Christianson Air Conditioning and Plumbing has been serving central and south Texas since 1950 with one goal in mind: ensuring customers get their money’s worth. This is truly embodied in everything they do, even down to the solutions used by their field technicians.
Recently, the company sought to transition from laptops to tablets to run their service management software on while on repair calls. “I knew that we were needing to stay on a Windows platform, so a Microsoft Surface Go tablet was my product of choice,” said HVAC Service Manager, Kirt Lamontagne.
When out in the field, technicians are faced with everything from dust and dirt to inclement weather, and their devices must withstand these conditions to prevent costly downtime, so Lamontagne knew the Surface devices would require a rugged case. Further, they needed the ability to securely mount the tablets in their service vehicles.
“Although I could find lots of ruggedized cases on the market, I could not find a case that had a vehicle mounting option. Once I found your products, I knew that I had a winning platform. I was able to utilize your Snap Rail mount along with additional components from RAM to modify our existing laptop mounts to accommodate the tablets,” Lamontagne continues.
The company planned to use the Surface Go xCase with integrated MSR to take payments while on service calls, but upon ordering, MobileDemand released the xCase with MagTek tDynamo. The mobile secure card reader authenticator allows for much greater payment flexibility, accepting mobile wallets including Apple Pay and Google Pay, NFC and EMV contactless, EMV contact chip, and magnetic stripe payments. Additionally, as the tDynamo is much more secure, Christianson saves significant credit card processing fees which, in turn saves customers money as well.
“After some additional software development and collaboration between MagTek, MobileDemand and our in-house software developer we were able to push the hardware out into the field,” said Lamontagne. Currently, Christianson has deployed 30 tablets into the hands of their field service technicians, which are used to process approximately 200 service calls a day. Accepting credit card payments at the time of the service provides customers added convenience in choosing how to pay. About 25% of total service calls use the MagTek device for credit card processing with others choose to pay with cash, a check or an invoice.
Christianson Air Conditioning and Plumbing’s deployment of the Surface Go with xCase and tDynamo payment device is just another way they ensure customers get their money’s worth. Protected devices ensure workers can complete their tasks even in harsh conditions, and the payment module adds convenience and prevents imposing processing fees onto customers
“We are absolutely loving our Surface Go setups with the tDynamo card readers. They have greatly increased our efficiency and productivity. I look forward to an expansion of our software and hardware to the other departments in our organization. We couldn’t be happier with the MobileDemand products."