“May your sales bells keep ringing and your customers keep singing.”

As we head into the holiday week, we wanted to round up some important things to keep in mind to prepare your service business for the holidays. Depending on your business, you and your team will either be working this holiday or taking some time off. Wherever you fall, as a field service business owner or manager, there are plenty of ways you can shine to your customers and potential clients while also setting up your business for success for the coming year.

1. Promote your Holiday Coverage

Communicate with your customers about your holiday availability by letting them know if you’ll be available for emergency situations over the holidays or not. Share this to your customers across multiple mediums — the most important being voicemail and your website homepage and contact page. Your social media pages will be good to update as well. Be clear with your announcement and if your business will be available to handle work, specify the days and hours and what number to call, especially if it’s not your regular office line, so there’s no confusion.

2. Send Greetings to Your Customers

A holiday card is a nice way to provide a personal touch and show your customers you appreciate them. It can also help you stand out among competitors, but keep the messaging simple and generic. It’s best to save the marketing-speak or requests (“Like us on Facebook” or “Refer us to a friend”) for another occasion. We like the business card selection at Vistaprint. You can pick from designs that already incorporate a place for your logo and team photo. Their prices are also more affordable than other sites.

If you want to avoid a holiday greeting, a New Year’s card will be just as nice. We also really like the idea of a calendar in lieu of a card. Also, if budget is tight, e-cards have become acceptable, so it’s fine to go that route. Check out this great list of etiquette tips for holiday e-cards from Intuit.

3. Connect with Service Providers You Work With

If you rely on suppliers or other individuals or service businesses to help you do your job, you’ll want to make sure you are aware of their plans for the holidays. If you are answering service calls during the holiday break, now would also be a good time to check your supplies and stock up on anything that’s low. If you live somewhere that gets snow, it’d also be wise to prep your home and your car so that you’re able to get to your customers.

4. Collect Unpaid Invoices

Now is the time to follow up with customers who owe you money if you want to try to get paid before the holidays or the new year. It is never guaranteed that your email or regular mail will be opened, so to reach people before they check out for the holidays, pick up the phone. When you do, be sure to speak in a professional manner and leave a voicemail if the customer doesn’t pick up. It’s also best to document all of your attempts to reach the customer. If you’ve been chasing a customer for a while and need to take more aggressive actions, here’s some advice.

5. Schedule out Social Media Posts

Just because your business goes on holiday break, it doesn’t mean you have to go completely dark. If you have time now, pre-schedule some social media content. Using a social media scheduling tool makes it easy and some offer free accounts like Buffer. What content should you promote? Here are some ideas:

• Your holiday schedule and emergency services if you’re offering that
• Before and after photos of your favorite projects from the year
• Timely tips (i.e. an appliance repair company could share tips on how to make sure your stove and oven ready for the holidays)

6. Think About What You Can Streamline and Automate

Will 2017 be the year your business really takes off? To truly grow, many service professionals and businesses turn to field service software to free up their time from manual and cumbersome processes, like keying in customer information and invoices into separate systems, automate their tasks, like setting up automatic appointment reminders for customers and employees, and to get more organized. If you are looking to solve for specific pain points and unsure if software will help, our team is here to help. Call us at 888-558-6275.

Looking for more tips on preparing your service business for the holidays? Don’t miss our blog post on securing revenue in the off-season!

Last modified: March 19, 2019