Celsius Plumbing and Heating has built a reputation as one of Edinburgh’s leading service companies having identified an opportunity amongst homeowners for the type of professional plumbing and heating service normally reserved for demanding ‘big contract’ commercial clients.
Formed back in 2007, Celsius emerged out of the financial crisis as one of a new breed of small businesses in an industry previously dominated by large companies. The challenge for Celsius was working out how to achieve the desired levels of service as a relatively small and new player in the market.
The solution was to adapt new cloud and mobile technology to bring, for the first time, large company service levels to the domestic market. Celsius realised technology could provide a level playing field for smaller businesses wanting to grow. The first task was to move away from the cumbersome paperwork that burdened businesses like Celsius, and the company made an initial switch to digital working with a system that was later replaced.
Michael Cairns, Director of Celsius Plumbing and Heating, said:
“Over time we began to realise our first software supplier was not meeting our expectations and support was frustratingly slow, by chance we came across a completely new system that looked fantastic. Although the product was still evolving, the company behind it clearly had the vision and ambition to build something that would be clearly streets ahead of the competition. So, in a leap of faith, we signed up. That was back in 2016 and the company behind the development was BigChange.”
Celsius was one of the first adopters of BigChange, and the company has played a key part in developing the system for the heating and plumbing industry. The company has since transformed its business with the 6-in-1 field service management software system, a cloud-platform for CRM, job scheduling, mobile working, vehicle tracking and management reporting. BigChange also integrates with Xero account software, giving Celsius a completely seamless digital solution from job booking to completion, eliminating paperwork at all stages.
Engineers are equipped with rugged Samsung tablets running the BigChange mobile plumbing app. This provides useful workflows to take engineers step by step through the correct procedures onsite. Digital job cards and inspection sheets are enhanced with photographs and GPS location data for proof of service and compliance. Celsius also use the BigChange ‘No Touch’ app allowing customers to remotely sign off work from their own smartphone.
Cairns says:
“The BigChange mobile app really is a ground-breaking innovation for service companies like us, it is so easy to use and customise that it can be used for absolutely every task, completely eliminating paper and ensuring consistent reporting from everyone. And it’s synchronised in real time with our central BigChange management system so we have complete visibility of everything going on, 24/7”.
Celsius believe the greatest business benefits come from automation of tasks that previously took a huge amount of time.
“BigChange now automates a raft of key processes to significantly improve our business performance, boosting our productivity, customer service and sales. We’ve also set up over 100 alerts allowing us to keep our fingers on the pulse 24/7,”
says Cairns.
Previously Celsius would call around customers when their boilers were due for their annual service. It took a huge amount of time and numerous attempts to get hold of people and secure a booking, especially when dealing with tenants. The whole process has now been automated with the software generating appointment offers.
“Running a service list was a frustrating and slow process until we automated the communications using BigChange. The system now automatically generates scheduled appointment offers making it very easy for the customer to just say ‘yes’. As a result there has been a huge improvement, with our service booking success rate increasing from 20 per cent to 90 per cent,”
“BigChange has improved job allocation, scheduling and provided a much slicker paperless reporting process. We used to average 6 jobs a day but now we are doing 7 or 8 meaning that our engineers are often 30 percent more productive.”
“In the office the productivity gains are even greater. With a single, paperless system, BigChange has not just cut administrative work but, through automation, we have significantly reduced the customer calls we make. Saving all that wasted time - we are certainly 40 per cent more efficient - it has in effect freed up two members of staff to focus on important things like customer service.”
BigChange vehicle tracking provides a live view of the whereabouts of all engineers, and customers receive ETA messages auto-generated by the system.
“Customers love the system, It’s really easy to book a date and time online and with ETA notifications on the day they know when an engineer will arrive; they don’t need to waste time hanging around wondering when someone will turn up.”
Celsius has also used BigChange's plumbing scheduling software to improve and automate quoting, which has significantly improved both the speed and level of quote acceptance and through instant access to product information and pricing, upselling is now much easier.
“The BigChange Road Crew support is excellent. We were increasingly frustrated with our previous software supplier taking ages to return calls; now we can call anytime and someone picks up straight away. Everyone is very professional and helpful.”
