Althoff Industries’ success with ServiceTitan is making noise around its offices. Literally.

Blake Wiltshire was mid-thought, sitting in his office at Althoff Industries in Crystal Lake, Illinois, where he runs residential services at the plumbing, HVAC and electrical company. He paused.

“Did you hear that?” he said.

In the background, a faint ringing of a gong could be heard, which only meant one thing this time of year: It was membership month.

“Every time we sell a membership one of the team members gets to bang the gong,” Wiltshire explained.

And this year, Wiltshire thinks the gong has rung more frequently than previous years. He credits much of that to ServiceTitan’s Marketing Pro. The all-in-one marketing automation solution for the trades allows him to create audiences based on customer information that Althoff already has in ServiceTitan—like unsold estimates, aging equipment, and, you guessed it, memberships that are expiring.

“We get really good responses to that because we send an email out to both members and then a slightly different verbiage one to nonmembers,” Wiltshire said. “Because of ServiceTitan, we have evolved our memberships and upgraded the amount of benefits we have. (The software) gives us clearer visibility into expiring and renewing memberships. It just makes that whole process simpler.”

Making things simpler and providing a great customer experience were two of the main reasons why, two years ago, Wiltshire campaigned for Althoff's ownership to join ServiceTitan. Since then, the results speak for themselves. After going live with the software in July 2021, Wiltshire’s team has gone from $8.5 million in revenue to $11.4 million in 2022. This year, their goal is $14.6 million in revenue.

“There it was again! The gong! It's almost like ‘The Hunger Games’ except somebody didn't die,” Wiltshire laughed. “We sold another membership!”

» Want to grow your business? Click here to get a demo.

Fit for a union shop

There’s an empty champagne bottle on a shelf in Wiltshire’s office. It was originally popped on July 1, 2021, to celebrate the day that Althoff’s residential unit went live with ServiceTitan.

“Anybody that's ever done the onboarding process and gone from one software to another—it's a long, lengthy process,” Wiltshire said.

For years, Wiltshire had petitioned Althoff’s ownership to make the switch from its antiquated server-based CRM system to a cloud-based solution. But Althoff is a union contractor. That meant a cloud-based software had to satisfy union requirements, which was a very important point to consider.

According to Wiltshire, ServiceTitan has worked “beautifully” in that regard.

“There may be a lot of union contractors out there who think that maybe they won't be able to track some of the things, the reporting and stuff, that you have to do for union purposes,” Wiltshire said. “We're able to do all the reports and satisfy all those requirements that we're supposed to. And honestly, the technicians find it better because they're clocking in and out based on when they're getting to the jobs and leaving the jobs.”

Software that ensures a premium brand 

Wiltshire loves that ServiceTitan is so user-friendly and that it has dramatically cut down on how much paper they use. But most important, there’s “about a million ways that ServiceTitan is just better for the customers,” Wiltshire said. Here are a few.

• Customer portal: It all starts with a phone call, and Wiltshire loves that each customer has their own portal. “Their information pops up, and it’s easy for our CSRs to quickly identify who they’re talking to, what plan they have, and look at open invoices,” Wiltshire said.

• Marketing Pro: Even though Wiltshire only uses the email marketing function of Marketing Pro, he loves it. “We put lots of different emails together. Email campaigns, drip campaigns, targeted campaigns. You can segment your customers and cross-sell,” Wiltshire said. “We've got some cross-promotions. We got all kinds of things set up in Marketing Pro. The best part is it's dynamic. It updates on its own. You set it and forget it.”

• Dispatch tools: A lot has changed since Wiltshire was on the dispatch team. “I tell our dispatchers, ‘You guys have so many tools now. I had to look at paper maps and try to figure things out.’” Now with ServiceTitan’s GPS tools, it’s easy for the dispatch team to see where their techs are, and it’s easy for the techs to navigate to their appointments to ensure prompt arrival. Althoff also receives compliments about the SMS communication and technician profiles they send to customers.

“These are just things that you expect today,” Wiltshire said. “That was one of my sales pitches to Althoff’s owners (a couple of years ago): ‘We're a premium brand in our market, we present ourselves that way. Our processes and our software and the things that we're doing need to be a premium brand, too.’”

The guinea pigs

Admittedly, the first six months to a year on ServiceTitan was “just hectic” when it came to onboarding and adjusting to the software, Wiltshire explained.

But now that they’re in year two, it’s a different story.

“The second year has just been fun,” he said.

Wiltshire is experimenting with new tools such as inventory management and the barcode scanner. Recently, his team rolled out a loyalty rewards points program for its customers, which has been a resounding success.

On top of that, Wiltshire said that the onboarding process for CSRs and dispatch has been painless compared to their old software.

Interestingly enough, Althoff isn’t just a residential company. It also features a commercial unit and an industrial unit. Each of those units still use the old server-based CRM software that Wiltshire had petitioned to leave for years. In a way, it feels like his residential team has been the guinea pig testing the waters with ServiceTitan.

“I want our success to be the loudest voice,” Wiltshire said. “I think it's starting to be heard.”

And so is the gong.