Client Spotlight: Dryer Vent Wizard

This month, our Client Spotlight shines on Dryer Vent Wizard, a franchised system that offers dryer vent cleaning, inspection, and installation to homeowners throughout the United States and Canada. With 15,500 dryer fires reported annually, the company provides an important service that most of us might otherwise let fly under the radar.

To spread the word about Dryer Vent Wizard’s important work, Vice President Jason Kapica turned to ModSquad to help with customer engagement on social media channels. We recently spoke with Jason for a closer look into the services provided by the company, and how social media plays a vital role in connecting with their customers.

Tell us about Dryer Vent Wizard. Why do people need your service?

There are multiple reasons, the scariest being to prevent a dryer fire. The home-based dryer was designed to be positioned on an outside wall with a short dryer vent going outside. Now you see laundry rooms in central areas of the house, or upstairs, with longer dryer vent runs. Often the dryer is not producing enough force to clear out the vent. When you’re drying clothes, you’re not just blowing warm air through the vent, you’re getting rid of lint. As the vent gets clogged, the dryer has to work overtime, and you’ll feel the unit getting hotter. Sometimes they just quit drying altogether, or it may take more cycles to dry clothes. There’s a lot of lint inside the dryer as well, if it’s not properly ventilated. It can cause damage; the dryer can overheat or catch on fire. It’s easier to get the vent cleaned every few years.

Efficiency is another reason. If you have to run a dryer two or three times, your electric bill will go up, and your dryer won’t last as long. Then if you buy a new dryer, it will be working just as hard as the old one, because your vent is still clogged. That’s the main reason that people get their vents cleaned. You may also have mold growing, or water may build up and start coming out of the ceilings or walls where the vent is run. With most of the dryers we service, the vent system is not up to code. Many people go to Home Depot and put that foil material behind the dryer, and it’s not up to code. That foil won’t contain a fire; in fact, it will actually help spread it, as it burns easily. There’s supposed to be a rigid metal vent from the dryer into the wall. We replace the foil material with a much safer vent.

When did the company start?

This is our tenth year of franchising, and we started a few years before that, in 2004. Our founder, Dave Lavalle, also founded the Mr. Handyman franchise, which is pretty large. Soon after leaving that, he got involved with dryer vents. We have about 80 locations and 75 franchisees. We go all the way from the East Coast to the West Coast, and up into Canada.

What brought you to ModSquad?

When I joined Dryer Vent Wizard almost four years ago, we had 50 franchisees. We were doing well sales-wise, but there was a huge opportunity to do even more. I saw social as an area that wasn’t being taken advantage of. We did websites and search engine optimization for our franchisees, but I had the idea to do more in social media for them. You see all of these young people, millennials, buying houses now, and they’re all potential customers. They’re all on the Internet, using social media. I knew we wanted to go in that direction. I reached out to see what ModSquad, and a few other companies, could offer. ModSquad was head and shoulders above the others.

Can you share your experiences with ModSquad?

Five or six months into the relationship, I think things are going very well. We love the help that we get with our postings, and we love the reports we get every week. We also like the reputation management we get, the constant monitoring of comments about Dryer Vent Wizard locations on Yelp, Facebook, HomeAdvisor, and so on. It’s very valuable. If you’re not on top of it, there’s the potential for it to negatively affect your business.

ModSquad has been very helpful for our franchisees. When we get a new franchisee, we’ll work together to boost Facebook posts for them to potential customers in their territory. If the franchisees are experiencing a slow week, we boost a post in their area to get more appointments in their calendar. As a result, we’ll see an increase in visits to the franchisees’ websites, and we’ll get calls at our scheduling center to set up appointments. We’ve been very happy with the results that we’ve seen so far.