11 HVAC Dispatching Tips to Cut Drive Time and Improve Communication

1. Improve communication between technicians and the office

Having a reliable communication plan keeps HVAC dispatchers and technicians on the same page as they receive new requests.

Whether you use a radio, phone, or HVAC service software, here are a few tips to fix dispatch communication:

• Set a communication protocol. Define when, how, and how often technicians and dispatchers should communicate. For example, do techs need to check in with their dispatcher once the job is done?
• Stay informed about job delays. Technicians should notify dispatchers when jobs go over their allotted time so office workers can manage customer complaints about delays. Have your technicians notify home base over text—or keep tabs on the tech’s location with GPS tracking (more on that later).
• Send automatic schedule updates to your crew. Automating these updates will save your dispatchers time and prepare your field techs for on-the-fly changes.

When you manage your team with Jobber’s HVAC software, anytime you make a schedule change to an employee’s current workday, they’ll get a notification on their phone with all the details.

2. Schedule ride-alongs with your HVAC technicians

To help dispatchers better understand what field workers experience on the job, ride-alongs may be the perfect training opportunity. These are chances for HVAC technicians to show dispatchers what their daily workload entails, not to mention how travel time and customer interactions can put a strain on their schedule.

If you’re in charge of dispatching, go on two or three ride-alongs to get a sense of the time your technicians spend on the job. If you manage a larger team with dedicated dispatchers, make ride-alongs with techs part of your dispatch training.

READ MORE: 7 best HVAC scheduling apps for small businesses

3. Offer ongoing training for dispatchers

Keeping dispatchers sharp requires steady attention and small adjustments, and that’s where ongoing training comes in. Here’s how to go about it.

Real-world scenarios

A good place to start is by going over real-world scenarios. HVAC operations move fast, so your dispatcher training should too. Take dispatchers through situations they actually deal with, like hectic mornings with emergency replacements. Or when a tech is stuck across town, and you’ve got a high-priority call waiting.

Case studies and “what would you do?” sessions help people practice the problem-solving they’ll need during peak season.

With the customer’s permission, recording real customer calls can be great for training purposes. Your team can hear what happened and how the dispatcher responded. As a group, think about what worked well on the call and what other solutions the dispatcher could have tried.

Software proficiency

Hands-on time with your field service management (FSM) software—whether you’re using the Jobber app or something else—can prevent small delays that turn into big headaches.

Let dispatchers click through the tools, change statuses, send messages, and watch how data flows from call to job completion. When people know the system front to back, you’ll see fewer urgent messages and more confident scheduling.

Communication skills

Communication is at the heart of dispatch. Teach your dispatchers to use clear, calm communication, especially in stressful moments. A friendly tone or a heads-up to a technician about a tricky homeowner can make the day go smoother.

Continuous feedback loops

To help your team remember what they learned in training, build a simple feedback loop. This could be a weekly huddle or a monthly refresher session.

These sessions aren’t meant as an opportunity to nitpick. Instead, they should help dispatchers spot patterns, adjust their habits, and even recommend improvements in your operations. With time and repetition of these key lessons, people will start taking more initiative, improve their responses, and, as a result, the chaotic days will feel a lot more manageable.

4. Create a system to prioritize jobs

Prioritizing your crew’s schedule is one of the easiest ways to stay organized and take on more work. To start, assign each type of job an urgency level: low, medium, or high.

For example, emergency AC repairs during the summer should receive the highest priority, while routine system maintenance appointments are usually lower priority.

You should be capturing enough information in your work request forms or customer phone call notes to determine how urgent a repair job is.

Jobber Tip: In Jobber, you can customize the color of different visits in your team calendar. This helps dispatchers recognize job urgency at a glance and make faster rescheduling decisions.

Set specific colors for visits with certain keywords in their title, like “emergency repair,” to help easily re-route unpredictable emergency calls.

5. Give technicians access to schedules in advance

When HVAC techs can view their schedule at any time, they’ll be more prepared for the day ahead. The result is better customer service thanks to having the right information, HVAC tools, and equipment.

Use a shareable job schedule (like this one in Jobber) to easily reschedule jobs or reassign them to a different field service technician.

6. Make customer notes and details easy to access

It’s always important to provide HVAC technicians with one consistent place they can go to access all the details they need to do a job well. Before techs arrive at a job site, make sure they know:

• Specific details about the job, customer, or property
• Notes or images that the field technician should review prior to the repair
• Any additional customer requests or questions that the technician can solve

All these details should be easy to share and refer back to digitally, which eliminates tedious back-and-forth emails or paper documents. Instead, use a customer relationship management system (CRM) or HVAC scheduling software to upload details.

Jobber Tip: When a tech needs to access details about a service call, they can simply click on the visit in their Jobber calendar and see the original HVAC work order, notes, images, and other attachments.

7. Dispatch and route your team efficiently

Speed up HVAC scheduling and dispatching by assigning technicians to the jobs that are closest to them. Location-based scheduling reduces driving time between jobs, improves your crew’s efficiency, and makes managing a team of technicians easy.

Follow these steps to organize your crew by location:

• Organize visits into geographic “groups.” You or your dispatchers can group them by which part of the city or town they’re in (e.g., northeast, southwest, etc.), or by neighborhood if your services are more localized.
• Assign one technician (or crew) to each location group. This way, your staff will spend less time driving from one job to the next.

Make this process easier by using route planning software. Jobber automatically creates the most efficient crew schedule based on the location of each visit—and lets you track your team’s location as they’re driving from job to job.

8. Schedule consistent breaks

Everyone at your HVAC company has the right to rest, so be diligent about scheduling. A balanced work schedule ensures that your team can function at peak productivity and complete every job accurately. Be mindful of including regular breaks in each HVAC technician’s schedule.

To more easily manage employee breaks, you can:

• Schedule breaks in advance. Setting a defined break time in each technician’s calendar (e.g., 12:00-12:45) before even scheduling jobs ensures you never miss a break. 
• Figure out your team’s peak productivity periods. Plan your breaks immediately after the busiest, most productive times.
• Allow input from employees about their work breaks. Always make notes about employee preferences, and schedule breaks that accommodate them as best as you can.

Breaks ensure that your team stays well-rested and ready to do great work. Not only do scheduled breaks satisfy labor compliance standards, but they can also prevent burnout and fatigue. 

Pro Tip: Check your regional and state guidelines on minimum rest periods or meal breaks. If you’re stuck, Google “[YOUR STATE] + required labor breaks” to get started.

9. Have a backup plan for job cancellations and no-shows

Cancellations and no-shows are annoying, but they’re part of life in HVAC. A fallback system protects your revenue and saves dispatchers from scrambling when a 2-hour slot is suddenly empty.

Maintain a standby list

A standby list helps you backfill open time when a job falls off the schedule. It’s a prioritized list of flexible, easily rescheduled jobs that can be “moved up” to fill gaps created by cancellations or no-shows. Common examples include: 

• Routine maintenance
• Duct cleanings
• Customers who say things like “anytime this week” when asked about their availability

You can also pair those jobs with nearby technicians already in the area, so you’re not creating extra drive time just to fill an empty time slot. When a cancellation hits, dispatchers should already know exactly which job slides in.

Use real-time communication

Quick, real-time updates become a lifeline for dispatchers. If a cancellation occurs, the dispatcher can shift a tech without losing momentum. Any scrambles will be less chaotic when you’ve got a system that sends instant communication to everyone who needs it.

Set clear cancellation policies

Of course, fewer cancellations in the first place makes life easier. Setting clear cancellation and rescheduling policies (and sharing them upfront) helps customers understand what’s expected. This can include a required notice window or a small financial penalty for last-minute cancellations or no-shows.

Framed the right way, these policies protect your team’s time and keep the schedule fair. Even a friendly reminder that missed appointments affect your team’s schedule can add accountability.

10. Monitor technician progress with GPS tracking

Track your crew’s progress and location throughout the day using a GPS tracking tool. Knowing the location of your crew’s vehicles can help you manage delays effectively and with less frustration.

Using fleet management tools in Jobber, you can see when a technician gets stuck at a property or job site. (For example, maybe they ran into an unexpected issue, or they needed to find the proper tool or repair part.)

Jobber integrates with FleetSharp for more efficient scheduling and dispatching. Live GPS tracking helps you ensure that techs arrive on site.

11. Keep customers informed about upcoming visits

To deliver great customer service, notify each customer before their repairman or installer arrives. Use these strategies to keep customers in the loop as you dispatch your technicians:

• Automate your appointment reminders. Use emails and texts to ensure that all customers get a reminder 1–2 days before the service call (ideally before your cancellation window in case they need to reschedule—and can do so without penalty).
• Get your field service technicians to send ‘on-my-way’ text messages to customers. This is helpful for letting customers know when a tech is en route, and it lets them know who exactly will show up at their home.

Jobber Tip: With Jobber, you can schedule reminder emails and send standardized ‘on my way’ text messages before every visit without typing them each time.

Then, manage all these conversations in a single place. Using two-way text messaging, you can see what was sent, when it was sent, and which team member sent the message.