Todd Ricks decided to leave ServiceTitan less than one year after adding the software to his residential and commercial HVAC business.
The reason was simple: Ricks, the owner of Mechollage in Virginia Beach, Va., was having a hard time implementing it.
“It was a lot more (work) than I anticipated,” Ricks said. “I wasn't prepared on my side, on the office side, for it.”
Ricks admittedly didn’t have the in-office personnel to help with the rollout, and didn’t have the bandwidth to figure out the robust software on his own. He figured the easiest route would be to switch to a different software, which he did.
And that’s when it hit him.
“I realized that there was so much more that we could do in ServiceTitan, (with features) that I really needed to have,” Ricks said.
So in the spring of 2023, Mechollage returned to ServiceTitan—with more front-office staff and plenty of support to help with the rollout.
“I couldn't be happier,” Ricks said. “Tickled to death to be where we're at right now.”
Here are the features that Ricks realized he needed.
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Reporting features you can trust
The biggest reason Ricks returned to ServiceTitan was because of its powerful reporting features.
In comparison, the other software left him with more questions than answers.
“I couldn’t tell you if I was making money or losing money,” Ricks said. “I would pull a report and it told me I hadn’t made any money in three months. (...) I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t made money for three months.”
If the software couldn’t handle basic reporting, it certainly couldn’t give him detailed breakdowns of techs’ performance, like ServiceTitan could. Without a reliable way to monitor how his techs were doing in the field, Ricks found himself paying for more call-backs than ever.
“If you’re losing money, you’re not going to keep your job, that’s all there is to it,” Ricks said. “But how do you (make personnel decisions) if you don’t have a good reporting system?”
Now that Mechollage is back with ServiceTitan, Ricks can easily see how much revenue every tech is bringing in—and where there’s room for improvement. He can also finally introduce new KPIs (key performance indicators) to reward high-achievers and cut down on call-backs.
Grow faster with smarter software
After leaving ServiceTitan, it didn’t take long for Ricks to start missing some of its features. Here are a few of the tools that his team are happy to have back:
Estimates: ServiceTitan makes it easy to generate accurate estimates. Recently, Ricks bid on the same project as a family member had. He saw their estimate and noticed it was suspiciously low. “If you had ServiceTitan, (...) you might not lose money on that job,” Ricks remembers saying. “You would've seen that you didn't have everything in there."
Marketing Pro: With Marketing Pro, Ricks has resources at his disposal to create custom mailings and targeted email campaigns, as well as track customer reviews and returns on investment of digital ad campaigns.
Phone integration: While using the competitor’s phone integration software, Mechollage’s techs would get multiple non-emergency calls after hours. But today, Ricks has more control over where calls are directed after hours, ensuring a better experience for customers and techs. And with ServiceTitan, Ricks can track phone numbers for marketing, and even record calls for training.
Building a more efficient future
When Ricks re-joined ServiceTitan, he noticed “huge improvements” over certain features. For example, he said Pricebook Pro has become “one of the best features” ServiceTitan offers.
Pricebook Pro is a fully integrated pricebook that allows techs and customers to browse high-quality images and descriptions of parts and fixtures. Its dynamic pricing feature automatically updates the ever-changing cost of parts, reducing administrative burden and improving the accuracy of estimates.
“I couldn't imagine using ServiceTitan without Pricebook Pro,” Ricks said. “You'd have to have already been in business for 10 years and using your own pricebook that you'd already built. I don't know how you’d do it otherwise.”
By harnessing features that help his team move efficiently, Ricks hopes to grow his company faster—he’s planning to expand operations into electrical and plumbing service in the future.
But time is of the essence: He wants to retire one of these days.
“In the next five years, I will have taken each one of my hats and put them on someone else,” he said.
