Call Center + Field Practices

Automated way to introduce techs, drive higher customer satisfaction

Alerting the customer that your technician is on the way elevates your customer’s experience, but it can be time consuming if it is done over the phone.  

ServiceTitan recommends setting up automatic dispatch notifications to send a text message to the customer when the technician is on the way.  It can include a picture or the individual technician as well as a brief introduction. 

This helps put the customer at ease when the technician approaches the door because the customer already knows whom to expect.  Here is an example of what that text may look like:

A sample of what you may want to include in the notification could be:

Hi! Your [Your Company Name] representative, Technician Name, is on the way to Service Location Address. Please know that we aim to deliver an entirely contact-free experience. Technician Name will be wearing protective clothing and will not shake your hand upon entering your home. We will also send all follow up information digitally — including a link to view your estimates and pay online! You may reply to this message or call the office with any questions: Business Unit Phone Number. See you soon! Follow this link to see where your technician is: Tech Tracking URL. Reply STOP to STOP receiving text messages.

You can also include a bio of your technician, so your customer can make an instant connection with the technician and begin to build trust. 

Chris Hunter, ServiceTitan’s Director of Customer Relations, built technician bios for Hunter Super Techs, the HVAC and plumbing company he built in Ardmore, Okla. He’s also founder of the GoTime Success Group, which seeks to empower trade industry owners to build their businesses and their revenue. 

“These bios are super important,” Hunter says. “Customers do business with people they know, like and trust. Sending out these bios helps you connect with the customer and sets you up for success before you even get to the home.”

His tips for writing technician bios: 

1. Write them in third person. Saying “Chris Hunter is an award-winning technician” keeps the bio from seeming like the tech is bragging on themself.

2. Gather the information to complete a professional bio template directly from the tech. His staff biography template includes:

Name: Title:   Hometown: Education or work experience: Certifications: Favorite aspect of my job: Role Model: Interesting fact about me: Best advice to customers:

3. Add a YouTube video to your employee biographies, showing the tech saying hello and sharing a couple of items about themself. Help with the script, but don’t make it look like the tech is just reading the lines. 

“I lost count of how many positive reviews we got that referenced the tech bios,” Hunter says. “They meant enough to customers that they would take the time to write about them in the review.”

The dispatch notification can also include a technician arrival tracking link. This link allows the customer to view the GPS location of the technician on the way to the home, a feature that can really set a company apart from the competition. 

You may run into several objections from your technicians when trying to turn on dispatch notifications and especially when turning on GPS tracking. Here are a few things that companies have used to successfully implement this:

1. Technicians generally do not want the customer seeing them all the time.  Let them know that the link only works until the technician arrives at the job. 

2. Technicians will often say, “Well what if I want to stop and get lunch on the way to the customer's house?”  The easiest answer to this is that the link only gets sent to the customer after you clock in to the job when you are dispatched to the job site.  This can also put an end to technicians clocking in while they are taking lunch.

3. The technician may worry about making a mistake and clocking into the wrong job and sending multiple texts to the customer.  While they may make a mistake and send a text prematurely to a customer, the customer cannot be sent two dispatch notifications in the same day.  This includes times where they may hit “Done for Now” to go to another job and come back. 

To implement automatic dispatch alerts or enable GPS Auto-Arrive in ServiceTitan, contact your CSM.