Jeff from Travis Crawford HVAC has published service pricing online for two years to give homeowners cost estimates before a technician visit. He says transparency addresses post-COVID uncertainty, though on-site assessments may reveal additional work. The tradeoff: attracting price-conscious customers, but staying in control of what information gets shared.
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What's different now in the market today is this buzzword that you guys are probably all maybe a little fatigued with, which is AI. And homeowners are researching things differently. They're forming different opinions based upon accurate or inaccurate facts before they ever call you. And it's changing the buying process now, and it'll continue to change it in the future. So I think the question you have to ask yourself is what happens, or should I put pricing online? If I don't, what's gonna happen? If I do, is something gonna change in my business? But how can I stay in control of the information either way? So Jeff, thanks for joining me today. Jeff works at Travis Crawford HVAC and Travis's, Travis's company's been putting pricing online on their website for 2 years. So I wanna talk to him about what's actually happened, what works, what didn't, what he would change and whether or not they have been attracting those price shopping, bottom feeding customers that everybody's afraid of. And you can drop the questions in the chat and Paul with Contractor Commerce will answer them and we'll also do a Q&A at the end. And, uh, you know, I appreciate you guys joining me today. And if I do bad, uh, Tirsch Blissett is on the call today and he'll take over if I don't do good. So he said, make sure you do good in this webinar. So I said, if I don't do a good job, Tirsch, you can just jump in. Gonna do it for me, you know? So Jeff, let's start with you. So why did you and your company decide to put pricing on your website in the first place?
Well, I think one of the main reasons was a lot of, you know, the way that technology has advanced and of course our industry and a lot of changes, you know, since COVID and so on and so forth is a lot of homeowners do not know what to expect. They are weary about having people in their homes. They're weary about, you know, can I afford this? How much is it? You know, most homeowners only deal with system replacement maybe 1 to 2 times in their entire lifetime, right? So there, there's A lot of questions going on in their head. And, uh, so just to have that upfront resource for them. Now, we're not saying that that price online is to the cent of exactly what needs. Obviously you've gotta get in the home. You've gotta look at, you know, other components just beyond the HVAC system itself that they may need. But it does allow them to get a good general idea of what it will cost to replace the system with the company prior to, you know, them contacting us or having a salesperson or technician or someone coming inside the home.
