You serviced that boiler twelve months ago. Did a good job, left the place tidy, customer was happy. A year later their annual reminder came around and they Googled “boiler service near me” and rang whoever came up first. That wasn’t you, because you never sent a reminder. That job, and every job after it, went to someone else.

What this is actually costing you

Work it out on your own numbers. How many boiler services did you do last year? Multiply that by your service rate. Now ask yourself honestly: how many of those customers booked with you again this year without you chasing them? If the answer is fewer than half, you’re leaving a significant slice of predictable, low-effort revenue on the table every single season.

The job itself is the easy part. The customer already trusts you. They dont need convincing. They just need reminding before someone else does it first. That’s the whole problem, and it’s a simple one.

Three ways to handle it

Option one: do it by hand. Every month, open your job sheets or your invoicing app, find everyone who had a service twelve months ago, and send them a text or an email. This works. It costs you nothing but time, roughly thirty to sixty minutes a month if your records are tidy. The failure mode is that it depends entirely on you remembering to do it when you’re busy, which is exactly when you won’t. Most plumbers who try this approach do it twice and then stop.

Option two: an off-the-shelf CRM with reminder features. Tools like Jobber or ServiceM8 have automated follow-up built in. You set a rule once: service completed, reminder fires in eleven months. Real published prices for those platforms start at a few pounds a day depending on your plan - check their sites for current figures. If you’re already using one of them to run your jobs, turn the feature on today. Thats the honest recommendation for most plumbers reading this: the tool you’re paying for can probably already do this, and you haven’t switched it on.

Option three: a custom-built reminder loop. If your records live somewhere awkward - a spreadsheet, an old invoicing system, paper job sheets that get typed up - a built reminder loop can watch that data, work out when each customer is due, and send the message automatically without you touching it. This is worth considering when the volume is high enough that manual work becomes a real drag, or when you want the reminder to do more than send a text: check whether they’ve already rebooked, stop the message going out if they have, log the response, and flag anyone who didn’t reply so you can follow up personally. That last part - stopping a message going out to someone who already booked - is called a deduplication check, a simple test that makes sure the same customer isn’t contacted twice for the same job.

Which path to take

If you’re on Jobber, ServiceM8, or similar: use what you have. Open the settings this week and find the follow-up or reminder section. If it’s there, configure it. You’re done.

If your records are a mess or spread across three places: fix the records first. A reminder system is only as good as the data it reads. Spend a few hours consolidating job history into one place - even a single well-kept spreadsheet beats three half-used apps.

If you’re doing enough volume that the manual work is genuinely eating your time, or you want the loop to be smarter than a basic scheduled email, that’s when a build makes sense. Not before.

What the message should say

Keep it short. Dont try to sell. You’re not a stranger to this customer - write like it.

Hi [Name], it’s [Your name] - I serviced your boiler at [address] last October.
Just a heads-up that it’s coming up for its annual check.
Want me to pencil you in? Usually takes about an hour.
[Your number]

That’s it. No offer, no discount, no pressure. They already know you. The message just has to arrive before someone else’s does.

The one thing that kills reminder campaigns

Sending the reminder to someone who already rebooked. It makes you look disorganised, and it annoys a customer who was already loyal. Whatever system you use - manual, off-the-shelf, or built - make sure it checks for an existing booking before it sends. That single check is the difference between a reminder campaign that builds trust and one that quietly damages it.

Start somewhere

Pull up last September’s job sheets. Count the boiler services. Work out how many of those customers you’ve seen again this year. If the number is lower than you’d like, you already know what to do.

If you want a second pair of eyes on how your current setup handles follow-up - what’s slipping through, where the gaps are - we’re happy to take a look and tell you straight whether a build is worth it or whether your existing tools already have you covered.