Feeling the Heat: ServiceTitan Summer Benchmark Report Insights and Tips

Economy in Motion

In the most recent economic reports, consumer sentiment is up, inflation is steady, and consumer financial status is going more in the red.

“Credit card balances are higher than they’ve ever been,” Kawasaki says. “Home equity lines of credit are maxing out. Card delinquencies, for really bad ones, are at 90 days. Even as much as $1,000 is a lot for the homeowner right now.” 

Bankrate data says only 44% of U.S. adults would pay an emergency expense of $1,000 or more from savings. 

“This is what our target customers are going through,” Hunter says. “They’re stressed. They’re strapped. We have to learn how to help them.”

Some providers go right to discounting, but that’s not the best option. Most homeowners will pay, they just don’t have the available credit, which is where financing comes into play.

To demonstrate this, Kawasaki shows what’s called a box and whiskers chart. There’s a line for median and a plus sign for average.

“When you look at user financing, you can see that the line is much higher, which means a higher percentile of revenue,” Kawasaki says. “They're making more money. When they do financing, it goes to their bottom line, it goes to their completed revenue.”

When you look at how contractors are performing, there are two drastic ends of the spectrum. 

“There's two tales being told right now,” Hunter says. “You find some people who are just absolutely thriving and then another whole group that is like, ‘Man, I don't get it. We're down.’ A lot of these can be in the same market, same area, same size company.”

The big difference Hunter sees between these two groups is that the ones doing well are willing to implement process changes to meet today’s consumers where they are, like offering financing every time.  

“It’s understanding what’s in the customer’s head,” Kawasaki says. “Homeowners are changing their buying patterns right now. Before if a tech walked in and recommended an HVAC install, they would say, ‘You know what? My unit is 15 years old. It's time. I don't want to be in Arizona stuck without one.’

“Now what’s happening is these customers are asking, ‘Can you just get me through the summer?’ They’ve been using credit for everyday needs and now the credit is dried up,” Kawasaki adds.

Benchmark Report

One place contractors can go to troubleshoot why revenue is flat or down is the Benchmark Report in ServiceTitan. To find this, go to Titan Advisor and click the rocket ship in the upper-right corner. 

Within your Benchmark Report, track the following:

• Completed revenue percentile: Tracking this over time informs you of whether you're losing share or gaining share. If revenue trends down, but you're maintaining your percentile, you're not losing share. It means something else is going on in your market.

• Ticket values: Review whether ticket values are going up or down, and if they’re going up and down relative to other businesses like yours. 

• Booking rate: See if you’re booking the calls that come in at the top of the funnel.

• Job volumes: Analyze whether the number of jobs completed is increasing or decreasing.

• Call volumes: Monitor the number of calls coming into your business. High call volumes with low booking rates might indicate inefficiencies in your sales process, while low call volumes could suggest decreased market demand.

“It's really important to download your Benchmark Reports and keep them so you can track performance over time,” Kawasaki says.

Because the reports only cover a quarter at a time, Kawasaki recommends adding historical benchmark numbers into a time series chart in Excel. 

What You Can Do to Improve

With your data in hand, it’s time to strategize for improvement. Hunter walks through ideas to boost performance at every stage of the customer journey. 

“We know contractors are seeing a bimodal model where some are really winning, some aren't,” Hunter says. “I’ve visited countless people on both sides of the hump. Those on the higher tier, they’re leaders. They took action. They’re using tools to execute. Here’s some tips on what some of the best are doing.”

Lead Generation

For lead generation, a new feature in Marketing Pro allows you to send promotional text messages. The tool is fully compliant with opt-in requirements. 

“If you're slow or if your call board isn't full, it's time to take action,” Hunter says. “What can you do? One thing is you can text your customers and get a compelling offer out there in front of them.”

Increase Booking Rate

“Google is king,” Hunter says. “We've made it really, really easy for your customers just to book with Google. This is actually a core feature. It integrates everything into one place where customers can have a seamless experience booking right with you, and guess what? There's no chance to blow it.”

You can also make it simple for customers to schedule on your website with Scheduling Pro. If someone starts the process and doesn’t finish, you’ll receive an alert and be able to follow up.

“Some customers are experiencing double the booking rate since they've implemented this,” Hunter says. “Here’s a bonus, too. You can integrate Scheduling Pro with the Reserve With Google feature.” 

When Zack Kays of Intelligent Design integrated Scheduling Pro and Reserve With Google, he saw more than $200k revenue from online bookings within a month. 

Increase Average Tickets

“One of the key things you have to do to be successful in this day and age is make sure your pricing is right,” Hunter says. “ServiceTitan has some great features that can help you make sure of this. If you haven't checked out the Configurable Services, this is a core feature.”

Configurable Services allow technicians to select specific materials or equipment while performing services. This helps them track pricing and protect margins. 

Another way to increase average ticket price is by leveraging Dispatch Pro. 

“We've studied the data and we know the average ticket growth is 1.75 times higher when using this. Two times higher average ticket growth if you're just looking at the smaller businesses,” Hunter says. “It knows your techs’ performance, what job types they excel at, and can find the right tech for the right job.”

Improve Close Rates

Those who present multiple options and lead with financing see 12% higher close rates and a 13% higher average ticket size. 

“If you're not using the integrated financing or offering multiple options, you're really just shooting yourself in the foot,” Hunter says.

Don’t Leave Tools in the Toolbox

“To sum it all up, the companies we're seeing doing really well, they're leading. They're taking responsibility for their companies. They're saying, ‘All right, let's study the data. What do we need to drive more leads, to book more jobs, and increase average tickets?’ They're utilizing the tools, and they're doing it well,” Hunter says. 

“I wish there was a magic or a silver bullet, but the bottom line is the good companies, they're just going to work, and they’re winning with it.”