Automated ROI: Setting Your Teams on Easy Mode

Challenges Today’s Contractors Face

Contractors in the trades face a similar set of challenges, says Belessis, Senior Product Marketing Manager at ServiceTitan. The first is drowning in the daily demands of the work.

“Just the volume of phone calls that you're managing, routing your technicians, working on the schedule to make sure you fill the board, billing, customer service—there are so many different things. In addition, you're also focusing on driving demand,” Belessis says.

To get a handle on the first challenge, companies often introduce the second challenge by implementing manual internal processes that take too much time, such as creating pricing adjustments, new reporting, or managing customer accounts.

The third challenge of letting opportunities slip away happens because you’re so focused on meeting daily demands and completing all of these manual processes, Belessis says.

“You may be losing some opportunities where the right tools and automations really could have helped you close a deal, upsell certain products, or reduce the overall stress and make your team more efficient,” he explains.

Automation isn't just the future of the home service industry. It's the “now.” 

“It's what gives businesses the competitive edge they need to stay ahead of their competition and drive more demand, but to also make sure they're continuing to keep their margins as high as possible,” Belessis says. 

Utilizing automation tools as your business grows not only helps you save time and gain efficiency, but also achieve the greatest return on your investment, says Lizette, Mattioni’s former Call Center Manager and now Director of Process Improvement.

“We're utilizing just about all of the Pro products that ServiceTitan offers. Most of them have some form of automation. Scheduling Pro, Dispatch Pro, even Second Chance Leads—all have the ability to multiply efforts and achieve results,” Lizette says. “We use automation on a daily basis and attribute a lot of our growth to it.”

Automating Your Internal Operations

It’s not easy to run a successful home services company, but you can set up your team to operate on easy mode with the right automation tools.

Start by dialing down on those time-consuming administrative tasks to see where automation can lighten the load, says Burgess, Customer Advocacy Specialist at ServiceTitan.

“Think about pricing, billing, reporting, etc. Anything we can automate, we want to do that,” Burgess says.

Dynamic Pricing

To automate pricing adjustments, ServiceTitan offers a Dynamic Pricing tool for businesses that follows the flat-rate model approach. 

“ServiceTitan has really changed the game for pricing,” Burgess says. “I've worked in shops where the technicians were figuring out the pricing out in the field, or maybe somebody in the office was doing it after the job was done, or we just had really stagnant price books, and that price wasn’t always what we were looking for because things change.”

For example, you’re a plumbing business in Texas and a customer hires you to repair or replace their water heater. 

“In Texas, water heaters are up in the attic, which is crazy to me,” Burgess says. “But sometimes, when you get up in that attic, the water heater's right there and it's really easy to access. Sometimes, it's across the attic and there's a crawl space. So yeah, it's the same job, but there are a lot of different layers to it.

“So Dynamic Pricing takes that flat rate and it lets you choose, ‘Okay, what type of crazy is this?’ And you're going to be able to adjust your price based on that factor,” she adds.

To access Dynamic Pricing, go to your Pricebook tab, find Pricing Builder in the column on the left, then click into Services and Dynamic Pricing.

“Just remember when you are setting [Dynamic Pricing] rules, you can only set one rule to each category,” Burgess says. “Here, I have a plumbing rule, an HVAC rule, and a sewer rule.” 

For this example, Burgess sets up an electrical rule. However, a recent update to Dynamic Pricing allows users to set a rule for your entire Pricebook and adjust pricing based on business units.

Next, the Dynamic Pricing tool asks for your billable rate.

“This is going to change, based on your company, what your technicians make, what kind of margin you need to make, all kinds of things,” Burgess says. 

Here, you get two options: 1) set the billable rate manually with a specific hourly rate or 2) choose progressive rates to lower the hourly rate after the second or third hour on the job.

“Choose what fits best for your company,” Burgess says.

Now, it’s time to select markup on your materials and equipment.

First, choose your markup type:

• Individual: Looks at each line item and finds the rule that matches that line item by itself.

• Aggregate: Adds up all of your material costs and figures out the rule based on that sum.

Next, you select the markups for materials and equipment in your pricebook.

“You can do it based on your gross margin, a percent or dollar amount of markup, or based on a multiplier,” Burgess says. “I'm going to do percent markup because that's what I see most frequently in our shops today.”

You can choose whatever tiers you like, and go up to 100 or 1,000, or whatever works best.

“Just make sure when you’re done doing this, your last dollar amount has a lot of nines, because we want to make sure nothing is falling outside of these rules,” she adds.

You can do this same process on the equipment side, or use the nifty toggle to use the same rules you applied for markups.

ServiceTitan also offers Configurable Services for contractors.

“It’s basically asking, ‘Do you want to continue using the generic cost across the board so that the service price doesn't change, or on every job, do you want to recalculate the service price so that your margin stays consistent across all of your jobs?’” Burgess explains.

>>Learn more about ServiceTitan Configurable Services. 

Next, you’ll add your surcharge as a flat amount or a percentage to your base rule.

And rather than go through this process multiple times, you can use the most recent update to Dynamic Pricing to adjust pricing across the board based on business units in your pricebook. 

The last step for setting up Dynamic Pricing asks you to select additional modifications, such as add-on discounts, after-hours rates, price levels for more difficult jobs, or rounding to the nearest dollar. 

Lizette says Mattioni typically follows the standard quarterly pricing review, but Dynamic Pricing allows the company to make adjustments and account for increases in material costs in real time, rather than waiting to reflect those changes on quarterly intervals.

Client Specific Pricing

Lastly, setting up Client Specific Pricing is similar to Dynamic Pricing, but you’re able to apply it for specific customers.

“Think of a chain that says, ‘You can only charge me X amount, this is my trip charge, and this is my markup,’” Burgess says. “It may take a little bit more time if you have a lot of different rules to set up, but it’s definitely something to play around with so that whoever's billing those services for you isn’t referring to a slick sheet or a binder every time they're doing this.”

Automate Your Reporting

So, you love reports, but are you manually searching for them every time you want to see one? Save time by scheduling which reports you want to receive and when.

Scheduling Reports

“When you’re looking at your reporting screen, think about all of the reports you're looking at every day. We're able to go through and set up a rule so they get emailed to you every single day,” Burgess explains.

• A Simple Report, if you need it to go to specific people about their specific metrics. 

• A Flexible Report, if you want everybody to get the same one. 

You can define the email subject line, determine if you want the report in a PDF file or Excel sheet, and set whatever filters you need. Then, you decide who to send the report to, such as an entire business unit, a team, or a technician. Lastly, you set the report cadence, such as daily, weekly, or monthly, and the time of its arrival in their inbox.

If you’re looking at multiple reports every day, you can create a custom dashboard with all of your reports, and even choose to default to it when signing into ServiceTitan.

“That way, you're not having to go run it or dig through your inbox for it,” Burgess says. “We're able to just see it populate on that screen for you and you don't have to think about it anymore until you're actually going to look at that data.”

At Mattioni, Lizette utilizes ServiceTitan’s reporting features in various ways, such as:

• Sending service managers a report summarizing the previous day’s recalls so they can see how their teams performed the day before 

• Delivering automated reports to call center management staff that shows how CSRs categorized call reasons or unbooked calls with potential for follow-up opportunities

• Using automated reporting to gauge the performance of inside sales representatives on a weekly basis to calculate per-pay-period compensation 

“There's really an endless list of reports that we end up getting automated and that are delivered directly. We're able to see through the inbox all kinds of things, from call volumes to individual staff performance to broader views of the company, in general,” Lizette says.

Dispatch Pro

Mattioni also implemented Dispatch Pro last year, and Lizette says it has dramatically changed the way the company’s dispatching team works.

Mattioni employs four to five dispatchers, who previously spent an inordinate amount of time planning and setting up the job board with the right technician, the right skills, no excessive drive times, etc. Now, Dispatch Pro does all the planning, job board set-up, and finding the most efficient route.

“It's something you want to go deep on,” Lizette advises. “It’s something you really want to learn and understand. We've made several tweaks to everything from technician schedules to arrival windows to make sure Dispatch Pro works the absolute best for us.”

And Mattioni’s dispatchers view the time savings as a huge benefit.

“Our best practice is later in the afternoon, we end up asking the dispatchers to review tomorrow and make sure [Dispatch Pro] actually set the board as ideally as we want it to be,” Lizette says. “It dramatically shifted their time, their focus, and really allowed them to spend the time where it's most needed.”

Automating Your Demand Generation Engine

During shoulder seasons, marketers are often busy trying to generate demand for your home services. But what system do you have in place to capture that demand? More companies today are moving to online scheduling to capture those customers automatically, Belessis says.

Online Scheduling with Scheduling Pro

Just like consumers book everything online, from travel arrangements to dentist appointments, your customers can use Scheduling Pro to schedule their own appointment with your HVAC, plumbing, or electrical company.

Mattioni is currently using Scheduling Pro (Version 2.0), and Lizette says customers use the tool to book 25 to 30 jobs a day, whereas the traditional call center books 100 to 150 calls a day.

“We had one month where we exceeded 400 jobs booked online as our standing record. So, we’re seeing a consistent evolution of our customer base, of our membership base, as we continue to advertise Scheduling Pro,” Lizette says.

The company offers Scheduling Pro to customers by putting QR codes on their equipment, in membership mailings, on the website, and through its Google listings.

“If you're using any type of real-time availability, which I know is strongly encouraged when you set up online scheduling, that's when we started with adjustable capacity planning. Then customers are able to see real-time availability,” Lizette explains.

Scheduling Pro 2.0 is more mobile-friendly, streamlines the number of steps customers need to take to schedule their job, and captures the most important data for Mattioni.

“We have a very elaborate system at Mattioni,” Lizette says. “We care about the age of the system. We care about the fuel type. We care if they're looking to book a maintenance visit or if it’s a demand call. And we’re able to capture all of that through Scheduling Pro.”

Recurring Services SMS Campaigns

ServiceTitan’s Recurring Services SMS Campaigns can also help you generate demand from those potential customers who don’t want to call to schedule a job.

“There's a bunch of recurring services just sitting out there that our customers are not booking. And part of that may be that they don't want to call you,” Burgess says. “These SMS campaigns are really easy to set up. It's basically just a quick text message to all of the customers that fit that bill of a recurring service that has not yet been completed.”

Sending a Recurring SMS campaign is really simple to do, she says, and it’s going to help you maintain those steady service volumes.

Marketing Pro Autopilot

Sending email and direct mail campaigns can be a tedious manual process without automation. You need to pull your customer lists, hope that they’re accurate, upload them to an email platform or direct mail service, and make sure they get sent.

Marketing Pro Autopilot, announced at Pantheon 2024, automates that demand generation to bring in new customers and drive more leads, upsells, and cross-sells, Belessis says.

Under the Marketing tab in your ServiceTitan account, click on the blue “Create Campaign” button. 

Here, you will have the option to start a campaign from scratch, or you can click on the Autopilot feature to find a variety of pre-designed campaign templates, such as post-job thank yous, membership due services, recurring service reminders, or open estimate follow-ups.

You can activate one of these campaigns with a couple of clicks, or edit the template to make it your own, including adding your logo, selecting the launch date, and automatically pulling in the customers you’re trying to target. Once you launch it, it becomes a drip campaign that sends several emails over a certain number of days, followed by a direct mail piece, to engage your customers.

“We’re continuously building out more and more campaigns for Marketing Pro Autopilot as well as activating additional channels,” Belessis says.

» Ready to get started on adding automation to your business processes? Check out these articles from our Help Center:

• Set Up Dynamic Pricing

• Set up Client-Specific Pricing

• Create Recurring Service Campaigns with SMS

• Schedule your ServiceTitan Report