Growing Employees, Serving Customers
This leading company, with roots in the heating fuel business, is drenched in a commitment to training, service, follow-up, and total customer satisfaction.
Casey’s Climate Partners
Location: Milford, Conn.
Owners: Tom and Todd Casey
The Casey name is well-known in Milford as the family has been in the heating business since the 1930s. Brothers Tom and Todd Casey are the third-generation stewards of the family’s HVAC businesses. Tom Casey focuses his attention on his Florida company, Griffin Services, while Todd Casey manages the Climate Partners firm, which the family opened in the early 2000s.
“I can't tell you how many people I talk to that were customers of Casey's Fuel and my grandfather, 50 years ago, and remember him and remember the trucks and remember just everything about it,” Todd Casey says. “It's cool to be able to carry on in HVAC for my family.”
“When I look at a Facebook posts for our community from people looking for HVAC company recommendations, half of the answers say, ‘You’ll be in good hands at Climate Partners,’” Todd Casey notes. “It's our team from our original call handlers, to our dispatchers, to our service technicians, to our follow-up — our whole staff is 100 percent committed to our customers.”
A member of Nexstar, Climate Partners’ management team meets quarterly to discuss its current year business plan, it’s three-year plan and 10-year plan.
“The company itself has an annual revenue and profit goal,” Todd Casey says. “It also has annual goals in terms of number of [service agreements] we want to sell and the number of customer reviews we want to receive. We meet with team members and discuss their individual goals. They know what we're hoping to accomplish as a team that week, month, year — and what their part is.”
Technician training is critically important to achieve customer satisfaction, and Climate Partners goes the extra mile. Techs are sent to boot camp at Tom Casey’s home in Florida, where they stay at his home and learn the company standards, its operational excellence for every kind of service it provides. That includes continuing education for experienced technicians, as the HVAC industry is constantly evolving with new technology.
“We create specific themes, whether it be air-conditioner tune-ups or the perfect service call or duct diagnostics,” Tom Casey explains. “We'll live together during this time so we can get 12-, 14-hour days. And you also get really granular because you're not just in a classroom setting or a field setting, you're in a life setting.
“So as much as there's technical training going on, we also take on the role of mentor. Many of these folks are younger men, so we talk about what's important for their career trajectory and life skills they may need to succeed.”
He is making training more accessible via video, even before the COVID-19 pandemic
“Many people in the trade don't respond as well to written things as they do by hands-on experiences,” Tom Casey notes. “And we noticed at boot camp how people always go to their phones when they have private time, watching videos on their favorite social media platform. So, we've been moving a lot of our training to video. Our onboarding process is video-based, where new hires learn about our culture, our core values and our processes.”
He and his team also created several dozen consumer videos about options for certain repairs that techs can play for customers — perfect for those techs who are not comfortable talking with customers.
