Profile
A Breath of Clean Air
America‘s oldest mechanical contractor relies on customer input
Davis Modern Home
Heating was
founded in 1850
by William Davis Jr. and
incorporated as Davis
Modern Heating & Cooling
in 1982. The company
started with wood and coal
heat in the 1800s and then
oil heat in the 1920s.
Today, with 10,000
service customers, Davis
services all brands
of heating and air
conditioning equipment.
They install High
Efficiency Furnaces, Air Conditioners, Heat Pumps and
Boilers and Indoor Air Quality systems to match any fuel
source, including natural gas, propane, heating oil and
electric.
Indoor Comfort Marketing chatted with Jim Reese,
Chief Engineer, Davis Modern about some of their
services, especially Indoor Air Quality (IAQ).
ICM: Going back to 1850, what did the company do?
Reese: They had a business of selling wood, coal, ice and
parlor stoves. They simply had a business that would sell
just about anything the customer wanted.
They must have kept up with things to still be here.
The company moved into retail heating oil in the 1920s.
They were one of the first retail heating oil dealers in
the suburban Philadelphia area and was successful for
over 100 years. They got out of the oil business when the
market here was shrinking and our tanks needed replacement;
the cost of upgrading the tanks did not seem
warranted. We made a conscious decision to get out of
the retail oil business and concentrate on residential mechanical
systems in 2007.
What does the company offer and where?
We handle all of the suburban areas around Philadelphia.
We are now strictly residential mechanical contractors
focusing on service and replacement. We offer no
new construction. We do AC, hot water, steam, any kind
of ducted system, gas, oil, electric, heat pumps geothermal
and solar thermal systems.
At some point you made the decision to get into IAQ
on a meaningful basis. First, how do you define IAQ?
Anything that we do that makes the homeowner more
comfortable or addresses a particular problems that can
be remediated by the mechanical systems in the home.
When did you start to offer IAQ services?
We really started when we sold the oil business and decided
to become solely mechanical contractors. At that
point, there were larger companies, the consolidators,
doing lots of mass marketing. We decided to go a different
route and speak directly to our customers to find out
what their real needs were. Perhaps they had a home
that felt like a desert in the middle of the wintertime or
had dust or mold. We needed to talk to them about why
were we replacing a system and what else we could offer
them to solve those problems. We choose not to dictate
to them. We sell them what they want and not what we
want.
Your customers, through articulating their wishes
and needs, brought you into the IAQ business?
Yes, they really have. We use a very thorough interview
process to find out what they need and want. The process
allows the customer to think through and really
articulate what they want in a meaningful way. Then, of
course, if we have the correct solution, we present that to
the customer.
Is it safe to say you take a more holistic approach?
Absolutely, I usually schedule at least 45 minutes to sit
and have a conversation with homeowners. I often find
out that they have had maybe one, two or three estimates
and no one has actually talked to them.
When they find out I am a mechanical engineer they
have more questions and are willing to open up about
their issues.
The conversation goes away from price and towards
solutions. The homeowners don’t always know how to
articulate their problems. Some actually don’t have any
issues but others, when they start talking, realize they
will be willing to spend the money to truly answer their
needs.
How do you market your IAQ services and solutions
to your customers? Do you market IAQ specifically?
No, we really don’t, we have the manufacturers representatives
of the products we offer come in and talk to our
techs to update them. That starts conversations between
service techs and homeowners. That is where we do our
vast majority of marketing—through word-of-mouth with
our people in the field. Part of what we do, even with
tune-ups, is have our techs engage the customer in a conversation
asking the homeowner what other issues they
might be having. If they are unhappy with any part of
the comfort in the home, we can have someone come out
and talk it through with them.
Your techs are empowered to engage the customer
in this discussion?
Absolutely, empowered and encouraged. The guy with
the blue collar has great credibility with the homeowner
and can bring back a wealth of knowledge from that customer.
The techs are definitely the first line.
4 ICM November/December 2017