Working on mechanical systems inside or outside a customer's home presents its own set of challenges, from easing anxiety over allowing a stranger on-premise to providing complete customer satisfaction for a job well done.
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Whether you're a small business or a large enterprise, a good customer experience leaves consumers feeling heard, valued, and appreciated. It also keeps them, and other potential customers, coming back for more—essentially securing future work with improved customer retention and new job leads for your salesforce.
Can you remember your last great customer experience with a home service technician? What made it so awesome? Did the company make scheduling an appointment online convenient with self-service portals? Did they arrive quickly to do the job, answer your questions with real knowledge and expertise, and engage in friendly customer interactions?
When describing the best customer experience, recent trends indicate consumers want:
Speed
Convenience
Consistency
Friendliness
Human touch
Developing loyal customer relationships starts with building a solid team of professionals equipped with the right customer data, training, and tools. Investing in the right automation tools, like ServiceTitan’s CRM software, helps your home services team streamline its overall workflow and efficiency to create better customer service solutions.
Learn how to automate your company's processes, but still provide a real-time personal touch, with these 9 ways to create a better customer experience from other skilled contractors in the trades.
1. Invest in customer support software
Providing the best customer experience can directly affect your home service company's bottom line, especially when customers share good reviews (or bad) on social media.
Today's consumers go online to research a local business before hiring, so even a one-star rating difference between you and a competitor can result in either winning new customers or losing business.
According to a consumer survey by PwC, a professional services network, blending automation with a human touch hits the right sweet spot when it eases the customer experience with minimal frustration. The survey also found:
73% of all people point to customer experience as an important factor in their purchasing decisions. Yet, only 49% of U.S. consumers say companies provide a good customer experience today.
43% of all consumers would pay more for greater convenience
42% would pay more for a friendly, welcoming experience.
65% of U.S. consumers find a positive experience with a brand to be more influential than great advertising.
ServiceTitan's mobile app allows companies to generate more reviews automatically by texting a direct link to customers as soon as you finish the job. With Marketing Pro Reputation, an add-on software solution, you can manage consistent messaging on all social media listings in one simple dashboard.
Mike Losoya III, integration manager of Mike’s Plumbing and Electric in McAllen, Texas, says ServiceTitan helped him boost the company's reputation, SEO, and online authority.
“We went from under 100 reviews across all social media pages and now we're up to nearly 400, just by integrating our social media accounts with ServiceTitan,” Losoya says.
2. Use messaging to ease the customer experience
Customers view service technicians with skepticism for a number of reasons, says Joe Cunningham, a lifelong HVAC tradesman and founder of the Technical Arts Center in Houston. Apprehension typically starts as soon as the tech steps out of his truck.
Most home services customers know little about the trades, he says, and many feel apprehensive about allowing a stranger in the home or have experienced poor service with previous technicians.
“They can make the customer feel safe or not safe," Cunningham says. "They can make them feel willing to believe and trust, or not willing to believe or trust.”
To overcome customer apprehension, ServiceTitan’s mobile app eases communication via SMS text messages, online chat, and email to keep customers informed at every stage of the job. The customer portal allows them to schedule jobs, confirm appointments, review service calls, access invoice history, and submit online payments—without ever picking up the phone.
Through ServiceTitan’s automated scheduling software, customers receive notifications when a tech heads their way, and they can track tech arrival time with GPS mapping. They can also receive a tech bio and picture, so they know who’s coming to their house.
“It really makes it much more personable, so when the tech gets to the door, we can help build that long-term customer, because the relationship already started before they even show up,” says Jay Kline, operations manager at Penguin Air & Home Services in Arizona.
3. Show empathy to improve customer engagement
While a particular service repair may be routine for your service tech, it may be life-disrupting for a customer who’s never experienced the mechanical issue. Whatever you do, don't downplay or dismiss the customer's concerns, on the phone or in person.
“When you show up, if you don’t act like you really care, the customers aren’t going to care about you, because they want to know if you're empathetic with their situation,” Cunningham says.
They want to be heard, valued, and appreciated—the true hallmarks of a positive customer experience. When they feel valued and appreciated, Cunningham says they're more likely to accept your positions, ideas, and solutions for the problem at hand.
ServiceTitan's best customer experience software equips service techs with a robust database, so they can view complete customer information before arriving on the job site. Knowing the customer's name and job history helps techs and CSRs personalize the customer experience, provide better customer service, generate more business via customer referrals, and build a strong network of online reviews.
“We don’t want our customers to feel like we’re too big to care," agrees Kline, who used ServiceTitan's CRM platform to grow Penguin Air, while making customer service its top priority.
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4. Build your knowledge base with digital aids
As mentioned previously, most homeowners know very little about how their HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and other mechanical systems work. They contact your service company to find a solution to a problem, and it's up to your technicians and support team to clearly communicate the right options.
"Clients want to deal with professionals who show concern, but speak with certainty and clarity, and are able to communicate with visual aids,” Cunningham says.
People feel comfortable looking at visual descriptions, photos, and diagrams on a simple service platform because it helps them clearly understand the problem. Through improved customer communication, they begin to understand how this problem affects their daily lives, the consequences of putting off the repair, and possible solutions that fit their budget.
Utilizing ServiceTitan's mobile app, techs arrive prepared with full access to a consistent knowledge base—such as job details, work orders, inspection checklists, customer history, notes, previous estimates, and even pictures—to share with the customer and explain the proper solution.
Customers receive the on-demand service they've come to expect, and the all-in-onesoftware solution provides digital forms and templates to guide techs as they create detailed estimates, professional invoices, or mobile sales presentations.
5. Ease customer concerns about pricing
Only about 10% of customers truly want to know the price before they hire you, according to a recent Service Nation Alliance survey on what factors into customers’ decision-making when choosing a home services company.
Most customers simply want more information that leads them to finding a possible solution for their problem, says Angie Snow, ServiceTitan’s Director of Customer and Product Training.
“They want you to ask questions," Snow says. "They want you to find out more about the situation.”
Asking a few simple questions not only helps your customer service team learn more about the problem and offer a possible solution, it also helps to build trust with the customer. You can then build value and give pricing by sending a certified, knowledgeable technician to implement the best solution.
Utilizing ServiceTitan's Pricebook and Mobile Estimates, your service techs can sell with confidence in the field and increase average ticketing, which grows your bottom line.
6. Inspect the whole system when servicing customers
Cunningham says home service customers typically want to save money, time, and reduce hassle—and they want a company to offer options for achieving all three.
When field service techs fail to inspect the entire mechanical system when making a service call or providing an estimate, they miss an opportunity to build trust with customers and provide an overall better service experience. Customers also might blame you later when something else goes wrong and question why you didn’t discuss the issue during your initial visit.
“We can't give them options to solve problems if we don't know what the problems are,” Cunningham says.
Kline of Penguin Air says the functionality of ServiceTitan's mobile app, with its customizable checklist templates, pricebook options, and correlating pictures, empowers his team to build an awesome customer experience every time and avoid negative customer issues.
“We’re really big on that customer experience and really being transparent with the customer as to what options they’re getting, what sales they’re getting," Kline says.
7. Effectively manage memberships to reduce churn
The best customer service software helps you tailor maintenance contracts and service agreements to each customer, so recurring appointments never get missed and customer feedback remains positive, even during busy seasons.
With a customer experience management solution in the palm of their hands, techs can even offer automatic memberships or generate estimates to renew an expiring membership, right on site with their smartphone or mobile tablet.
ServiceTitan software also gives your techs the ability to customize additional monthly charges, add opt-ins for extra maintenance tasks, offer membership upgrades for additional services, and more.
Plan recurring services to leverage memberships and maintenance contracts for profitability. Advanced features available in ServiceTitan's field management software lets technicians review open estimates, equipment service histories, and all notes to identify new sales opportunities.
8. Use technology to improve the human touch
In today’s e-commerce world, technology plays a role in nearly every action we take as a consumer—from ordering takeout and attending company Zoom meetings to scheduling vaccine appointments and hiring a plumber.
Every customer communication, interaction, and service call leaves a trail of insightful data that companies can use to grow their business and provide better customer experiences. Modern CRM platforms—such as Sales Force, Zoho, and ServiceTitan—utilize cloud-based technology, which enables users to access the customer management software remotely on mobile devices.
Thousands of residential and commercial field service companies choose ServiceTitan CRM software because it’s easy to use, improves communication, streamlines and automates customer touchpoints, increases tech efficiency, and offers mobile functionality via smartphone or tablet.
Rebecca Tenorio, Dispatcher and Client HAPPYness Representative for The Happy Outlet in Carson City, Nevada, utilizes ServiceTitan software to boost communication with customers by automating courtesy calls before and after a service, and also texting customers so they can track their technician and get a precise arrival time.
“It makes it so convenient for scheduling afternoon appointments for our clients who need to leave work to meet us at their house,” Tenorio says. “They appreciate being able to text and communicate with us.”
9. Go the extra mile to deliver great customer service
How does your call center greet and interact with customers? Do they immediately connect the customer's phone number with a name, detailed job history, and previous work orders, so they can add a personal touch to the conversation?
Do they go out of their way to assist customers when routing a service tech to their home? Or do they rely on chatbots to convince new customers to book a job?
What about your service technicians? Do you monitor your company's metrics to track the number of techs who earn five-star reviews for delivering great customer service on the job site? Do you offer tech training on body language and communication skills as part of the onboarding process for your service management company?
Home services customers rave about technicians and CSRs who go the extra mile, or what HVAC company owner Travis Ringe refers to as "second-mile service."
“It's looking for ways to go above and beyond the call," Ringe advises. "It could be as easy and cliché as bringing up the trash can or the newspaper.”
Ringe's company in Arizona even offers customers “ladder service,” as part of its ticket-management process for maintenance memberships.
“Most of the homes in our area have 12-foot ceilings and we have a large population of retirees…retirees and 10-foot ladders don't typically mix very well,” he says. “We'll use our ladders to change smoke detector batteries, air filters, light bulbs, anything like that, and that's really gone a long way, and driven a lot of really happy customers and reviews.”
ServiceTitan Software
ServiceTitan is a comprehensive software solution built specifically to help service companies streamline their operations, boost revenue, and substantially elevate the trajectory of their business. Our comprehensive, cloud-based platform is used by thousands of electrical, HVAC, plumbing, garage door, and chimney sweep shops across the country—and has increased their revenue by an average of 25% in just their first year with us.
