Bill BrownFounder of ServiceTitan Hacks community (9k+ pros) | INC 5000 Contractor | Helping contractors win with AI & Automation

Stop Truck Rolls: Remote Monitoring for HVAC Success #shorts

23 Apr 2026 · 1 min

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1:14

In this short conversation, Bill Brown explains the challenge his HVAC company faced after installing new systems: technicians often returned to "truck roll" visits within six months to a year, trying to sell additional options and commissions, which frustrated customers who had already been presented with all available upgrades. Seeking a better approach, Bill describes adopting remote monitoring technology—referred to as Smart AC—that lets the company log into the system, verify it’s operating correctly, and proactively inform customers via messages or videos that everything is fine. This remote check not only eliminates unnecessary service calls and sales pressure but also provides real‑time feedback (e.g., temperature complaints) and demonstrates to customers that the company cares and is actively watching their equipment.

Chapters

When I was looking for a solution, what I was trying to do is prevent truck rolls on new systems we'd installed. So as we got better at sales, we would, as we got our average tickets up to $15,000, the customer heard about every single option, every add-on that we had, all the IQ. So we'd install this system, we'd do a great job, we'd do a great quality audit and checkout, and then we come out 6 months later and my experienced techs would want to try to sell them something because they made commission. And customers were like really turned off by that. They were like, you know, they had heard everything that we offered at that point and they either bought it or they didn't. So I didn't feel like there was a lot of opportunity, you know, within that 6 months, 1 year, maybe even 2 years. So I was searching on the market for a solution that I could monitor the systems remotely. Give the customer the peace of mind and know that their system was operating good, but didn't have to go out and try to sell them something to make money.
You know, on the new systems with the, with the Smart AC, it's like we can just log in, hey, the unit's working fine. Send the customer a message, send 'em a video or a message and say, hey, everything's working great.
No, no issues.
Unless they, you know, sometimes we'll get feedback, hey, this room's hot or this room's cold. Which is great because sometimes you don't get all that feedback either.
It helps with the customer, uh, knows that you care, you're watching. You just didn't sell them something and leave.