Trane and its dealers achieve meaningful growth with Podium Partnership.

While some HVAC dealerships’ sales are cooling down during COVID-19, others are heating up. The difference? A sleek digital transformation.

Trane Technologies offers elite membership for dealers.

Over 20 years ago, Trane Technologies, one of the nation’s largest manufacturers of heating and cooling systems, decided to partner with its dealers through an “elite” program. Dealers who met certain criteria would receive benefits from Trane to boost their online presence. These benefits included online lead generation, social media advertising, and online banners. While the program started strong, after the first few years of the elite membership program, Trane wasn’t pleased with the value they were providing and dealers were having a hard time gauging the true worth of some of the program’s non-quantifiable benefits. Concerned, Trane executives began brainstorming ways to deliver more effective and measurable value to their elite members.

Podium gives dealers tools for a sleek customer experience.

Trane knew that manufacturer sales depended on not only the product itself but also the customer experience. After talking it over, Trane executives scrapped the program’s old benefits and adopted a fresh focus on improving the customer journey.

Most modern consumers expect a sleek digital experience, from the first impression to a done deal. As part of the program revamp, and in effort to help execute the seamless customer journey vision, Trane partnered with Podium and made the solution available to its elite members.

Dealers who chose Podium experienced 8% more overall sales than those who didn’t.

Through Podium, these dealerships began interacting with website visitors, texting customers, boosting their online reviews, and implementing touch-free payments. This provided a smooth and personalized experience unmatched by competitors. In fact, during the COVID-19 outbreak and shutdowns in 2020, Trane dealerships that chose Podium saw an 8% higher increase in sales than those that did not.

Suddenly, Trane’s elite program was providing the type of value they always envisioned.

“Getting Podium through Trane’s elite program has been a huge benefit,” said Gary Nordin, Head of Information Systems at Renaud Electric Heating and Cooling. “We have seen the value immediately. We are glad that Trane sees the value too and made the move to a better process in collecting reviews and growing our business.”

Pandemic or not, our goal is to help companies like Trane improve the experience for their dealers and end customers through a seamless digital experience.

As Katherine Shin, President of Customer Experience at Trane, said, “When customers are happy, the dealer is happy, and when the dealer is happy, the manufacturer is happy.”