How Premier Heating Surrey Transformed Their Business with Commusoft
March 26, 2025 | Read: 9 minutes
When workflow inefficiencies and juggling countless admin tasks start to weigh on your business, every process feels harder than it should. This was the challenge Premier Heating Surrey Limited faced before discovering Commusoft.
Now, after over a decade of using the platform, they have revolutionised how they manage their business, enabling them to grow, streamline operations, and deliver an improved customer experience.
If you’re a heating or plumbing business owner looking to optimise your operations and improve customer satisfaction, their story might just inspire you.
About Premier Heating Surrey Limited
Premier Heating Surrey Limited, run by Keith Richards, has been serving domestic and commercial customers in the Guildford area since it was founded in 1963.
With services ranging from heating and plumbing installation to maintenance, their company is a trusted name in the region.
Today, they have a dedicated team of nine maintenance engineers, three installers, apprentices, and five office staff, split between their thriving maintenance and installation divisions.
Over the years, they’ve managed to grow steadily despite increasing competition from smaller firms as well as fulfilling a niche within heating, particularly for oil-related assets.
While the team is thriving and the company doing incredibly well, the road to success wasn’t without its challenges…
The Challenge that Premier Heating Faced
By their own admission, keeping on top of administrative tasks before switching to Commusoft was more than a bit chaotic. Before experimenting with software tools, Premier Heating were like most other heating business, primarily using paper diaries and simple spreadsheets. It was not an efficient system.
Of course, they couldn’t ignore the benefits of technology and, in the hope of improving efficiency, they pursued a few different options before finally settling on Commusoft.
These included using systems like ServiceMax that were overly simplistic for their growing needs, or attempting to use custom-built options, but these became too costly to scale and maintain.
As a result, Premier Heating were faced significant pain points, including:
- Inefficient Communication: Engineers and office staff constantly needed to relay updates back and forth over the phone, eating into everyone’s schedules.
- Time-Consuming Admin: Generating invoices required extensive manual effort, leading to delays and unnecessary workload for the office team.
- Limited System Functionality: Their previous solutions lacked automation or real-time visibility into engineer schedules and job updates.
It became clear they needed a more robust system to ease the bottlenecks and create a more efficient work environment, especially one that could transform their customer experience.
That’s when they found Commusoft.
How Commusoft Became the Solution
Keith recalls seeing an ad for Commusoft and, seeing that it looked like what they wanted, decided to reach out and give Commusoft a look.
What stood out to him was how tailor-made the platform felt for trades businesses. Unlike generic software tools, Commusoft felt like it was designed with their specific needs in mind.
In fact, this has always been Commusoft’s goal: to fit the needs of growing service businesses and provide them with the tools they need to operate more efficiently and effectively.
Here’s how Commusoft addressed the challenges Premier Heating were facing effectively:
Streamlined Diary and Job Management
Charlotte Wignall, the Installation Administrator at Premier Heating, relies heavily on Commusoft’s diary feature.
“The diary is a huge thing I use daily to keep track of the engineers. It saves so much time,” she shared.
The system centralises all job scheduling, ensuring that surveys, quotes, installations, and follow-ups are efficiently planned, reducing guesswork and wasted time. That’s because the single customer view set-up makes it easy to navigate, find information, and share it with the team, so everyone is on the same page.
Mobile App for Engineers
For engineers in the field, the mobile app has been a game-changer.
Leigh Lush, who oversees the maintenance team, highlighted the simplicity and utility of the app. Engineers receive real-time job updates and can access historical data instantly, making tasks like troubleshooting significantly easier.
“The engineers now see previous issues at a site and even locate assets like filters and motorised valves without having to call the office,” Keith added.
After 16 years at Premier Heating, Leigh has seen frst-hand the impact that these tools have on the business and found Commusoft to be an absolute game-changer.
“As we grow, Commusoft is the perfect system for us. It’s a really good system to use.”
Automated Communication and Notifications
The introduction of automated emails, letters, and SMS notifications has improved customer communication.
Customers now receive timely updates about bookings, including engineer details and estimated arrival times.
For elderly customers without email, Commusoft still ensures that print letters are easily logged and tracked, so when paper is required, it’s still incredibly efficient.
Faster Quoting and Payment Processing
Commusoft’s estimating tools make generating and sending quotes a breeze.
“Sometimes customers accept them within five minutes of them being sent out,” Charlotte noted. The speed makes her job infinitely easier, so keep tracking of schedules, customer information, and more, is simple.
The system enables swift communication, fast approvals, and easy payment processing, significantly speeding up their sales cycle.
Vehicle Tracking for Enhanced Fleet Management
The vehicle tracking features available in Commusoft have proven to be indispensable.
The team can uses it to monitor engineers’ locations in real-time, allowing for dynamic adjustments like assigning urgent jobs to the nearest available engineer.
This ensures faster response times and reduces unnecessary travel time, but also keeps customers happy by ensuring rapid response times.
Key Benefits and Improvements
Since implementing Commusoft, Premier Heating Surrey Limited has seen remarkable improvements across multiple facets of their business:
1. Time Savings
The automation of mundane admin tasks has freed up significant time for both the engineers and the office staff.
Charlotte compared it to her previous experience of handwriting invoices and scanning everything into the system, saying in contrast, “Commusoft saves so much time.”
She went on to express she felt that, even without hiring more staff, the company could comfortably take on more work just fine: their processes are robust enough to handle it.
2. Improved Customer Satisfaction
Customers appreciate the timely updates and professional communication.
With automated notifications keeping customers in the loop and engineers arriving with all the necessary details, miscommunication has drastically reduced, leading to better reviews and repeat business.
“Having a good CRM system is a must when you have multiple engineers. It just creates a better customer experience. They’re kept up to date with what’s going on. And should they need to call us for a problem, then it’s quite easy for the office staff to look into the background history of what’s been done
It’s this that helps them outperform the competition: keeping customers happy with work that flows smoothly thanks to accessible, real-time data.
3. Enhanced Workforce Productivity
Engineers are more efficient, thanks to the real-time access to job details and the ability to update job statuses instantly through the app. This reduces delays and ensures more jobs are completed each day.
4. Scalability Without Increasing Overheads
Keith pointed out one of the most impressive benefits of Commusoft:
“As we’ve grown, we’ve managed to keep the same number of office staff while adding more engineers. It’s helped us streamline the back office to accommodate growth without increasing costs.”
That’s massive, especially as costs have risen for parts and materials have risen in recent years. It’s also incredibly helpful to know they can maintain their workload, but scale with their current workforce.
5. Actionable Insights
The reporting feature gives Keith and his team the ability to track key metrics like profit and loss, recall rates, and job performance.
“The reporting side is really good for managing the company,” Keith remarked, saying that as a business owner, everything is there at a glance, without the need to navigate messy systems and data is clear, which saves him time and helps him have confidence that the business is on track.
Why Heating Businesses Should Consider Commusoft
Premier Heating Surrey Limited’s journey showcases why Commusoft is the ideal solution for plumbing and heating businesses.
By addressing key pain points and providing tailored functionalities like a mobile app, fleet management, and automated communication, Commusoft empowers businesses to focus on growth and profitability, all while reducing administrative burdens.
If your business struggles with inefficient processes, outdated systems, or time-consuming admin, now’s the time to explore what Commusoft can do for you.
A Word from the Premier Heating Team:
Here’s a little more about what the team at Premier Heating had to say about using Commusoft:
- Keith Richards (Owner): “With Commusoft, we’ve not just saved time but also improved the overall customer experience. The scalability of the platform has allowed us to grow while keeping operational costs low.”
- Leigh Lush (Maintenance Manager): “For any company similar to ours, I would recommend Commusoft. The mobile app is so simple to use, and the system keeps everything organised, from updates to invoicing.”
- Charlotte Wignall (Installations Administrator): “Commusoft has made my job so much easier. Everything is in one place, and it’s incredibly simple to use.”
Discover How Commusoft Can Help Your Business
You can discover more about Premier Heating Surrey Limited by watching their testimonial playlist, here.
Of course, if you’d like to explore more about Commusoft for yourself, you’re in the right place. Take a look at our job management software via the banner below, or take the first step towards transforming your own business by requesting to schedule a free demo call of Commusoft.
We’re confident we can help your business to streamline operations, enhance efficiency, and create happier customers.
