Residential HVAC contractors
How to stop maintenance agreements lapsing silently
Agreements rarely get cancelled. They expire, quietly, because nobody was watching the date. That is a tracking failure, not a customer decision.
The whole process is below. You can run it from a blank spreadsheet.
Step 1 — Every agreement, one list, with expiry dates
You cannot renew what you cannot see. Export from your field service software, or enter the filing cabinet once.
The only mandatory columns are customer, tier, annual value, expiry date and visits owed. Everything else is optional.
Step 2 — Fix undelivered visits before you call anyone
Filter to agreements with visits owed. Schedule those first, at no charge, before any renewal conversation.
Asking someone to renew a plan you did not deliver turns a lapse into a cancellation and sometimes into a review. Deliver first.
Step 3 — Run 90 / 60 / 30 / 14 / 7
First contact ninety days before expiry, while there is room to schedule the visit that comes with it. Then thirty-day gaps, tightening to fourteen and seven inside the final month.
Nothing should expire with fewer than three attempts logged against it. If it does, that is a system failure, not a lost customer.
- 90 days — call, confirm the plan and any owed visits
- 60 days — second call or voicemail
- 30 days — text or email with the expiry date stated plainly
- 14 days — call
- 7 days — final call
- 30 to 180 days after — monthly win-back attempt
Step 4 — Handle the price increase directly
If you raised prices, say the old number and the new number out loud in the call. Customers find out anyway, and finding out on an invoice is worse.
Follow it with what the agreement actually protects: priority scheduling in peak season, the repair discount, and manufacturer warranty validity. One warranty denial usually costs more than several years of the agreement.
Step 5 — Track renewal rate, not renewal count
Count goes up when the base grows and tells you nothing. Rate tells you whether the cadence works.
Track renewal rate monthly, and track it separately for agreements that had a delivered visit versus those that did not. That comparison usually ends the debate about whether visit delivery matters.
Common questions
How early should the first renewal call go out?
Ninety days. Earlier and it feels irrelevant; later and you are competing with your own peak season for schedule space.
Should renewals be automatic?
Auto-renewal with clear notice reduces lapses substantially. It does not remove the need for the call — a customer who is auto-renewed and never contacted is a cancellation waiting for a bad invoice.
What about customers who lapsed a year ago?
Work thirty to one hundred and eighty days first, where the equipment is still familiar and the relationship is warm. Beyond that, treat it as a normal sales conversation rather than a renewal.