Kitty Dunn has said that technicians are “the heartbeat” at Interstate AC. And that’s why it was heartbreaking when she and her dispatchers felt they couldn’t do more to make their techs’ jobs easier.
“We have 50-plus service technicians. And to keep track of them all day, every day, even with three to five dispatchers, it's a lot,” said Dunn, who recently went from dispatch manager to integration specialist at the commercial HVAC and plumbing shop in Nashville, Tennessee.
Dunn knew that human emotions sometimes got in the way of placing the right tech with the right call. That there wasn’t time for daily check-ins to see how each tech was doing. And that optimizing routes was always a challenge.
“It's really embarrassing when your service manager comes up and says, ‘Why do we have two guys on the same street, across the street from each other?’” Dunn said.
That’s why, when Dunn learned about Dispatch Pro at Pantheon, ServiceTitan’s annual conference for the trades, she was intrigued. The automated dispatching solution could easily solve the above challenges and, most importantly, allow her dispatchers to take better care of the heartbeat of Interstate AC.
But there was skepticism.
“A lot of people were afraid of, ‘It's a computer system. It's going to take over my job,’” Dunn said.
And yet the opposite happened. Here’s why.
Less bias
Every dispatcher—whether they admit it or not—is influenced by human emotions when placing the right tech with the right call.
"Like if Tech A brought me a coffee, he's my favorite today,” Dunn said.
Dispatch Pro removes that human bias.
Its algorithm finds the best technician for every job based on your tech’s skills, recent sales performance, proximity to the job and more—all to maximize profit.
“(Dispatch Pro) helps you track trends with your technicians,” Dunn said. “If Tech B was your all-star, and then you start seeing that he’s not being sent to the all-star jobs, it can give you insight into if there is something going on.
“(On the contrary), maybe you thought Tech D was just a C-level technician. But based on historical data, they're one of your better techs. So Dispatch Pro will bring those quiet technicians who really don't say a lot and go about their jobs into the limelight and recognition.”
Dispatch Pro’s machine learning capabilities and route optimization took a huge responsibility off of Interstate AC’s dispatchers’ plates.
Was it taking their job, just like they had worried? Not at all.
Instead, each dispatcher saw their technician count double to 15 to 18 techs, and their stress levels fall.
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More support
Adding an automated dispatch solution actually brought more of a human component to Interstate AC.
“Our dispatchers have time to focus on the technician, to focus on what preventative maintenance projects we have coming up. It allows them to make sure our customers are taken care of, that we get all the belts ordered, all the filters ordered, which is a help to our technicians,” Dunn said. “Because now our techs don’t have to go to the supply house and look and get those filters. They just come into the shop, pick them up, and they're ready to rock and roll on their calls.”
Thanks to Dispatch Pro, Dunn and her dispatchers no longer worry about having two techs working across the street from each other. They have time to call their techs every day and ask how they're doing and see what else they need.
It has served its ultimate goal: Allow Interstate AC to take better care of the heart of the company.
“We've gotten a lot of great feedback from our technicians,” Dunn said. “Dispatch Pro allows us to focus more on the human aspect and make sure the technicians know that they're noticed, that they're important to us, and that we're here to support them.”
