CHOICE Service Call Playbook
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The CHOICE Service Call Playbook is the service call standard for your technicians: six steps, from arrival to the invoice, with a checklist, quiz and progress tracker for each, plus scripts and ride-along forms. It is written for owners of independent HVAC and plumbing companies across the United States and Canada, and the people in their trucks use it.
It is also the smallest and most accessible step in the BGS Strategies line. Nothing about it requires you to hire a coach, rearrange your week or sit your whole company down. One person can read it, one manager can coach it, and you can see inside a month whether your technicians are running calls the way you would run them yourself.
Live every Thursday, 11 AM to noon Central. Register and get the book free.
01 / The problem
Your Technicians Are the Company
The customer never meets you. She meets a man in a truck who arrives somewhere in a four hour window, walks through her house, tells her something is wrong, and puts a number in front of her. Whatever she decides about your company, she decides in that hour.
That is an uncomfortable thing for an owner to sit with, because you did not hire most of your technicians for that hour. You hired them because they can diagnose a system, and that is what you trained them to do. Nobody trained them on the part that decides whether the customer says yes, calls you back next year, or quietly writes your name down as the company that talked over her.
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So the service call goes a different way with every technician on your payroll. One explains, one lectures, one says almost nothing and hopes the invoice speaks for itself. You cannot hold a standard you have never written down, and you cannot coach a call you did not hear.
02 / What is inside
What Is Inside the CHOICE Service Call Playbook
Six steps, one for each letter of CHOICE, and a line that runs through all of them: the customer always has a choice. The subtitle says what it is for, six steps to build a high-performance service team, and it is written so a manager can train from it.
C, Character, Control and Competence
C is Character, Control and Competence: attitude and energy on arrival, turning up prepared with the materials, parts and history for the call, and values in action.
H, the Happy Greeting
H is the Happy Greeting: the first ninety seconds, empathy and a no-surprise preview of the visit, and the language that builds trust quickly.
O, the Overview of the system
O is the Overview of the system, with optimism: inquire first, then explore, turning symptoms into evidence, and model confidence while doing it.
I, Inspect, Diagnose and Options
I is Inspect, Diagnose and Options to resolve all issues: a diagnostic every time, three professional recommendations laid out as best, better and good, and a clear path to a same-day decision that stays the customer's.
C, Complete Care
C is Complete Care: gratitude, gold-standard documentation and a follow-through plan.
E, Extra Choices for Effectiveness
E is Extra Choices for Effectiveness: teaching the customer efficiency, the quality of the whole home, and reviews, referrals and the club revisit.
Each step comes with a checklist, a quiz with an answer key and a progress tracker. Behind the six sit a library of role-play exercises, field assignment tracking sheets, manager ride-along evaluation forms, customer communication scripts, review and referral request templates, technician development and KPI tracking, and a statement of company values and service standards.
This playbook covers how a technician runs a service call in a customer's home. It is not technical training on the equipment, and it does not cover replacement selling at the kitchen table or how your phones are answered.
03 / Use it this week
How a Service Team Actually Runs It
The owners who get something out of a playbook all do the same three things.
Give it to one person to own
They give it to one person to own, and that person is the service manager, not the owner. A standard enforced by the owner lasts until the owner gets busy.
Run one standard at a time
They run one standard at a time. Not all six steps, the ride-along forms and a new price book in the same month. A step at a time, long enough for the team to stop thinking about it, and then the tracking.
Use the tracking as coaching
And they use the tracking as coaching rather than ammunition. A technician who sees the ride-along form once a quarter in a difficult meeting learns to dislike it. A technician who sees it every month, on a good week and a bad one, learns to use it.
04 / Why it pays
Five Star Service Is a Profit Argument
Home-service work reaches the customer through one person, in one visit, with no second chance at a first impression. Trade bodies like the Air Conditioning Contractors of America set the technical standards for the work itself, and the trade is skilled: a technician who opens a sealed refrigerant circuit has to hold EPA Section 608 certification to do it legally. None of that has anything to do with how the visit feels to the person paying for it.
That is why "five star service and customers for life" is a money sentence and not a manners sentence. A customer who trusts the technician books maintenance, takes the recommendation, calls you first next time and tells her neighbor. A customer who does not goes back to searching, and you pay for that lead all over again.
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The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks this trade as a growing one, which means your competitors are hiring too, and the technician standing in that house is the only part of your marketing the customer can actually see.
05 / Who it is for
Who Buys This and Who Uses It
You buy it. Your technicians use it. Your service manager coaches it and owns the scorecard.
That split matters, because the most common way a playbook dies is an owner who buys it, reads it, agrees with it, and puts it in a drawer. This one is written to be handed over. If you have no service manager yet, the person you would promote is the person to hand it to, and that is often the moment an owner realizes they are holding a job they never meant to keep.
06 / Pairs with
Where This Sits Against Coaching and Training
This is the smallest step BGS Strategies offers, and it is deliberately the first one.
Leadership Training is live training with weekly reinforcement, delivered to your team over time. The playbook is a written standard they work from daily. Owners frequently start here and step up, because a company already running one service standard gets far more out of live training than one starting from scratch.
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If the same person runs the service call and then sells the replacement, add the CHOOSE2 Replacement Sales Playbook. If calls are being lost before a technician is ever dispatched, the problem is at the front desk and the answer is the CSR Master Playbook. If the person supposed to be coaching all of this cannot run the department, that is the Elite HVAC Service Manager System. Systems and Tools for Growth is where BGS installs the measurement around all of it, and the whole line sits on the Products page.
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Playbook
CSR Master Playbook
For the person answering your phone.
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Playbook
CHOOSE2 Replacement Sales Playbook
For the people who ask for the order.
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Toolkit
Home-Service Profit and Performance Toolkit
A Growth Roadmap from $1 million to $3 million.
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Operating system
Elite HVAC Service Manager System
The premium training, for the person who runs your service department.
07 / Questions
Frequently Asked Questions: CHOICE Service Call Playbook
Which of my people is the CHOICE Service Call Playbook for?
Your service technicians, the people running maintenance and repair calls in customers' homes. Your service manager uses the scorecard to coach them. You buy it and you set the expectation, but you are not the one reading the scripts. Companies where one person does service and sales usually want both playbooks.
Will my technicians actually use a script?
The good ones do, because it takes the guesswork out of the part of the job nobody ever trained them for. A script is not a costume. It is the order the call runs in and the words for the three or four moments that decide whether the customer trusts the man in her hallway.
What comes with the CHOICE Service Call Playbook?
Six steps spelling CHOICE, each with a checklist, a quiz with an answer key and a progress tracker, plus role-play exercises, ride-along evaluation forms, customer communication scripts, review and referral templates and KPI tracking.
How does pricing work at BGS Strategies?
The business assessment is free, and Level 1 of the Skool community is free. It contains the 7 Step Method, and the community on Skool is free to join. There is no trial period and no card required.
To get the full set of the 7 Step Tools, serious clients move to Level 2 membership on Skool at $295 a month. If you want to fast-track your growth and success, sign up for the 90-Day Plan at $7,500. To learn more, register for the $100,000 Conversation webinar.
Is the CHOICE Service Call Playbook the same as your Leadership Training?
No. Leadership Training is live training with weekly reinforcement, delivered to your people. This playbook is a written standard your technicians work from every day. Owners often start here because it is the smallest step, and it is the most natural introduction to what team training actually feels like.
Is this a sales program?
No. This is how to run a service call well: diagnose it, explain it, offer the options, and leave the customer better informed than you found her. Asking for the order at a kitchen table is a different job with a different standard, and that one is the CHOOSE2 Replacement Sales Playbook.
Ask About the CHOICE Service Call Playbook
Ask about this product and say you are asking about the CHOICE Service Call Playbook. Kerry will come back to you with what it costs, what you receive and whether it is the right first step for your company.
- Book the $100K Conversation.
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Take the Business Assessment.
For owners still working out where the problem is.
Call BGS Strategies on 940-441-3231 or email support@bgsstrategies.com. The office is open Monday to Friday, 7 AM to 4 PM Central, and calls before 10 AM usually reach voicemail because Kerry is coaching. BGS Strategies works with home-service companies across the United States and Canada from its home base in Lantana, Texas.