postpones: create a task Get back in touch in three months.

In reports you see where the work is. Requests per week and per source. Time from request to survey, from the activities. Quotes sent and won per salesperson. Lost reasons per quarter. And weighted pipeline per installation type, so you see whether there is work for the crews next month. Every chart drills down to the deals behind it.

Say an installation company that fits and maintains HVAC systems and heat pumps for offices, schools and care homes. For this example we call it Climate Works East. It has 40 engineers, three project leads, two planners, two salespeople and a service desk of three.

Climate Works creates two pipelines. Projects with the stages from the example above. And Delivery with the stages Schedule, Materials ordered, In progress and Handed over. A won deal gets a new deal in Delivery, so the office sees what is under way. Crew scheduling itself stays in the planning system.

Requests come in through a form on the website. A rule assigns them to a planner and creates a task for today. The survey sits as a meeting in the calendar of the project lead, who uses Google Calendar. After the survey he attaches photos and measurements to the deal.

The salespeople build the quote with lines for the heat pump, the installation and an annual service contract of three cycles. One of them emails from Outlook and puts the BCC address on every message, so his mail lands on the deal too.

The service desk works in the helpdesk. A high priority fault has an SLA of two business hours for the first response. Every month leadership reviews a dashboard with requests, won quotes, faults per client and contracts ending next quarter. A client with many faults gets a conversation before the contract is renewed.