Emerald Heat & Air fixes the system, then explains it
Sarah Hiler and Emi Alsobrook started the Norman heating and air company in 2010 with one truck, and they made teaching customers about their equipment part of the job.
Norman, OK
The trouble was in the attic. A first-time customer called Emerald Heat & Air about her air conditioning, and two technicians, Bobby Bergen and Bree Logsdon, came out with an apprentice. They traced the problem to a plugged drain on the indoor unit up there and had it fixed in a little over an hour, she wrote in a Google review.
That is everyday work for this Norman, Oklahoma, heating and air company. Customers also write about something the owners planned from the start: they tend to come away understanding their own equipment better than they did before the van pulled up.
Sarah Hiler, who owns the company with Emi Alsobrook, put the idea simply in a line the company quotes on its website: it helps customers more to explain how their air conditioning works than to just fix it and hand them a bill.
Hiler and Alsobrook founded Emerald in 2010. According to the history the company publishes, it began with a single truck and an office in a home. In 2018 it moved into a larger office and warehouse on West Acres Street, where it still works. Hiler is the contractor of record, and the business holds an Oklahoma mechanical license. Its vans carry a pun on the company name: “Where we treat you like a gem.”
The operation is small. “We are a small army of four,” says Kandace, the office manager. Customers tend to know the technicians by name, and the two who come up most in reviews are Bergen and Logsdon. Both carry the company title “comfort advocate,” and Logsdon is a licensed journeyman. One customer wrote that Logsdon does not try to upsell.
Kandace puts the result simply. “We have customers for life,” she says.
The company keeps a 24-hour emergency line. One customer’s air conditioner quit on a Friday night, and a technician was at the house by noon Saturday.
Emerald works in homes and light commercial buildings, and Kandace has a favorite. “If you’re asking me as office manager, I would say commercial all day,” she says. Many commercial buildings run on packaged units, which hold the whole system in one cabinet. When a new unit has the same footprint as the old one, the swap goes fast. “If you can find the exact same footprint, then it really is one up, one down,” she says.
The company’s work stays close to heating and cooling, plus indoor air quality and dryer vent cleaning. Kandace thinks that focus matters. “In any trade, if you are not focused enough on one or two trades, then things get lost in translation,” she says.
The teaching shows up on ordinary calls. The company promises on its website to teach customers about their systems while it lays out their options, and reviewers describe what that looks like. One homeowner wrote that the technician showed her a few things she could do herself in the future.
A customer who has used Emerald for several years wrote that the crew always explains what it is doing and passes along tips on saving money or caring for the equipment. Every time they come out to the house, she wrote, she learns something new.