Feel the Love and Feel the Warmth (Podcast)

In this podcast, John Moroney from Jones Services talks about the Feel the Love, Feel the Warmth campaign at Jones Services. He talks about the company’s commitment to providing a “wow” experience to customers, employees, and community members.

John Maher: Hi, I’m John Maher. I’m here today with John Moroney, general manager of Jones Services, a service company in Goshen, New York with a focus on ductless heating and cooling systems. Today we are talking about the Feel The Love and Feel the Warmth campaigns. Welcome, John.

John Moroney: Thank you, John. Thank you for having me.

Jones Service’s Feel the Love Campaign

John Maher: Sure. So John, tell me a little bit about the Feel The Love campaign that Jones Services ran and what it is and why you started it.

John Moroney: Sure. As a Lennox dealer, we participated in the Lennox National Feel the Love contest, which is a great way for us to give back to the community. Lennox donated the equipment and we donated our sweat equity. We did the install and we provided all the parts and such. We just had a lot of fun participating in this.

This contest is about giving back to your community. We polled our customers and our employees and said, “Find somebody that was there for the community and now it’s their turn for us to be there for them.” We got… It must have been dozens if not 100 really good applicants. There are a lot of good people here in Orange County and the surrounding counties, North Jersey and Dutchess County and Ulster and Sullivan, and even in Pike, PA we had so many great stories.

But one stood out in particular. It was a 9/11 first responder firefighter. The day that the towers got hit, he jumped in the truck and he went to the Twin Towers where they were conducting rescues of his fellow firefighters and the misfortunate people that were in the towers at that day. He spent the next several days there, only to then go back to a hospital where his wife gave birth to his firstborn. Then shortly after that, he returned to be with his firefighters and he told the great story. He was down in the 9/11 area and they were conducting the rescue at the time to see if there were any more survivors. Mayor Giuliani was there. He pulled the mayor aside and said, “I have some good news.” Mayor Giuliani said, “I could really use some good news there.”

He goes, “Life is going on. I just gave birth to my first son.” That was such a heart tug to hear what this man had done. To make the story even better, why he was the no-brainer choice for our very first Feel of Love campaign, his wife is a registered nurse. She was here for our community during this whole COVID pandemic. She was working in the hospitals to make sure we were safe and protected and were treated when necessary. What a great couple to be the winner.

We chose them based upon the nominations. Then we spent a Saturday at their home installing this brand new top of the line Lennox system, and he barbecued hotdogs for all of us. He was just a great guy. It was a great experience.

Lennox System Installed During the Campaign

John Maher: What was the Lennox system that you installed? Is that a furnace that you installed for the house or?

John Moroney: It was an air conditioning, the highest end condenser outside and the air handler inside, and we installed it to duct work that we-

John Maher: Okay. So duct to Ducane end air conditioner?

John Moroney: Yeah.

Feel the Warmth Campaign

John Maher: Now you’re running a new campaign called Feel the Warmth. Tell me a little bit about that one.

John Moroney: We were so excited. We had so much fun doing this. At Jones, we don’t just want to be the contractor of choice that people will want to use us for heating, air conditioning, plumbing, electrical, take care of their sewer if they get it backed up, put a generator in, condition their water if they need it. We’re there and we’re very focused on our customers.

Our first core value is to provide that wow customer service experience. But we also found that it’s equally important, in fact, it’s probably more important that we also provide an outstanding wow experience for our employees as well. What we found was that… We usually do about one event a month or every other month. We took the company to see Carlos Santana last year, and that was exciting. We actually had a few extra tickets and we brought some customers with us. We had a fishing trip. But the number one event that our employees attended was that Feel The Love event that we had.

We had about half the office show up barbecuing in our customer’s driveway and made it a real celebration as we were installing this equipment. We want to do more of this. We just had such a great time that we said we have to find another way to give back. We just can’t wait once a year for the Lennox Feel The Love. I was speaking to one of our other strategic partners, Mitsubishi, and I said, “Why can’t we do something with Mitsubishi?” They said they would love to.

They don’t have a national campaign or anything set up, but Lennox did it. Such a nice job teaching us what to do, we just replicated it. We said, “Okay. Instead of a Lennox system, we’re going to do a Mitsubishi system and we’ll find a worthy customer and we’ll have a party in their house and we’ll give them a brand new Mitsubishi system donated from Mitsubishi. The parts are being donated from Meier Supply who sells to Mitsubishi. It’s a whole supply chain party in honor of another worthy customer.”

This time we found a firefighter, another first responder firefighter who was there for many years. He does volunteer work at Humane Society and he drives now, he’s retired, he drives a bus for children with disabilities so that they can get an education. He was another no-brainer. In fact, it’s next Saturday. We’re going to be installing a Mitsubishi system in his house and he’s on an oil heating system.

This is great because the Mitsubishi Hyperheat, they eliminate the need to have an oil heating system. This is the gift that keeps giving because it’s not only a one-time freebie install and then you’re comfortable, but he’ll be saving money month after month, in the winter, in the fall, and even the early spring. When you have the heating system on, he’s not burning, it was on an oil system, he’s not having to burn oil anymore.

We’re really excited. These are both great campaigns and we just want to do more of this. We wound up changing our mission statement. Our mission statement used to be very customer focused and it still is, but we changed it and we simplified it. Our first core value is to provide a wow customer service experience. Now our mission is to provide wow experiences for customers, community, and our employees. Just that simple statement says everything that we’re all about.

We want to take care of our customers. The best way to take care of your customers is to first take care of your employees. You have employees showing up every day feeling like they’re making a difference, and they are. They’re making a difference in our customer’s lives. It becomes more enjoyable, and if they’re in the right state of mind, then they’re passing on that enthusiasm and that excitement and that willingness to serve our customers.

I don’t think we could really truly live our mission of providing a wow experience for our customers if our employees weren’t fully engaged and excited about coming to Jones every day. Then to put the cherry on top of the sundae is now we’ve expanded it yet again and we want to be good corporate citizens. When we’re finding these ways to give back to our community, we do regular donations when we’re doing contests to Humane Societies to the Middletown Soup Kitchen, and now we’re doing these other activities like installing Lennox systems, installing mini split systems from Mitsubishi.

It just makes it that much more exciting and that much more fun to show up every day here at Jones Services and knowing we truly are making a difference in our customers lives and our employees lives. Even just in the community, just being that good corporate citizen.

How to Get Involved With Future Campaigns

John Maher: So when do you think that you’re going to be doing this again and how can people from the community get involved if they can?

John Moroney: We’re going to be doing some little stuff during the year and we are definitely doing two major events this year. We’ll be doing the Feel The Love with Lennox come the fall again, and then in 2024 we might even start doing this quarterly rather than semi-annually, because we just love doing it. It’s part of our DNA now, and it just feels good. The employees, it’s such a kick to do this for somebody and then to do it as an entire company.

Everyone in the office, we don’t get to go out each day to nine, 10, 11 installs that we got going on and celebrate with every single customer. It’s a way then to include everyone and get to see firsthand the quality of the work that our people do.

John Maher: Like you said, it’s good for the community and it’s also good for your employees as well. They feel like they’re working for a good company that cares, and that gives back to the community.

John Moroney: Yes. Because they are. We get excited about doing that. It’s genuine.

Learn More About Future Feel the Love, Feel the Warmth Events

John Maher: So how can people learn more about the Feel The Love and Feel the Warmth campaigns?

John Moroney: That’s great. It’s on our website and you would just jonesservices.com and under the about us, you would find… What are we calling it? The community involvement page. It keeps getting bigger. We’ll have a lot more pictures after we do this Feel the Warmth installation come next Saturday.

John Maher: All right. Well that’s really great information, John. Thanks again for speaking with me today.

John Moroney: Thank you, John.

John Maher: For more information, you can visit the website at jonesservices.com or call 845-294-1010.