Welcome to the future, technologies and innovations that sculpt our industry.
This episode brought to you by ServiceLogic, building efficiency and sustainability.
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Greg, what's going on?
Man, I'm just sitting here.
I've got this truck full of cool stuff and I'm trying to decide which one of these nice
digital multimeters I want to take up on the roof with me this morning.
Man, I'm all about new tools and technologies.
I'm always buying anything that I can get.
Our industry has really changed with the tools that are available to us.
Let's talk about tools for a minute because I've got tools that I like and I've got tools
that have been around for a long time, but some of those tools aren't as useful as they
used to because there's new tools.
Let's talk a little bit about what did tools look like when you first got into the industry?
Back then when I was knocking the dinosaurs off of my roof.
Throwing rocks.
I used a very reliable tester called the Simpson 260 Multimeter.
It was an analog meter that had a needle that bounced across the screen and I could tell
how many volts I was looking at operating with.
Non-RMS?
None.
Now when I go into my garage and I open my toolbox, I see a plethora of so many cool
tools that make our tools of old look antiquated.
That's okay because it's evolution of our industry.
As we change and as our equipment that we support change and as our customers change,
they want, need and demand better, more accurate information.
The only way you can do that is to stay current with your tool bag.
Absolutely.
At one point in my career, I was at the Indiana Masonic Home.
I had taken a break from the family business to go do some commercial HVAC and refrigeration.
In that department, it was a combination of maintenance and grounds people.
All in the same building, all in the same department.
One of the old guys that was in the grounds department, we were hanging out and we were
talking about tools of the trade.
At that time, I was rebuilding.
I had a 66 Chevy truck and I was building a 400-small-block Chevy for it.
I was talking about honing out the cylinders and he said, you know, there was a time that
I used to hone out blocks on Model Ts.
I'm like, tell me about the tools that you used.
He said it had a wooden block that had a cast iron head to it and a mallet.
You believe that.
That was how they honed the cylinders in his early days.
I remember this is 20 plus years ago and Dale was probably 80 at the time.
Retired for decades.
He was just a volunteer.
He lived at the Masonic Home.
He volunteered his time building engines for the tractors and such.
Early on in his career, he used a mallet and an iron tipped wooden tool to hone cylinders
of engines.
Now, think about how tools have changed efficiency over the years.
I know in my own side of things, tools have changed the way my efficiency is as a technician
and now as a teacher and giving back into the industry.
I've still got a dial-a-charge with R12 in it down here in my garage.
Do I use that for charging a system?
No.
Can I use it to teach basic principles and fundamentals?
Absolutely.
But the tools have really changed, especially in this last couple decades.
Well, I think that we have to change.
Yes.
And we have to change because if you're working on a Dykan VRV or VRF refrigerant system,
you can't use a dial-a-charge because it's not accurate enough.
So you have to go to digital instrumentation, whether you're weighing it in, weighing it
out, or if you're checking pressures and temperatures, you have the ability now to do all this in
an IoT environment with wireless sensors.
And you're able to do it in real time and adjust charges, adjust airflow, and you see
immediate response.
And you may remember the days of making adjustment on a thermostatic expansion valve and you
have to wait 15 minutes to...
Quarter of it a turn, wait 15.
And that is part of the evolution of the equipment and specifically the evolution of the tools.
So think back, and you and I have talked before about the communication, how important communication
is.
Think about the communication tools that we're able to use now.
We went from...
And I'm not that old.
I'm fairly ancient, but not that ancient.
My first communication tool as a young technician was a digital beeper that beeped only.
There was no LED readout, no number, no anything.
Just one beep, call the office.
Two beeps, call home.
All right.
So if you go from that, from 1982, when I started in the industry, to today, 2023, we
have every app imaginable to communicate with.
We can pull up WhatsApp and talk to somebody in Korea about this air conditioner we're
working on for free, by the way, in real time.
So I think our means of communication have to keep track with our tools in the van that
we take onto the job site, but it's all to deliver a great customer experience because
we're looking for better, quicker now responses so that when we're able to walk into...
At the end of every job, the best thing to do is walk into your customer's presence,
whether that be their home, their office, their store, and be able to communicate what
you found and what the solution is.
Your tools, and as they have progressed and advanced, allow us to be better at that communication
side.
What about from the business aspect?
You have went all the way from a technician to owner operation.
How has the tools of our industry also affected the efficiency in business?
I think, Clifton, great, great point.
We use tools now.
Like XOI is a great tool.
I know XOI very well.
So Aaron Salo, the gentleman who developed the tool, allows us to give better, accurate,
more quickly information available in video content through a web link, however you want
it.
What that does is enables us to operate more efficiently so that we're able to make the
most out of our limited number of technicians' time.
So if we can save a truck roll because we're able to document better, if we can save nameplate
recognition software, save a trip of having to go back and reread a nameplate because
somebody transcribed it improperly, all of these tools make us more efficient.
So instead of having 10 technicians, which we wish we did, maybe we have eight.
How can we make the eight perform like 10 by utilizing technology?
I preach this all the time.
We keep talking about the labor shortage and how do we promote more people into the trades.
Yes, that is a fantastic topic.
But at the same time, I look at it another way and go, what if we can't?
What if we do not become that attractive to the additional amount of technicians?
Because it's not just that we have a shortage, it's that we have all of these changes in
technology and regulations and refrigerants, so we have a lot of things going on in our
industry.
What if we just made our technicians more efficient?
Exactly right.
What if we can get an extra call a day or two extra calls a day because as the business
owner, we've utilized tools in connection and in conjunction with our technicians to
be able to expedite everyone's time more efficiently?
Well I think one feeds the other.
So if you're a company and you utilize technology and you utilize tools well and you're not
scared of technology, you embrace it, you're going to attract, we talked about generations
of folks before, we're going to be able to attract more talent because they want to go
to companies who are not stuck in the middle ages and their knuckles are all dragged up
from, or scabbed up from dragging on the asphalt.
People are going to want to go there and you're going to be the employer of choice because
you do embrace technology and as your tools evolve, I think your technician pool evolves
with you and you attract the people you want to be there.
The law of attraction is you build something nice and you build something useful and you
build something that people want to be a part of, they're going to come to you.
That's our human nature.
It is.
I completely believe that.
When I spent my last years out in the field, I was a mobile engineer so I did building
automations but I still worked on the refrigeration, I worked on the air conditioner, worked on
electrical of grocery stores but I monitored hundreds of stores when I was on call, hundreds
of stores from my couch.
Every store would have roughly 2000 digital inputs and outputs that I can look at and
I can monitor all of those and if I had something that was causing an error, I could look at
that and I could evaluate it, I could look at trends in history and have a general idea
what I needed.
If I had a sensor that was bad, I could literally just borrow the output from another piece
of equipment and use it as an input to get it by for a moment.
Save that call on heading out to that job and when I do send the technician out to that
job, they're taking the part with them that's already been identified as being a failing
component.
How does that affect a business?
It multiplies your workforce.
Well, it also allows, I totally agree with that.
It also allows your customer to realize you're taking care of them and not abusing them.
Because if you knew that and you sent a guy anyway, then you're billing them for an unnecessary
trip.
That's right.
And if you're in partnership, the true definition of a partnership is you take care of my problems
like you take care of your problems.
So if your customer and you build that rapport with them and they understand that what you're
doing is for the mutual benefit of you both, you're going to be really sticky and they're
not going to want to get rid of you over a $10 or lower bid.
And I think that as tools have evolved, if they're implemented properly, they make our
customers realize that we really can provide better service because we're giving them better
information.
But we have to go back to the soft skills part you and I've talked about in the past.
You have to be able to deliver that message one-on-one, eye-to-eye contact in a way that
they understand it and in a way that they want to be communicated with.
And that can only be done by listening first.
You know, if I think about that technician trying to communicate with a customer, what
better way to be confident in my delivery than to be confident in my results?
If I have validated information in front of me, if I have a reliable reputable software
that is showing me an exact outcome or scenario from a piece of equipment that I'm working
on, I now can have that extra confidence of going to that customer, showing them exactly
what has been found.
So I see tools and especially digital tools and tracking and commissioning and documentation
as being a vital part of our growth of an industry and aiding in that communication
with our customers.
So well said.
And, you know, the image while you were describing that, that popped into my mind was an infrared
picture of a three-phase contactor.
And when you see infrared in motion, so to speak, in action, and you see L1 and L2 are
nice and happy and black on the picture and L3 is lit up like a Christmas tree, it's
very easy to show the customer in real layman's terms why they have to replace the contactor.
Or why you need to dig deeper is, you know, to own the motor out, to mag the motor.
What's driving this additional amp draw on L3?
It gives you a tool and, you know, trust but verify.
I think Ronald Reagan was quoted.
This allows the customer to do that because, you know, unfortunately, we have some jack
legs running around the country in HVAC technicians' clothing giving us a black eye.
So when we're able to differentiate ourselves by being professional, by using state-of-the-art
technology and demonstrating L3 needs to be addressed here on this power, and you can
show a digital image of that in real time on your phone while you're talking to them,
that's got to be a warm and fuzzy.
If we think about what the digital technology has done just for a civilization, we now use
media for communication.
Every one of us.
We used to have a telephone.
Now we have a digital communication device that we tend to trust, that we use as input
for our daily life.
Why would we not want to utilize that technology that customers, that people are already comfortable
with and just communicate with our technology?
Yeah, great point.
Great point.
And think about this.
When you and I were starting our careers, we're up on the rooftop and our job that day
was to change air filters in 50 five-ton carrier rooftop units.
What a boring job.
Had we had a podcast where we could learn what was in the SNAP Act legislation, R32
and R454B, while we were working instead of our AM transistor radio listening to whatever
country you could plug into.
We would have been better off if we had the tools that we had today just from a learning
aspect.
Every time you're by yourself and not having to converse with somebody is an opportunity
to get better at your craft or at communicating or at listening or how to be a better dad.
Use the technology, harvest the abundant crop of stuff laying out there for us to consume.
Use the tools that allow us to do that.
Amen.
People ask me all the time, why do I enjoy doing these podcasts?
It's because I can't.
There's a time when I couldn't.
Well said.
Craig Crampton, thank you so much for your time.
You are an absolute asset to our industry.
Well, I appreciate that.
It means a lot.
I love to help.
I love to help our young and upcoming rock stars get to where they want to be.
Awesome.
Everyone get a chance.
Get on over to Straight Outta Crampton.
Thanks, Craig.
Love it.