Building technicians, holistically

This Q&A was written in partnership with Work With Your Handz.

What would you say to a contractor who’s big enough to invest in their own training academy but hasn’t pulled the trigger?

What we’ve heard from clients is that trade schools — which do a great job — miss the customer service and soft skills parts. Even if a technician knows how to fix the thing, they don’t necessarily know the importance of keeping their truck clean, putting on shoe covers, and why we put stickers on units and ask for Google reviews. 

By molding someone from the very beginning in an academy, you’re showing and really instilling in them those processes and why they’re important. To piggyback on that, you can also show them what’s special about your company. What are your core values? What does the customer experience mean to you? How do you guys make a difference in your community? Because chances are, you can throw a rock and hit another company doing the same thing. 

There’s a lot of talk about academies, but if you had to pick two things that contractors tell you are most important about them, what would they be?

Customers are using them as a retention tool. If you can train your guys and keep them intellectually stimulated and always on the cutting edge, they feel super confident about what they’re learning and are excited about it. It’s more meaningful to them, and you not only have a more educated technician at the end of the day, but a more educated consumer.

I’d add that it’s an opportunity to build a career path. So if you’re talking to a technician who started as a helper, you can say, “What do you want to be next? Do you have any desire to go into sales? Do you ever want to be a manager? What is it that you want to do with your HVAC career?” Having those conversations is retention because you’re fostering relationships, really getting to know your techs, and giving them what they need to feel like they’re growing in their profession. 

Do you think there are any less-talked-about benefits to in-house academies? 

We’ve seen that they can actually foster appreciation and respect from CSRs, dispatchers, salespeople, and install coordinators. When they can go into a training room and see what technicians do, it gives them a different comprehension when they’re on the phone with customers or dispatching someone to a call. They just get a whole new appreciation for what technicians do. It’s a learning event to show everybody, “Hey, this is what our guys in the field are doing every day.”

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