Diamond Certified Video Reports

Hometown Heating & Air Conditioning in 5 Useful Answers

• Play from Beginning
• What does Helpful Expertise mean to you and your team?
• How did you get into this industry?
• What’s the favorite thing you enjoy about the work that you do?
• What are some of the key things your company does to deliver high quality?
• Tell me a short story about an interesting job or customer.

[Music] I think her full expertise is just, you know, for the training that we do here, that our technicians come into your home. They explain things in a very clear and concise way, so they can be helpful, of course. The expertise comes from the training we do with the guys, both in-house and on the job, and the trainings we send them to. So I think that combined, our technicians' experience as well as being patient, clear, and concise with our clients is how we can provide that helpful expertise to them. I think for us, obviously it's quite simple. I think it's just making our clients more comfortable in their own home. We get to go out each day and we remind the guys, obviously we're there to help. If people are too hot or too cold or what have you, our job is to make sure we solve those issues for them. Obviously, it's never always straightforward or super easy. There's obviously things that come up from day to day that provide challenges, but at the end of the day, getting those positive reviews in where we've helped someone feel more comfortable, we've solved an issue for a client, and they're going to be them and their family are able to lead better lives is what we do. A couple of things I think we purchase only high-quality products, first of all, that we bring into your home. The second thing I think I mentioned in the last question was about the training. We have a classroom here that we train in two to three times a week. The guys are all here bright and early at 7:00 a.m. till 8:00 a.m. We have a curriculum that's provided. We provide the uniforms for that professional appearance. All the tools and everything they're provided with are to be very professional. We do on-the-job training as well for new hires, and then we also send certain technicians to the various schools or training programs to upskill them. So, I think all in all, those things combine for us to achieve that goal. We're lucky. We get to do lots of interesting jobs and meet lots of interesting people. From personal experience, I met a young lady, I say young lady, she was an elderly lady called Jeie down in Castro Valley four or five months ago. Sat out in her back garden during COVID, we obviously had the social distancing, and I was very respectful with the mask and all that kind of stuff. We sat out in a beautiful garden and had a conversation about many things. She was on her own, living, her children had long since moved away, and I believe her husband had passed unfortunately. We were able to get her a brand new furnace and get her more comfortable in her home. But one of the neat parts of the story is I think when I finished the call we went away, she was talking about her children and so on and so forth and about where they were living. One was living, I think up north near Tahoe or in the foothills, and I thought about my own parents being in England and how I would want a contractor to interact with them. And I kind of thought, well, I'd want to hear from them and know that they're doing the right thing for my mom, you know, so I made the point to speak to her son who was in the foothills. We got on the phone, I explained to her sorry to him, her son, the full details of our conversation, what we were doing for his mother, what we recommended, what we're doing, and I just think that made him super happy that he was comfortable that they were doing business with the right type of people, that we didn't just get in and out of there, and then they find out their mom spent x amount on a new home project without them knowing. I thought it was nice. We just had a good conversation. She was very sort of pleasant and warm regards to the people who went and did our install. She was very happy we spoke to her son, and the family just felt super comfortable doing business with us. So that was that was nice. It's what we should do every time we're in that type of situation. I think just the type of people we are. I think we really do care. It's a family business, as we kind of advertise, which is people can say that, but I'm here. My wife is next door despite being several months pregnant. My father-in-law is in the office down the street, my mother-in-law is down the other office down there. And then the rest of our employees we try to treat as our extended family here. We have, you know, seven, eight professional installers, eight, nine, ten technicians and comfort advisers. So we and the office staff themselves. So we try to be personal. We're a real family business. So we may not get everything always perfectly right, but once we find out about the issues, we will do everything we can to resolve them because we really care. It's our livelihoods, right, are on the line. We have to provide great customer service and do the right thing. We can't afford not to. The reality is that all heating and air conditioning companies are somewhat similar. We all provide very similar services, types of products. But some are owned and operated differently. I think I've talked about we're a family-owned business. How we operate and we care. That personal care and attention I think really has to separate us. I would like to think that the training and development we do here, the lengths we go to train two to three times a week in our own classroom, the investment we make in our staff to make sure they have the right tools, the right uniforms, the investment we make to make sure they have trucks that are well serviced and maintained are cleaned. I do truck inspections every Tuesday to make sure our guys' trucks are clean and they look professional. If you look professional, you act professional. That's the goal of what we're trying to do here. So I would like to think that altogether, you know, family feel professionalism that we try to stick by every day. The consistency we have every day will try and stand us out against the other heating and air conditioning business and up there with the other good ones that are in the industry. We want to be part of that elite group of service providers in our industry that are top level. Hence why we want to be part of the diamond certified family. That's good. I wanted to actually talk about my wife if I could because I think it's kind of unique her situation. My wife, you know, was here at the very beginning of the business. She went out of high school, was a veteran. She was an Air Force vet. She was in the Air Force for four years, lived in Korea, Washington, so forth. So she served for our country, which is great. I think veteran-owned businesses are super important. She's also now a partial owner in the business with her father-in-law. So, being a female part owner in a heating and air conditioning business. I think you're in somewhat of a minority there. There's not many, I would guess, in that. So, it's an owned business but shared with a veteran, a female owner as well as Brian, who's been in the industry for 30 plus years, and knows all the nuts and bolts of the industry, whom we learn from day to day. I think that that's really good. We've she's been here through had her first child working here. He's about to have our second child and is still working away and hopefully gets a full maternity leave this year despite being a family business. You know, you've got to be here when you got to be here. So, it's a challenge. But I think having that strong female presence in a very male-dominated industry is another point of difference for us and another point of interest perhaps for our clientele.