Our HVAC scheduling page covers how to build an HVAC board: installs, agreement tune-ups and service calls sharing the same trucks. This page picks up where that one stops. It is about the hours after the board is built, when the phones light up because the first heat wave or cold snap of the year arrived.
HVAC dispatch software earns its keep in peak season, when the work is no longer what you booked yesterday but what called in the last ten minutes. The job of dispatch on those days is triage: decide which calls go today, which truck takes each one, and which promises you are willing to move.
What changes in peak season
On a normal day an HVAC board is mostly booked work. In the first week of real heat or cold, the start of peak season, three things shift at once:
- The mix flips. Same-day calls can outnumber the work that was booked the day before. Tune-ups that were filler become the jobs you want to move.
- Durations stretch. Systems that limped through the shoulder season fail outright. A call booked as a capacitor swap becomes a compressor diagnosis.
- The drive gets worse. More trucks are on the road at the same hours, and calls arrive from every corner of the territory rather than in tidy clusters.
None of that is fixed by working harder. It is fixed by deciding, every time a call comes in, where it goes on the board and what it costs.
Triage before you dispatch
Not every no-cool call is the same emergency, and your dispatcher should not be deciding that from tone of voice. Write the tiers down before the season starts and train whoever answers the phone on them. A common shape:
| Tier | Examples | Target |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Safety | No heat with an infant, elderly or medically vulnerable occupant; a gas smell (send them to the gas utility first); no cooling where heat is a health risk | Today, ahead of booked work |
| 2. Comfort outage | No heat or no cool, healthy occupants, no safety factor | Today if a truck can make it without breaking a tier 1, otherwise first thing tomorrow |
| 3. Degraded | Running but weak, noisy, short cycling | Next open time |
| 4. Planned | Tune-ups, estimates, follow-ups | Movable on the day |
The table is a starting point, not a rule. The useful thing is that it exists, so the decision is the same at 8:00 a.m. and at 4:30 p.m., whoever picks up.
Tier 4 is your buffer. In peak season a tune-up booked for today is a promise you can move with a phone call and a better time, while a tier 1 call cannot wait. Decide in advance which customers on agreements accept a moved tune-up, and you have capacity that already exists.
Picking the truck: "closest" is the wrong question
When a tier 1 or 2 call comes in, the instinct is to send whoever is closest. The right question is who can get there first without breaking something you care about more.
Two numbers per candidate truck:
Arrival = When the truck can leave its current job + Drive from that job at this hour
Damage = Booked jobs on that truck that become late or need moving
A truck five minutes away but halfway through a two-hour changeout cannot leave for 60 minutes. A truck 25 minutes away, finishing a tune-up in 10, arrives first.
Truck 3 is the farthest and the best answer, because what it displaces is the cheapest promise on the board. You only see that when the drive is computed from where each truck actually is and when it can actually leave, which is what a dispatch board has to show.
Protect the rest of the day
Every emergency you insert pushes something. The difference between a hard day and a wrecked one is whether the push is managed or discovered.
- Move the cheapest promise first. Tier 4 before tier 3, and an agreement tune-up before a first-time customer.
- Call before you are late, not after. A customer told at 1:00 that their 3:00 is now 4:30 is annoyed. A customer who finds out at 3:20 is gone.
- Get running jobs to report early. The tech halfway through a job knows before anyone in the office whether it will run long. Make it easy for them to say so.
- Hold the last slot of the day loosely. In peak season the last booked job is the one most likely to be moved. Book it with a customer who has flexibility.
If you want a dedicated slot held for emergencies rather than inserting and bumping, see the arithmetic in emergency call scheduling. For how to set up techs and skills before the season, read how to schedule HVAC technicians.
How CrewLink handles HVAC dispatch
CrewLink is in early access, built for companies running 5 to 50 trucks. For peak-season dispatch, the parts that matter are these:
- Same-day emergencies. CrewLink finds a qualified tech who can still get there today, or says why no one can. That second half matters in peak season. "No one can reach this today" is an answer you can give the customer straight away.
- A live board. Each tech has a status dot (green when they will arrive at least 5 minutes early or are on site, yellow between 5 minutes early and 10 minutes late, red when more than 10 minutes late, grey when done for the day), what they are doing and the ETA to their next job.
- The mid-job check-in. About halfway through a job the tech app asks if the tech is on track or needs +15, +30 or +60 minutes. An extension re-flows the rest of that tech's day straight away: later jobs that no longer fit go to a teammate who can make the same time, or move to the nearest open time, and the affected customers are texted.
- On-the-way texts with an ETA, so the customer waiting on a no-cool call knows when the truck is coming.
CrewLink does not do call answering, a phone system or vehicle GPS. Positions come from the tech's phone app. Triage tiers are your company's decision; CrewLink finds who can get there.
A quick self-audit for last season
Pull the ten worst days from your last peak season and answer three questions for each:
- How many same-day calls came in, and by what time of day?
- How many booked jobs were moved, and how many customers found out after their window started?
- How many same-day calls did you turn away, and was that because no truck could reach them or because nobody could tell?
The third question is the one most companies cannot answer. It is also where the money is.
What to take away
- HVAC dispatch in peak season is triage. Write the tiers down before the season so the decision does not depend on who answers the phone.
- Pick the truck by when it can leave plus the drive from where it is, and by which promise it breaks. The closest truck is often the wrong one.
- Planned work such as tune-ups is your peak-season buffer. Move it first and tell the customer early.
- CrewLink, in early access, finds a qualified tech who can still make a same-day call or says why no one can, and re-flows a tech's day when a job runs long.
Common questions
What is the difference between HVAC scheduling and HVAC dispatch?
Scheduling decides which jobs go on which day and which times are offered. Dispatch handles the day as it happens: who takes the new call, what to move when a job runs long, and who to tell. The HVAC scheduling page covers the first. This page covers the second.
How do you prioritize no-heat and no-cool calls?
Use written tiers. Safety cases, such as vulnerable occupants, go first. Comfort outages come next, then degraded systems, then planned work. The point of writing them down is that every dispatcher makes the same call.
Should the closest technician take an emergency HVAC call?
Not automatically. Compare when each truck can actually leave its current job plus its drive from there, and what each one would displace. A farther truck finishing a tune-up often arrives first and breaks less.
Can CrewLink take HVAC emergency calls on a full board?
CrewLink finds a qualified tech who can still get there today, or says why no one can. If a tech then needs more time on a job, the mid-job check-in re-flows the rest of their day and texts the affected customers.