CRM blueprint: fields, job types and pipeline stages for HVAC

What a blueprint covers

A blueprint answers one question for every screen: what must be known at this moment, and who knows it? Here is what it includes for a typical residential and light-commercial HVAC company.

• Customer and site records. Billing contact versus service address, tenant versus owner, preferred contact method, language preference and how they found you.
• Equipment records. Type (furnace, boiler, heat pump, air conditioner, water heater, HRV), fuel, approximate install year, model and serial where known, and which site it sits at.
• Job types. No-heat or no-cool emergency, repair, maintenance visit, replacement estimate, new construction, warranty callback. Each one gets its own default duration and owner.
• Estimate stages. Requested, visit booked, quote sent, follow-up in progress, won, lost. Each stage has an exit rule so nobody guesses.
• Lost reasons. Price, timing, chose a competitor, repaired instead, no response. Five or six options, never free text alone.
• Ownership. For each stage, the role that must act next and how long they have.

Who it's for

The blueprint suits any HVAC company that is setting up a new CRM, moving from one system to another, or living with a system nobody trusts. It is especially useful when:

• different people use the same status to mean different things;
• the owner can't get a count of open quotes without asking three people;
• technicians enter equipment details as notes instead of fields;
• reports from the CRM never match the numbers in your accounting software.

If you are still choosing software, sort that first. A blueprint is easier to build once the platform is known.

How we build it

1. Discovery calls. We talk with the owner, the office lead, a dispatcher, a technician and a comfort advisor, separately. Each describes a normal day and the worst week of last winter.
2. Current-state map. We document how a call becomes a visit, a quote and an invoice today, including every spreadsheet and side channel.
3. Draft blueprint. Fields, job types, stages and lost reasons, each with a one-line definition. You review it in writing.
4. Configuration. We set it up in your CRM, test it with sample jobs, and adjust anything that feels awkward on a phone or tablet.
5. Sign-off. The final document goes to your managers and becomes the reference for the training sessions.

Timing depends on how many people we interview and how complex your job mix is. Your proposal lists each phase and date.

How results are measured

We measure the blueprint by whether people use it consistently. Useful checks a month after launch:

• percentage of new jobs with every required field completed;
• percentage of estimates with a named owner and a next-step date;
• number of jobs sitting in a stage longer than its time limit;
• whether the open-quote count from the CRM matches what the advisors believe it is.

A sample of blueprint definitions

Definitions are the part most companies skip, and they are what stop arguments later. Three examples of the kind of line the blueprint contains:

• Quote sent: the customer has received a written price by email or text. Exit when the customer replies, or after the first follow-up call is logged.
• Lost, repaired instead: the customer chose a repair over replacement. Set a reminder for the next season, because that equipment is still ageing.
• Equipment install year: the year from the rating plate, the permit or the customer. If estimated, tick the "estimated" box so reports can separate known from guessed.

Mistakes to avoid

• Copying another company's setup. A boiler-heavy shop in Halifax and a cooling-heavy shop in Kelowna need different job types.
• Making everything required. Required fields that people can't answer get filled with junk.
• Using free text for anything you want to count. If you want a report on it, make it a pick list.
• Skipping the technician interview. Equipment data comes from the field; design that screen with the people who use it.

The field and stage guide walks through a full example. Once the blueprint is approved, most companies move on to the customer and equipment import. See pricing for how this is scoped.