GarageDoorBossPro Blog — Tune-Ups & Maintenance Plans

Filling Slow Weeks on the Schedule With Garage Door Tune-Ups

Every garage door company knows the feeling. Last week every van was out from dawn to dark on broken springs. This week the phone is quiet and two techs are sweeping the shop. Slow weeks are part of the trade. Tune-ups are how you stop them from costing you a week of payroll with nothing to show for it.

Tune-Ups Are the Flexible Work

The bigger picture of how plans build steady work is in Building Recurring Revenue Between Garage Door Installs. This guide is about using that work day to day, when the schedule has holes.

Most garage door work cannot be moved. A customer with a car trapped inside wants someone today. A customer who just approved a new door wants it on the date you promised. Tune-ups are different. A visit due this week can go Tuesday or Thursday. A visit coming due next week can be done a few days early if the customer agrees. That flexibility makes tune-ups the work that fills in around everything else.

Look at the Waiting List First

When a slow day appears, the Waiting List is the first place to look. It is a live map of every visit that came due, colored by status:

• Overdue visits past a 7-day grace should go first. A slow day is the perfect time to catch up.
• Due now visits are next. Group the ones in the same area and give them the open day.
• Not due yet visits are your reserve. If the van still has room, call or text customers whose visit is coming up soon and offer an earlier day.

Because visits come due by minimum days between visits, doing one a little early is not a problem. The next visit simply counts from the day this one was completed.

Ask Before Moving Visits Up

Pulling a tune-up forward is fine, but ask first. Two-way texting from the office makes it easy: “We have a tech in your area tomorrow. Would you like your yearly tune-up done then instead of next week?” Many customers are happy to get it out of the way.

If the plan auto-charges on completion, mention that the charge will come with the visit. No one likes a surprise.

Keep the replies organized. Customers who say yes go on the van. Customers who say no stay on the list for their normal week. A note on the client keeps the office from asking the same person twice.

Keep Room for the Phone

A slow week can turn busy in an hour. Three spring calls before nine and the week looks completely different. The trick is to fill slow days with tune-ups without leaving yourself unable to answer emergency calls.

A few approaches work well:

• Split by van. One van on repairs and emergency spring calls, one on installs and tune-ups. Slow days fill the tune-up van, and the repair van stays ready. See One Van on Repairs, One on Tune-Ups: Splitting Garage Door Maintenance Work.
• Leave a gap. Schedule tune-ups in the morning and leave the afternoon open.
• Route tight. Auto-route Closest First or Furthest First from the shop so the van is never too far from the next possible call.

Crew GPS on the office map shows where every van is. If a spring call comes in near the tune-up van, the office can decide in seconds whether to move it over.

Slow Weeks Are Good for Commercial Work

Commercial maintenance on 90-day intervals is another great fit for slow weeks. Property managers, HOAs and businesses with rolling doors, sectionals and docks often have several doors at one address or several addresses close together. A slow day can knock out a whole account's quarterly visits.

Coordinate with the account first, since commercial doors may only be reachable at certain hours. Note those hours in the access notes so the tech sees them on the job card.

Use Slow Weeks to Clean Up

If there truly are not enough tune-ups to fill the day, slow weeks are a good time to work on the program itself:

• Follow up on unapproved estimates from past tune-ups.
• Text past repair customers who never signed up for a plan.
• Fill in missing equipment details on houses.
• Import an old spreadsheet of tune-up customers by CSV so they show up on the map.

Every one of those makes the next slow week easier to fill. The more plan customers you have, the fewer empty days you will see. The next guide covers a specific seasonal push that many companies use to fill the calendar. For the full tune-up program, see the garage door maintenance software page.