Are you often left scrambling after a storm, unsure where to send your roofing teams to both provide the most help and maximize sales? With GAF WeatherHub, you'll know exactly where the most hail, wind or tornado damage has been done, helping you act quickly and efficiently, as well as being able to identify warranty customers who may have significant damage.
With this roofing weather data, you can send your teams to specific areas that have been hit the hardest rather than wasting time driving around tracking the storm's path.
Storm Season Challenges
Potential roof damage from storms can include lost shingles, debris, structural damage, and more. All of these can compromise the structural integrity and water tightness of a home's roof, requiring either repair or roof replacement. But roof damage isn't the only problem.
Roofing contractors often face several challenges of their own when storms move across their service area. First, you need to predict where the storm will hit and identify areas with the most significant possibility of receiving damage. Then, you need to distribute your sales teams to contact the most likely leads. The problem is there's no guarantee those areas will be damaged, and you won't know for sure until the storm is over. Meanwhile, crews may be stationed in the wrong place, wasting time getting to the areas that have been hit the hardest.
Once a storm has passed, your teams must identify and manage properties that require urgent repairs versus those with less damage. With several teams actively canvassing and looking for leads, this can be a lot of information to process and organize. In addition, you must always balance keeping your teams safe versus ensuring they can respond quickly once the storm has passed. This can be a challenge, especially with changing weather forecasts and a lack of specific information about conditions on the ground, such as wind speed and hail size.
How GAF WeatherHub Can Help
As an interactive storm-tracking tool, GAF WeatherHub can help both residential and commercial roofing contractors stay one step ahead of Mother Nature. It identifies storm areas, tracks actual conditions, and provides robust roofing weather data, allowing you to prioritize your teams to help customers with the highest likelihood of damage first.
You'll know the wind speed, hail size, and tornado paths for homes and buildings within the storm area, and you can track the results in real time on your phone, tablet, or computer. With the data from WeatherHub, you'll know specifically which neighborhoods, or areas received the most damaging winds and hail so you can focus on those qualified leads, making roofing after a storm easier than ever.
The tool allows you to search the area you're looking at by state, city, or zip code as well as by size of hail, wind speed, or if tornadoes were spotted. You'll see a 13-year history for the area and current weather data. GAF collaborates directly with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Weather Service (NWS), and experts in climatology and meteorology to gather the most accurate storm data, and storm history.
For more detailed data, you can view the weather history of a specific address by downloading a storm report, which you can send to a potential customer or insurance company via text or email. The report provides a breakdown of weather incidents over the past three years, including specific details on wind speed, and hail sizes. Additionally, a hail verification QR code is included, which directs users to NOAA to verify the impact and severity of the hail in that area.
As an added service, GAF Master Elite®, Certified+™ and Certified Contractors* with a WeatherHub subscription will be notified by email when a roof with an active GAF Golden Pledge, Silver Pledge, or System Plus limited warranty is in an area that experienced 60 mph or greater winds and/or 1+ inch size hail. This can help identify warranty customers who may need repairs, so you can reach out to them and offer your services if they're needed.
WeatherHub's national coverage also allows you to see data wherever your crews are working, even if it's out of your normal service region, as there's no additional charge for additional regions.
WeatherHub is available as both an app for phones and tablets as well as a web application for computers. It's easy to sign up and get started, thanks to an intuitive user experience.
Potential Benefits to Your Roofing Business
Contractors can expect to receive several benefits from using GAF WeatherHub, including the following:
- Faster Customer Response. Access detailed wind and hail storm data, to quickly target the most impacted areas and priotitize high-need customers. Saving you time and boosting post storm sales.
- Improved Planning. Receive real-time and three-day future forecasts to strategically position crews and prepare for upcoming weather events.
- Enhanced Market Visibility. Instantly identify storm-damaged properties and get notified on affected warranty customers, allowing you to reach out to them proactively.
Get Ahead of the Storm
To help ensure you're prepared when bad weather strikes, GAF WeatherHub provides hail, wind and tornado data on potentially impacted homes, address-specific storm reports, and regional and statewide weather alerts. Additionally, GAF Master Elite®, Certified+™ and Certified Contractors can receive notifications when addresses with a GAF Golden Pledge®, Silver Pledge®, or System Plus limited warranty are affected by a storm.
GAF continues to be committed to supporting roofing contractors, going beyond just our products, by providing you with the tools and services you need to help grow your business. To sign up or learn more, visit GAF WeatherHub.
*Contractors enrolled in GAF certification programs are not employees or agents of GAF, and GAF does not control or otherwise supervise these independent businesses. Contractors may receive benefits, such as loyalty rewards points and discounts on marketing tools from GAF for participating in the program and offering GAF enhanced warranties, which require the use of a minimum amount of GAF products. Your dealings with a Contractor, and any services they provide to you, are subject to the GAF Contractor Terms of Use.
