American Leak Detection ‘skyrocketed’ with ServiceTitan

There are large offices and small offices, and offices in between.

Then there is the office where Jennie Nagel works. It has five people, all needing knowledge about almost every aspect of American Leak Detection of Tampa and MWSL Midwest.

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That real-time situation highlights one reason Nagel has been so pleased that her American Leak Detection franchises added ServiceTitan in 2019. She said the cloud-based software for the trades improved the franchise’s efficiency, communications, reliability, transparency and accountability.

“Having the ability to know who’s done what, when and what the intention is for what’s next is massive,” Nagel said in a recent interview.

What elements of ServiceTitan is she happiest about?

“Everything,” Nagel said.

Everything?

“There's no way to quantify the value that the system gives on the day-to-day and all of the different things that it allows us to do,” she said. “Nothing else I have seen, and I've seen a lot, can even begin to touch ServiceTitan. Not to the level of expertise, reliability, ease of use -- even though it can be complicated.

“But once you've learned how to ride the bike, it's smooth sailing and the benefits just keep on adding. I've not had really any negatives that are even worth speaking to because when I do have negatives, the support team is so strong and responsive in navigating what can be done to correct and help.”

She added that Google reviews have jumped from 127 when ALD signed up to 1,300 now. The business has added Better Business Bureau ratings, Facebook ratings and Yelp ratings. From 2020 to ’21 (during a pandemic), ALD increased revenue by 13%, though Nagel conceded it’s not possible to tell what was prompted by the software and what was organic.

In 2016, ALD’s revenue was at $1.6 million. In 2020, it was $1.9 million. In 2021, it was between $2.1 million and $2.2 million.

“ServiceTitan gets a lot of credit,” Nagel said. “On top of us just being super awesome.”

Naturally.

As for specific benefits, Nagel quickly lists them.

“The job-booking feature,” she said. “The call recording -- inbound and outbound call recording. These are call recordings that are actually usable because they're attached to the customer. ‘He said-she said’ is not as big a problem as it used to be.”

Nagel described a recent call with a customer that she said “had my heart pumping out of my chest.” The customer vowed he had never left a voicemail about a job. She asked to confirm his number, then played the recording of the call she had made the day before.

“The man who was yelling at me 37 seconds before started falling all over himself apologizing,” she said.

She went on.

“Being able to see where the techs are at any given day in time,” she said. “The techs being able to record their calls, being able to do their reports in the field through the forms application. My onboarding team worked tirelessly with me so I could do that.

“Our reports … before ServiceTitan, we used to finish a job and we would do our best to get a report out the following day. Sometimes it would be two or three days.

“The technician would email in pictures and descriptions, and then we would copy and save that to a document, then copy and paste it into a Word document, to then save as a PDF, to then send the form. Now it's all in ServiceTitan.

“Our payments are on ServiceTitan. I know I pay a little bit more money than I did with my previous credit card processing, but it's worth it because it's all in one place.”

American Leak Detection of Tampa is a franchise in Hillsborough and Polk counties (ALD awards franchise areas by county) that specializes in finding the cause of plumbing leaks or mystery water leaks, then fixing them. Often, these leaks come from pools. As the company website touts: “Hidden leaks are stressful.”

Nagel’s father-in-law invested in the business in 2001, for his sake and his family’s. For eight years, Nagel’s husband, Steve, ran it with his brother. She joined in 2009 when her brother-in-law passed away. For 10 years, she and Steve did their best using what she called a sophisticated form of Calendar to make and track bookings.

In ’19, the Nagels added ServiceTitan.

“There is definitely a learning curve,” she said, “but after the first few weeks, you start to get your sea legs under you. Then from that point, it just gets better and better and better. Once it was all done, it just skyrocketed.”

She suggests that anyone adding (or thinking of adding) ServiceTitan keep the long view in mind.

“In my experience, it is worth every penny,” she said. “I would pay -- don't you dare charge me this -- but I would pay twice as much as what I'm paying and consider it a value.”