Build Your Service Plans

Recurring revenue (such as collecting monthly payments from your customers with service plans) provides a stable and predictable way to grow your business. Compared to one-off sales, recurring income comes in regular intervals and can be expected with some degree of assurance, which in turn can help you grow faster and increase your business value.

As a heating engineer, you’ll no doubt be familiar with the service plans offered by national companies. You’ve also probably heard from your customers about being let down by these companies who aren’t able to offer the same level of customer service and care as you do. So there’s a real opportunity for small businesses to offer a more attractive alternative to their customers. At the end of the day, homeowners prefer dealing with a local business they know and trust, not a faceless organisation they struggle to get real support from.

What are the benefits of service plans?

There’s a good reason why many of the biggest companies out there choose a recurring revenue model for their business. Think of Amazon Prime or even Adobe. Adobe actually transitioned to using this model as they used to sell their products (like PhotoShop) as one-off payments. Why did they make the change? Well, it’s allowed them a level of sustainability. The same concept works for small to medium-sized businesses, it’s not just large organisations that can reap the advantages of this model.

Predictable revenue

By having service plans set up, you can be fairly confident that current paying customers will continue to pay you at regular intervals in the immediate future.

Your customers will benefit from having regular servicing and priority support from your business and once they are on a service plan, they are much less likely to use another business for their heating requirements. This is called customer retention and it helps you increase their “lifetime value.”

Also, service plans can provide a great opportunity if you ever consider selling your business. Having a regular income stream makes your business much more appealing as interested parties can create growth projections and better quantify the company’s value.

Stability

Having income come in on a regular basis provides your business with a level of stability. The higher degree of stability, the more confidence you’ll have in making decisions in terms of finances and operation, such as bringing on a new member of the team.

You’ll also be able to better structure your working calendar and increase efficiencies.

Stand out against competitors

Offering service plans distinguishes you from other heating engineers offering only reactive services. Customers are increasingly valuing proactive maintenance and assistance, and providing this demand will help you acquire a competitive advantage in the heating engineer industry. Service plans can also be used as a selling factor during customer acquisition by demonstrating a commitment to long-term partnerships.

Help your customers in the long run

Preventive maintenance is essential for avoiding costly breakdowns and extending the lifespan of heating systems. Scheduled inspections and tune-ups are frequently included in service plans, assisting customers in avoiding unexpected maintenance expenditures and ensuring their systems run properly. This proactive approach not only saves your customers money in the long run, but also shows you’re committed to helping provide them with honest and trustworthy advice and service.

Build a strong reputation

Word of mouth is an extremely effective marketing tactic. When you continuously provide high-quality customer service through service plans, happy customers become your brand ambassadors. Positive feedback and recommendations from plan holders help to improve your company’s reputation in your local area, gaining new customers and maintaining the trust of existing ones.

Interested in setting up your own service plans?

If you’re looking into setting up your own service plans but don’t know where to start, we can help. We understand that the prospect of doing it all yourself can be overwhelming, especially when it comes to protecting your business with terms & conditions or marketing your plans to make customers aware of what you offer. That’s why we’ve introduced our Service Plans Package, so you have everything you need to start offering this as a business. Here’s a list of what’s included in our offering:

• Personalised Terms & Conditions: We tailor our comprehensive terms & conditions to suit your business and the plans you offer.
• GoCardless Setup: We set you up on GoCardless so you can start collecting Direct Debits from your customers.
• Website Landing Page: We build a landing page on your website that features the key benefits of signing up for a service plan, what’s included in each tier and allows customers to sign up,
• Marketing Email: Once your new page has gone live, we’ll set you up with MailChimp, which allows you to send a professional email to all of your customers from your email address. We’ll write the content for the email, design it and send it out to your clients.
• Facebook Posts: The marketing support doesn’t stop there, we’ll also create 3 posts (images and text) for you to share on your Facebook page to help get the word out and gain new customers.
• 500 Leaflets Designed and Printed: We’ll also design beautiful new leaflets and have them printed and delivered to your address. This way, you can hand these out to your customers when you do work for them (e.g. a boiler service). These leaflets will have a QR code so customers can visit your website, find the right plan for them and sign up.
• Tracker Spreadsheet: Our team will also provide you with a tracker spreadsheet template to help you stay on top of your new service plan customers. That way, you have all of the information you need in one place, from which customers are on which plan to when they’re next due for a boiler service.

You have complete control over what you include in each plan, as well as pricing. For example, you can include anything from a system water test all the way through to loyalty discounts on the services you provide.

Here’s what Alex from A&W Plumbing & Heating had to say about his experience using BUILT to set up his service plans:

“Would just like to say what a great experience it was working alongside BUILT to get my boiler breakdown plan up and running. Everything was easy to understand with great communication from the team each step of the way from terms and conditions to the website page and to my leaflets.”

Get in touch to discuss service plans

If you have any questions regarding service plans, we’d love to hear from you! Please feel free to contact us and we’ll be more than happy to help you get started with offering service plans as a business.

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