Early adopter Frank Gay Services has watched ServiceTitan grow into commercial

Commercial work for a government entity brings its own special set of challenges. Consider the Orange County (Fla.) School System, one of Frank Gay Commercial’s better customers.

“(The school system wants) all the line items (billed) as it is on the contracts,“ said Ryan Gay, Director of Business Development for Frank Gay Services, which includes Frank Gay Commercial. “That could be as granular as how much sod you’re putting down. With ServiceTitan, you can do that in units.”

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Gay understands what ServiceTitan provides as well as anyone. The central Florida business has been with ServiceTitan since early 2020, which was right about the time the cloud-based software for the trades first started to support commercial businesses.

“We have grown,” Gay said, “as ServiceTitan has grown into commercial adaptations,” 

Gay himself has contributed to that growth. He’s a member of ServiceTitan’s product advisory group as a commercial specialist, which means he beta tests all the new features. In that work, Gay has provided input and insight into the ways ServiceTitan can handle large and complex commercial projects.

“We’ve really been able to grow, and we leverage ServiceTitan to help us with that,” Gay said “And it’s just great. We can really get information to a granular level.”

Frank Gay Services made its commercial and residential units separate entities in 2020.  The commercial territory comprises half of Florida, from Daytona Beach on the East Coast to Tampa, Sarasota and Fort Myers on the West. Its largest customer is Publix, the grocery store.

“Since we've been on ServiceTitan, we've totally seen customer retention go up. And not only that, but we're adding on to our current base as well,” he said.

The proof is in the numbers. Frank Gay was at about $10 million in the summer of 2019. Less than three years later, it’s at $25 million.

“That’s just huge,” Gay said. “And I equate a lot of that to ServiceTitan because it’s really given us a handle on the business. … There’s so many examples of how (ServiceTitan) has benefitted us.”

Among them: Customer-specific pricing, one of the newer features on the commercial side.

“That's helped us a lot,” Gay said. “Before, we had to have different categories in the price book for each customer, and then list out labor, trip charge. Sometimes even more than that.”

The company also has been able to better track its team.

“We run idle time reports every week,” Gay said. “ServiceTitan gives us that data, and we can see how much members of our team are not working.”

Not to spy, mind you. Gay understands that everyone needs some down time. But to maximize efficiencies and help team members be at their best, which helps the business.

“We want to be below 5% idle time, so our managers are always on top of our technicians on keeping on the job,’ Gay said. “And once they are above that threshold, then the manager will talk to them, and ask what’s going on?”

An office activities report built through ServiceTitan also shows how everyone is performing internally.

“That’s just hugely beneficial,” he said. “And then I get report requests all the time from our sales team -- run me a report on their top customers this year, the last six months. And we can send out thank-you cards to them. That is a great way to keep the existing business that you have.”

Other examples:

• Projects. ServiceTitan’s commercial applications have grown from limited capability to being able to handle multi-day jobs. “We can see how much work has been paid into (a project) so far, what the percentage of completion is, and also our WIP reporting for work in progress,” Gay said. “We see how much revenue we’ve brought in to have our accounting right.”

• Forms. Gay especially appreciates the ability to detail needs. “You can opt in for different things, and the stuff you don’t need you can have removed,” he said.

• Marketing Pro for Commercial. Gay said understands that much of Marketing Pro is geared to residential, but he and Frank Gay have found ways to make it work for their benefit. Sending follow-up emails on unsold estimates happens automatically through ServiceTItan. “That keeps the customer engaged, and we get a lot more closed estimates from that,” he said. “We love that too. And we send out the normal emails for different verticals. We tag each of our customer base with the industry types. We tag restaurants, senior living facilities, retail, hotels, go all the way down the list. And then we can build audiences based off that, and build content around that so we can target just them.”

• Improved customer relations. Reports that show before and after photos of jobs are popular, as is a description on the invoice of the exact work completed along with a breakdown of tasks. “(Customers) can see what we did and how much they were charged,” Gay said. “There’s also a customer portal that we utilize, and they can go right in and pay their bills and see what they’ve paid in the past. They really love that.”  Improved cash flow is a byproduct of that portal.

• Scheduling. The aggregate of all information provides a tight window when work will be done as opposed to a general time frame.

• Tracking techs. Reports used as a coaching tool improves productivity. “You can see whose average tickets are down,” Gay said. “You can see their length of time on the job. Are they taking too long? Is it above average? Their idle time as well, which we talked about. You can also see their technician leads. What leads are they getting? How much of those are closing? So yeah, there's just a lot of great data there we can utilize.”

• The overall ServiceTitan support community, which includes the Facebook group and Titan Exchange. That open communication has “really helped every aspect of our business,” he said.

Gay understands the software can and will always improve. But he knows well what ServiceTitan has already provided.

“In every part of the business,’ he said, “there’s been benefits that have helped us.”