Help Coolsy, my air conditioner isn’t working! What can I do? Coolsy is the best ally of Steinsel-based Cool Concept. An employee like no other, who never sleeps and knows the technical specifications of every air conditioner installed in the country like the back of his hand--in almost one out of two households, according to Pierre Padilla, CEO of the air conditioning and heat pump company, which was set up in 1999 and employs 60 people.
Since December, the company has been providing its private customers with this new interactive tool, which takes the form of an AI-powered chatbot. “This is something that didn’t exist in our field. With the ‘Amazon effect,’ people want everything straight away, and we’re in a world where there are online tutorials for almost everything, but not in the field of refrigeration. So this is an additional service that we offer to our private customers, but which also serves as a support for our employees,” explains the CEO of Cool Concept.
To create it, the company worked with a specialist agency based in Metz, Lorweb, to develop a tailor-made tool. “It took us three months. It’s basically the same model as a chat GPT [generative pre-training transformer], but we fed it with more than 50 GB of technical documentation relating to the equipment we install,” adds Padilla, who estimates the investment at around €50,000.
It’s not an insignificant sum for a small company, but it is one that should enable them to improve efficiency and reduce certain costs. “We were often called out for small jobs, small breakdowns that could easily be resolved: changing batteries, turning on a circuit-breaker, etc. For us, this meant small bills and small amounts, but it also meant sending out a technician who could be busy elsewhere, with a vehicle that needed to be fuelled, that would be on the road and produce emissions. If the problem cannot be solved, the system generates a ticket that is sent to us to trigger an intervention. The aim was therefore to improve efficiency, and this has enabled us to reduce the number of interventions by 20%. This means that we intervene where we feel there is added value,” explains the boss.
Today, Coolsy is able to answer most technical questions. It is still sometimes a little slow, but improvements are underway. “The application will evolve in a very short time. Today, customers have to write to ask their questions. Soon, they will be able to do so directly by speaking, from their smartphone. We’ve also set up a Youtube channel, as part of the same approach, to help private customers with small repairs.”
But private customers are far from being Cool Concept’s only clients. As well as air conditioning and refrigeration systems such as cold rooms, the company also installs heat pumps and solar panels for customers in a variety of sectors in addition to private customers: restaurants, hospitals, healthcare establishments and server rooms. For these customers, on-site intervention by a technician remains the norm. “You have to understand that when a restaurant owner calls us with a problem, we have to be very reactive, because if their cold room breaks down, their losses can be colossal,” says Padilla.
A fluctuating market
Today, Cool Concept provides around 2,000 services a year, and its portfolio of both professional and private customers helps it to stay on course in a market that is subject to many constraints and ups and downs. “We’re doing more and more work on heat pumps, because the government is encouraging their installation in new buildings. But 2024 wasn’t a very good year because the construction sector was at a standstill. We’re lucky that we also have private individuals. We always try not to be more than 3% dependent on any one customer in our business. But we still lost almost €200,000 in sales,” says Padilla.
Today, with the rise in electricity prices, we can feel that people are a little cold!
The other factor that has a major influence on Cool Concept’s business is energy prices and government subsidies. “Sometimes people are a bit disappointed. They make a lot of requests, but they don’t always turn into orders because they think they’ll get more money. For heat pumps, the government covers 50%. Subsidies were a trigger at the beginning. But today, with the rise in electricity prices, we feel that people are a little cold!” Customers are also adapting to the economic climate. When gas prices were soaring, many customers used their reversible air conditioning to heat their homes.
As well as air conditioning technology, which Pierre Padilla believes has evolved considerably over the last ten years, aesthetics are also an increasingly important criterion for his customers. For example, some air conditioners have a frame with an illustration, and some of the most modern have connected screens displaying data such as the weather. Photo: Maëlle Hamma/Maison Moderne
The company is also facing new European regulations on refrigerants, which are considered to be partly responsible for global warming. In stages until 2030, many types of fluid will gradually be banned, leaving just one type. “Air conditioning is going to become more and more expensive, but for the moment it’s complicated for us to anticipate. I don’t think it's viable, and the rules will have to be standardised worldwide, because if I can’t buy a gas refill in Europe but I can use an air conditioner that comes from Japan with the same gas already in it, that’s pretty absurd,” laments Padilla.
A question of values
Aware that the equipment it sells is also helping to pollute the planet, the company says it is taking steps to compensate, with an annual investment plan of €50,000 that includes planting a tree for every air conditioning unit installed. “We have air conditioning units that are increasingly efficient. Technology has come a long way in ten years. For example, before, for every 1,000KW of electricity consumed, we had an output of 1 to 2KW of cooling or heating. Today, we can achieve 5KW for the same amount of electricity consumed. Gases are also less polluting. But we know that air conditioning always has an environmental impact, so we try to be as neutral as possible. It’s part of our internal values charter,” insists the CEO.
The company also cultivates its values to overcome a difficulty that it is not alone in experiencing: recruitment. “Refrigeration engineers are the hardest to find. We’re trying to be an attractive company, not just in terms of salary, but also in terms of quality of life in the workplace, a relationship of trust, annual interviews, activities and so on.”
This article was originally published in .