The 14-truck HVAC company.
Six spreadsheets, three inboxes, one dispatcher who knew where everything was.
The problem
A service call came in by phone, text, email or the website form. The dispatcher wrote it on a whiteboard, typed it into a spreadsheet, texted a technician, and later retyped it into the invoicing tool. Twenty-two people, fourteen trucks, and one person who could answer "where is Truck 7?"
When she was on holiday the answer was "nobody knows." Jobs were double-booked about twice a month. Roughly a fifth of website inquiries never got a reply because the form emailed an inbox that three people assumed someone else was watching.
What we decided
- BuyWe looked at four field-service products. Two were built for 200-truck fleets and priced like it. Two could not handle the way this company quotes. Nearly, but no.
- ConnectTheir accounting and payment tools were fine. We connected them and left them alone.
- AutomateInquiry intake, technician texts, invoice creation and the end-of-day summary.
- BuildOne dispatch board and one customer booking page, designed around how the dispatcher actually thinks.
What we didn't build
Kept, on purpose
Accounting stayed where it was. Card payments stayed with their provider. The shared calendar stayed, because the technicians like it. We connected all three and changed nothing about them.
The system
Everything that floats in above used to be a separate place to look.
Every inquiry lands on one board with a status, an owner and a truck. Technicians get a text with the job and a link. The invoice is created from the job, not retyped from it. At six o'clock the dispatcher gets a one-screen summary instead of a stack of tabs.
Results
- 1
- dispatch board replacing six spreadsheets
- 12.5 hrs
- of admin returned each week
- 0
- double-booked trucks in month one
12.5 hours: we'd measure it, not guess it. And we wouldn't round it up.
Also nobody copies customer names into three places anymore. A historic achievement.
What we'd do next
Customer-facing job tracking ("your technician is 20 minutes away"), then a parts reorder trigger when a truck's stock drops below a threshold. Both wait until the board has run for a quarter and the team has opinions.
This is an illustrative engagement. The company, people and numbers describe the kind of problem we take on and the result we design for. Not a real client claim.