Family tradition meets modern technology: Tioga Plumbing & Electric's ServiceTitan story

Plumbing runs in Amanda Carter’s family.  Her grandfather was a plumber. So are her father, uncle, and brother. Her nephew is about to take his tradesman test, which means the family trade is about to stretch four generations. 

But growing up, Carter had no interest in plumbing. She wanted to be a doctor.

“And my dad was like, ‘You should be a vascular surgeon—because it's basically plumbing with smaller pipes,’" Carter said.

Instead, she worked as a certified medical assistant. But then her father’s new construction, commercial and residential shop, Tioga Plumbing & Electric, started growing and needed help. She’d come in after hours and help with accounts payable data entry. Eventually, she left the medical field and joined the family business.

Today, Carter is the office manager and going on 13 years at the Dallas-Fort Worth area company. That means she’s seen plenty of change—much of it having to do with software. Tioga has shuffled through multiple types that didn’t seem to fit—until they found ServiceTitan in 2016.

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The all-in-one software for the trades worked well, but Tioga was only using it to schedule and invoice service calls.

Thanks to Carter, that’s now a different story. 

In 2020, during the early days of the pandemic, Tioga’s new construction and commercial work with restaurants took a hiatus. So Carter had time on her hands.

“I had a bunch of extra time not having to do all the billing and stuff with that,” Carter said. “So I was able to dive into (ServiceTitan) and really learn how all of it works.”

Increasing productivity 

Carter has always tried to make things more efficient for her father’s business.

“I remember as a kid, I used to sit in my dad's office with him and he'd hand me different color highlighters and say, ‘Everything that's shaped like this, color this color, and then count them up.’ I had no idea at the time, but I was helping him do takeoffs,” Carter said.

Many years later, when she suggested the company switch to software, Carter’s father supported the idea.

“Y’all just do whatever you need to do to make everything run smoothly,” he told his daughter.

They shifted from one software to the next. The not-so-great ones had little scheduling capabilities. Others worked OK until Tioga started to grow (currently, they have just over 30 employees).

The company learned about ServiceTitan through Carter’s brother, whose plumbing shop in San Antonio used it. Carter researched the software with her sister-in-law, Courtney Carter, and decided to make the switch in 2016.

But Tioga didn’t realize the full benefits of ServiceTitan until Carter had time to dig into the software during the lulls of the pandemic. She spent hours going through every setting, chatted with support whenever she had a question, and set up weekly meetings with her customer success manager.

“I was like, ‘Oh, it does this. Oh, it does that,’” Carter said. “(For example), we turned on the dispatch notifications and the confirmation text messages, and our customers were like, ‘Wow, the communication is fantastic!’

“(ServiceTitan) increased our productivity and customer satisfaction exponentially when we started turning (on features).”

Communication is key

Right when Carter started using more features, Tioga’s Titan Score jumped up about 50 points. Here are some of Carter’s favorite features:

• Dispatch: The ServiceTitan dispatch board helps today’s home and commercial service companies optimize technician tracking—so everyone stays on time. “I love the dispatch board and how you can set it up into different groups. It's actually pretty easy to look at,” Carter said.

• Reporting: You can't grow your business without understanding what works and what doesn't. ServiceTitan's reporting tools provide robust analytics to help bring your business to the next level. “(When) I was able to dive into the software and really learn how all of it works, (I) set it up to where we got more accurate reports and KPIs,” Carter said.

• Invoicing: Carter is learning to love the new invoices feature, which utilizes invoicing tools like payment applications and progress billing that follows industry billing standards to make getting paid simpler.

• Customer communication: It’s true: As customers, we want to know when professionals are thinking of us. With ServiceTitan, you can send appointment reminders and even technician bios over SMS text so customers know what (and who) to expect when your truck arrives. “Once we turned that on, customers were like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is awesome. We know when you’re coming.’” 

Even better? After Carter turned on Google reviews, the customers let everyone else know about their experience, too. 

“The Google reviews would say how great we communicated with them,” Carter said.

A smoother workflow

These days, things have picked up at Tioga, enough that Carter can’t dedicate as much time to learning more about ServiceTitan. 

But she hopes that changes soon when Tioga’s new HR person is fully trained and takes some responsibilities off of her plate.

“That's when I plan to really dig back into (the software), and make sure we've got proper written processes and procedures to hand to everybody (about) what ServiceTitan does,” Carter said.

This year, she’s hoping to complete the ServiceTitan Certified Administrator Program. She’s also joined the Torch Network, and wants to keep better track of the Ember and Spark sessions, which fuel Titan Scores and business development.

This is all in an effort to set up Tioga for growth as they continue to hire more technicians and keep their pricebook up-to-date.

“We’re working now on fine-tuning processes and all the (ServiceTitan) features that we use,” Carter said.

Or, put another way, she’s removing obstructions and creating a smoother workflow. Which, coming from a long line of plumbers, fits perfectly with the family trade.