30 Years Strong. Carolina HVAC Grows Their Legacy with Service Fusion 

70% of second-generation businesses fail. Carolina HVAC is one of the few that beat the odds. After 30 years in business, they’ve come a long way from using sticky notes, where they would lose a lot of important customer information, to now being one of the established HVAC & electrical service providers in South Carolina.  

Let’s look at how they grew the company and their vision to build a legacy. 

Products used:   

Pro Plan | Custom Docs | FusionPay | Integrated Voice & Text | Customer Web Portal   

Customer since: 2016   

Number of staff: 25   

Ave annual jobs: 5K   

Ave daily time in-app: 2 hrs   

From Father to Son: A True Family Business  

Pat Quill started the company three decades ago. His son, Kyle, began working alongside him at just 17 as a service tech, and seven years ago, Pat passed him the reins. Now President and Owner, Kyle is already eyeing his eldest son, Duke, to carry the legacy into a third generation. 

The family involvement doesn’t stop there. Kyle’s sister, Emily, keeps operations running smoothly as office manager, while Patti (Pat’s wife) and Rebecca (Kyle’s wife) shape the company culture. 

Carolina HVAC lives by their five core values, what they call the 5Gs: Grit, Generosity, Greatness, Gratitude, and Growth. That final value, Growth, is where their partnership with Service Fusion makes the biggest impact. 

Growth Mindset: Overcoming Resistance to Change 

“We think about the future constantly, from mergers and acquisitions to employee satisfaction and technology.”, Kyle explains. But like most growing companies, they initially pushed back against change. “When someone first introduced Service Fusion, our first thought was ‘We don’t want change‘“.  

But after realizing that the industry is changing rapidly, technicians are getting younger, and customer expectations continue to rise. The question became adapt or get left behind. 

Results after using Service Fusion’s Field Service Software  

• Sticky Note Disaster Gone  

In the early days, Pat would leave handwritten sticky notes right in front of his son’s truck before heading out for the day, which often got lost. With Service Fusion, there’s no more lost data. All job and customer information is documented, so there’s no need to dig through file cabinets. It’s also easy to reassign jobs to different technicians, ensuring job continuity and helping the team get to the job on time, every time. 

“Life was miserable with handwritten notes. If one thing changed, I had to rewrite it all and make 3 phone calls to get everybody on the same page. But now, it’s done in 1 click. If we’re doing 80 jobs a day, that’s a huge time saver” 

• Turned Happy Customers to Fans  

Pat explains that in the service industry where customers often feel left in the dark, being honest and providing constant communication to customers is key.  

Service Fusion makes this possible through automated text messages via the Integrated Voice & Text feature that let customers know when technicians are “on the way” or have arrived “on site.” As Kyle puts it, those simple communications & updates help turn happy customers into fans. Pat adds that having a complete customer history available at their fingertips has been another big advantage. 

“When I’m driving to an estimate, I can pull up a customer’s entire history. If they’ve been with us for years, I make a point to thank them right away. If they’re new, I ask how they found us, which tells me what marketing is working. Service Fusion is a powerful tool that keeps getting better the more we invest time learning and using it.”  

• Cash Flow Management Made Easy 

Managing their books used to be another headache, especially with large accounts receivables. Soon, they realized that if they made it easier for customers to pay them, it improves cash flow management.  

Carolina HVAC has been using FusionPay to provide multiple payment methods to their customers. This includes debit and credit cards as well as ACH processing. The convenience factor makes a real difference, customers can pay immediately rather than putting it off, which keeps money flowing and reduces the admin burden of chasing down payments. 

Advice for Growing Businesses 

Kyle: “Embrace change. What got us here won’t get us to the next level. The industry is always changing, and the people that embrace it are going to be the people that win.” 

Pat: “Show up on time, do great work, and treat people the way you want to be treated. If a company does that, they can’t help but succeed. Service Fusion has made us better at those things. We’re not losing filter sizes or phone numbers or wasting time maintaining manual databases. Honestly, I don’t know how any service business today can survive without it.” 

Start Building Your Own Legacy 

Carolina HVAC’s 30-year journey proves that family businesses can scale efficiently. They’ve built systems and adopted technology like Service Fusion that supports growth. Most importantly, they’ve created something worth passing on to the next generation. 

Discover why thousands of service businesses trust us to power their success. Book your demo today. 

_{Carolina HVAC has been a Service Fusion customer since 2016, growing their business while maintaining the family values that set them apart. Learn more about their services at carolina-hvac.com.}