Replacement Estimate Recovery
Every replacement estimate gets a value, an age, an owner, a reason it is still open, and a dated next action, and a sequence that branches on why the homeowner has not decided rather than sending the same reminder four times.
- Tier
- Growth
- Build order
- 4th of 7 for HVAC
- Shape of it
- 9 steps, 1 decision point, 2 escalation rules
- At launch
- Built against your stages, then proven before it runs alone
The problem this solves
The failure chain is the same in almost every shop, and it is not a sales problem. It is an ownership problem.
A technician creates a replacement estimate. The homeowner says they want to think about it. The estimate is marked pending. No employee owns the next contact. The customer receives at most one automated reminder. The estimate ages out of the dispatcher's working view. The customer buys from the next contractor who calls, explains financing, or answers the objection.
And "let me think about it" is not one objection. It is at least five, and they need completely different answers:
Price. The number is real and the answer is financing or a different option, not a discount.
Trust. They have one quote and want a second. The answer is the AHRI match, the load calculation, the permit, and what is actually in the price.
Timing. They are waiting for a bonus, a tax refund, or the end of the season. The answer is a date, not a nudge.
Authority. They need to discuss it with a partner who was not home. The answer is a version they can show that person.
Doubt about the diagnosis. They think the repair might hold. The answer is the technician's photos and the honest odds.
All five get "just following up" today, if they get anything.
How it works, step by step
Every wait, threshold and branch below is a value we set with you during the build, against your stages and your language. None of it is a default we impose.
- What starts it
- It decides something
- It escalates to a person
Step 1Trigger
The estimate is created before the technician leaves the property, with the equipment age, system type, the failure, whether financing was discussed, and the urgency.
Step 2
It is immediately assigned an owner by name: a comfort advisor, the service manager, or the owner. Not a queue.
Step 3
Same day, the customer receives the estimate with the options laid out and financing shown as a monthly figure alongside the total, because the two numbers answer different questions.
Step 4
The system watches whether the estimate was opened. Unopened after twenty-four hours is a different problem from opened and ignored, and it gets a different action: a call, not another message.
Step 5Escalation
At the first branch point the customer is asked one question rather than nudged: what is the part you are still weighing? The answer routes the sequence.
Step 6Branch
Each branch has its own content. Price goes to options and financing. Timing parks the estimate with a real date and stops messaging until then. Authority sends a version built to be shown to somebody who was not there. Doubt sends the technician's photos.
Step 7Escalation
Anything with no response after the agreed window escalates to the owner's queue as a live call, with the dollar value on it.
Step 8
A stop condition ends everything the moment the customer buys, declines, chooses another contractor, or asks not to be contacted.
Step 9
Every closed estimate gets a reason code, and those codes are reviewed monthly. That is where next season's pricing and pitch changes come from.
How it gets built
Built inside what you already run
- ServiceTitan
- Housecall Pro
- Jobber
- FieldEdge
- or whatever your office already runs on
Nothing to log into and nothing to license. If a system needs a record your platform does not hold, we add the field to your platform rather than starting a second one beside it.
This is the actual build order, in the phases its own steps fall into. It runs in supervised mode first, with you approving what goes out, until you are happy with the tone.
- 1
Agree
Agree the estimate fields that make it complete, and make the estimate impossible to save without them.
The thresholds, the wording and the names are yours. We write them down with you and get the consequential ones signed off.
- 2
Agree
Name the owner for each estimate type. This is the step contractors skip and it is the one that makes the difference.
- 3
Build
Build the good, better, best presentation with financing shown per option, with the finance partner's real terms.
Built inside the software you already run, against your stages and your language.
- 4
Build
Build the open-tracking and the two different actions that follow from it.
- 5
Agree
Write the branch content with the owner, including what is honestly said about repair versus replacement on an ageing system.
- 6
Agree
Set the escalation window and the value threshold above which the owner is called rather than notified.
- 7
Build
Build the stop conditions and the suppression, and test them before the sequence goes live.
- 8
Agree
Agree the reason codes, and put the monthly review in somebody's calendar.
What changes after it goes live
How it runs today
The failure chain is the same in almost every shop, and it is not a sales problem. It is an ownership problem.
After this one is live
No estimate sits without an owner and a date. Open estimate dollars become visible by age band, which is usually the first time the owner has seen that number. And the conversation changes from "have you had a chance to think about it" to a specific answer to the specific thing that stopped them.
How to measure whether it worked
Your arithmeticRun with your numbers, not ours
Pull every open and lost estimate from the last twelve months and total the dollar value by age band: nought to two days, three to seven, eight to thirty, thirty-one and over. Apply the company's own close rate to the ones that were never contacted after the first reminder. That number is the pool. It is typically the largest single figure in this playbook, and the contractor already has every input needed to calculate it.
We agree the baseline before anything is built, and we do not take credit for things that were going to happen anyway. There is no figure on this page claiming what we have produced for somebody else, because there is no verified figure to publish.
What we will not do
This is from the same delivery document as everything above it. It is on the page because a supplier who has not thought about it will not tell you, and you would find out later.
Every system here sends automated messages to consumers in the United States, which puts all of them inside the TCPA and inside carrier A2P 10DLC registration. These are two different things and both apply. Registration is a carrier trust requirement; it does not create consent and does not make an unlawful message lawful. Unregistered application traffic gets filtered or blocked.
Classify every system before it sends. A service message is narrowly connected to an existing job: appointment confirmation, technician on the way, part arrived, invoice. A marketing message promotes something: a tune-up offer, a replacement promotion, a membership push, an estimate reactivation sequence. The standards of consent are different, and a promotional line inside a service template converts the whole message into marketing.
The minimum a compliant build has to do:
- Consent recorded per number with the date, the source, the exact wording shown, the sending brand, and whether it covers service, marketing, or both. Marketing needs prior express written consent with an unchecked opt-in, and consent cannot be a condition of purchase.
- A2P 10DLC registration of the brand, the numbers, and a campaign use case that matches the traffic actually sent. An appointment-reminder campaign does not quietly become a seasonal promotion campaign.
- Quiet hours of 8am to 9pm in the recipient's local time, not the office's, with queued sends held until the window opens. Apply the same gate to service messages by default and handle genuine emergencies as a named exception.
- Opt-out handling for STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, QUIT, REVOKE and OPT OUT, and for free text like "stop texting me". Suppress immediately in practice rather than to the outer limit of the rule, cancel messages already queued rather than only future ones, and propagate the suppression to every sending number, system and platform the contractor controls.
- Replies routed to a monitored human queue, always. A reply that says the heat is off is not a marketing response.
- Human review before any sequence that would materially pressure a prospect, which in this playbook means System 4.
- Suppression reconciled across systems, so a customer cannot opt out in the field service platform and keep receiving messages from the marketing tool.
- Purchased or scraped lists are not messaged. Consent has to name the actual sender.
Nothing in this document is legal advice. State mini-TCPA statutes, carrier policy, and the exact dialling or sending technology can each add requirements, and the rules in this area have moved more than once recently. Every template that states a commercial term, a price, or a guarantee requires review by the contractor's own counsel before it goes live.
Nothing here is legal advice. Rules in this area have moved more than once recently, and every template that states a commercial term or a guarantee goes to your own counsel before it goes live.
Seven systems forHVAC.
We build one at a time and prove it moved before starting the next. The tiers are the dependency order, not a price list.
Tier 1Foundational
Nothing arrives late or unowned. These come first because everything above them assumes they are true.
- 1Multi-Channel Capture, Triage & Instant ResponseFastest visible result, and it is the one that survives the first heat wave, which is when the owner decides whether any of this was real.
- 2Dispatch Confirmation, Arrival Protection & Technician BriefProtects the capacity and the truck rolls already paid for.
Tier 2Growth
The recoverable money. These work the pools the foundational systems have made visible for the first time.
- 3Bumped, Cancelled & Deferred Capacity RecoveryTurns System 2's cancellations into recovered revenue and stops the maintenance backlog compounding.
- 4Replacement Estimate Recoveryyou are hereUsually the single largest recoverable pool in the business.
Tier 3Flagship
One connected system end to end, plus what the owner reads on a Monday. Only once the pieces are proven individually.
- 5The Complete Service-to-Install SystemThe flagship, once the pieces are proven individually.
- 6Service Agreement Renewal, Fulfilment & ReactivationCompounds everything above, and depends on the equipment data System 2 started collecting.
- 7The Owner's Morning BriefOnly meaningful once there are systems to report on.
The tiers are the dependency order for HVAC, not a price list. Most firms do not start at the first one, because the order is a default and the call is where it gets changed.
A note on sequencing this trade
Do not build all seven at once.
Each stage is proven against its agreed measure before the next begins.
Season note. Build Tier 1 in the shoulder season and let it run through one peak before starting Tier 2. A contractor who sees System 1 hold on the first hot Saturday will build the rest without being sold again.
Back to the HVAC overview for the stage map and where these fit.
Is this the oneyou need first?
Often it is not. On the call we look at what is actually costing you most right now, which is frequently a different system from the one that brought you to this page. If there is nothing worth building yet, we will say so.