PlumbingBossPro Blog — Plumbing Software

The Customer App: What Plumbing Customers See, Request and Pay

A lot of the calls a plumbing office takes are not about plumbing. “When is the plumber coming?” “Can you send me that invoice again?” “I got a new card, can I update it?” “Can I get on the yearly flush list?” Every one of those is a question the customer could answer for themselves if they had the right screen. The customer app is that screen.

What the Customer App Is

The previous article, Job History and Photos: Why Plumbing Software Should Remember Every Visit to a House, was about what your company remembers. The customer app is about what your customers can see and do.

PlumbingBossPro includes a customer app tied to the same records the office uses. The customer logs in and sees their own information: their addresses, their upcoming service, their invoices and their card. Nothing the customer does there has to be retyped by the office.

Watching the Route on a Live Map

The most common question a plumbing customer has is “when?” On the day of service, the customer app shows today's route on a live map, with their place in it: “You're stop 12 of 20 — the crew is 5 stops away.”

That one line replaces a lot of phone calls. A homeowner who knows the tech is five stops away can finish a meeting, move the car out of the driveway, or clear the space under the kitchen sink. A restaurant manager knows when to expect the jetting crew.

Choosing Their Alerts

Customers choose which alerts they get:

• The night before — a reminder that service is tomorrow.
• When they're next — the tech is headed their way.
• When the tech arrives — the plumber is at the door.

Letting the customer pick matters. Some want every text. Some only want to know the night before. Respecting that keeps people from tuning out your messages. The alerts go out by text and email automatically, so nobody in the office has to send them. More on that in Two-Way Texting and Automatic Alerts in Plumbing Software.

Requesting Service and Signing Up

From the customer app, customers can:

• Request service. A dripping faucet, a running toilet, a slow drain. The request goes to the office to book.
• Sign up for services and pricing. For example, a yearly water heater flush plan at a price you set. Once signed up, the visits come due on the Waiting List on their own.

This is especially useful for maintenance work. Customers who see a flush plan in their app after a repair visit can sign up on their own, without anyone making a sales call.

Service requests that come through the app land with the office the same as a phone call would, but with the customer's name, address and description already attached. The office does not have to ask “which house?” for a landlord with six rentals, because the request came from the customer's own account. That makes it easy to book the call, pull the equipment from the house, and get it on the Waiting List in a minute or two.

Paying and Keeping the Card Current

Getting paid is easier when paying is easy. In the customer app, customers can:

• See their invoices, past and current.
• Pay an invoice online.
• Update the card on file when theirs expires or changes.

An up-to-date card on file is what lets the office charge at completion or on a schedule. A customer who can update their own card fixes the problem before the charge fails, instead of after.

Customers who would rather not keep a card on file still get the invoice and can pay it online whenever they are ready, which beats mailing a check and waiting for it to clear.

Rating and Referring

After a visit, customers can rate the service and refer someone. For a small plumbing shop, word of mouth is often the best source of new work, and a referral that comes through the app lands with the office instead of getting lost in a conversation over the fence.

Introducing It to Customers

The customer app only helps if customers use it. A few simple ways to get them there:

• Mention it in your first text or email after booking.
• Have the tech mention it at the door: “Next time you can watch us coming on the map.”
• Put the link on your invoices.
• For property managers, walk them through it once on a phone call. A manager with many addresses has the most to gain from fewer calls.

Customers in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK can use the customer app, and invoices are in their own currency. To see how the customer app fits with dispatch, the tech app and billing, visit the PlumbingBossPro plumbing software page.