Guided by industry principles and ACCA values, ACCA’s 2024 Service Manager of the Year has a strong history of working hard to foster a culture of excellence that elevates both his team and customer satisfaction. Gerry Den Ouden of REE Mechanical Inc. was named ACCA’s 2024 Service Manager of the Year at ACCA 2024 in Orlando, FL. The Service Manager of the Year Award, sponsored by the Air Conditioning, Heating & Refrigeration News, recognizes a leader in an ACCA member company who goes above and beyond the normal scope of their job as a service manager to make the company more successful.
Den Ouden’s journey reflects dedication and growth from his early beginnings as an apprentice. Sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic, Den Ouden led the company through a restructuring, enhancing its operations and service quality.
After graduating from WyoTech trade school in 2008, Den Ouden was hired as an HVACR apprentice at REE Mechanical.
“On my first day I showed up really early and I asked, ‘What would you guys want me to do?’ And they said, ‘Take out the trash.’ And yeah, it was really humbling,” he says, laughing.
Den Ouden then worked his way up to become a technician, and in 2015 he was promoted to the combined position of assistant service manager, dispatcher, and estimator, wearing multiple hats for the small company. In 2019, Den Ouden was promoted again to service manager after the former one retired.
“Gerry immediately stepped up to the role and amazed me with how the technicians responded with him taking over,” says owner Jonathan Evancik.
“His leadership skills and energy brought a whole new vibe to our culture and our performance as a company has drastically improved since he has taken the role as our service manager.”
In March 2020, REE Mechanical was forced to shut down operations due to the pandemic, as all its commercial customers were big box retail stores that also had to shut down. Unfortunately, the company had to let go all of its technicians, keeping just Evancik, Den Ouden, and the financial controller, Brenda Moffitt. Evancik and Den Ouden took that time to restructure operations to better manage the company’s growth, including creating the positions of a full-time estimator and a full-time preventative maintenance/install coordinator.
About six weeks later, retail stores began to re-open and so did REE Mechanical; however, most of the technicians who had been laid off had found other work. Den Ouden, then the company’s operations manager, went on a “hiring frenzy,” interviewing more than 500 candidates via Zoom calls to yield 10 new technicians.
The restructuring also included the creation of lead technician positions to supervise other technicians in the field.
“Everyone in the company now has a job description that shows exactly what’s expected of them, exactly what their responsibilities are on a daily, weekly and monthly basis, and everyone knows where to go when they have a question,” Den Ouden says.
He credits ACCA for giving them the right principles to restructure the company.
“We have been to a lot of ACCA conferences, and they really teach you how to formally operate a company by creating the structure and the procedures that need to be in place,” Den Ouden says. “We didn’t really have any of that in place before COVID, but we had a lot of time to do that during the shutdown. So that way we pretty much had a different company when we came back.”
Several years ago, Den Ouden also created a separate customer service department with a full-time customer service coordinator. He also implemented changes to the company’s procedures and processes to improve customer service, including developing procedures to enhance communication between the coordinator and the technicians on the progress of all open work orders. As a result, REE Mechanical’s grade improved to an “A” on ServiceChannel.
Evancik credits the improvement to Den Ouden’s approach to service–within all facets of the company’s operations.
“Whether it is staying late to make sure a client receives a quote on emergency repairs, or meeting our field staff out on the jobsite to assure it is being performed to the highest standard that our clients expect–Gerry’s customer service is that of a servant leader,” Evancik says.
“This man has dedicated his life to a service industry and thrives at supporting our team in creating the outstanding service that our clients expect.”
Den Ouden says he is grateful to ACCA for guiding him all along the way.
“It’s a real honor to win this award,” he says. “Getting up on stage at the conference in Orlando with my wife was a really cool experience. It is the people who work at REE Mechanical that make the difference. None of this works without everyone doing their part.”
Do you know a service manager who stands out like Gerry? Nominations for ACCA’s 2025 awards are open until November 30. Click here to nominate a deserving Service Manager for Service Manager of the Year. Awardees will be honored in March at ACCA 2025 in Greater Austin, Texas.
Read this article and more in the July/August 2024 edition of ACCA NOW magazine online.
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