ServiceTitan Dispatch Pro: How to Implement to Maximize Profit with AI

When Althoff Home Services implemented Dispatch Pro six months ago, the company was still using pencils, paper dispatch sheets, and monthly binders to manually schedule jobs for its 30 field service technicians.

Despite signing on with ServiceTitan in 2021, the company admittedly still relied on its previous, but “archaic,” operating system.  

“We were still doing a lot of things with pencil and paper and it took us a long time to actually get away from that,” says Ashley Leege, Customer Service Manager at Althoff Home Services. “So when we went live with Dispatch Pro, we were still using a paper dispatch sheet, even though we had all of ServiceTitan to help us. 

“We laughed, because it was like this security blanket. You double checked the paper with the dispatch board to make sure it was matching, and that was how you moved the pieces,” she adds. “And with Dispatch Pro, that paper became obsolete instantly.”

Live from Pantheon 2024, Leege joins the Mastering ServiceTitan podcast—where we get expert advice from power users—to unpack ServiceTitan’s Dispatch Pro, an AI-powered, fully automated, and revenue-generating dispatch solution for the trades.

Leege shares the challenges her team faced before Dispatch Pro, how they made the switch, and highlights the importance of getting everyone involved in the implementation process. 

Read on for the top takeaways, or listen to the full podcast episode to learn more about:

• Benefits of using ServiceTitan Dispatch Pro

• Making the switch from a previous system to Dispatch Pro

• The implementation timeline and some actionable advice

>>Listen to the full podcast on Dispatch Pro now on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube.

What is Dispatch Pro?

Powered by Titan Intelligence (TI), Dispatch Pro uses machine learning and your own system settings to maximize profits on every job by assigning the best-matched technician based on factors like their skills, proximity to the job, and recent sales performance.

“Dispatch Pro is awesome. It's an AI product that really assists your dispatchers,” Leege says. “When we first went into it, we thought maybe we wouldn't need as many dispatchers. But it’s actually just a really great tool to help them make faster decisions and it lets them focus on things they couldn't focus on before.”

Benefits of Dispatch Pro

Dispatch Pro not only helps the Althoff Home Services dispatchers save time and use their time more effectively, it also helps to generate more revenue for the company by automatically sending the best technician to maximize the job.

“It's looking at routing, it's looking at the best tech to the best call, and it's moving those pieces all throughout the day, and letting our dispatchers focus on bigger problems, which has been great,” Leege says. “We’ve definitely seen some increase with revenue.”

Dispatch Pro uses automation and machine learning to assign jobs to techs with the right skills and higher closing rates at a certain moment in time, essentially identifying important “hot hand” trends to help you grow your business. It also determines the best routing more quickly.

“Seeing those best routes really helps our dispatchers. They don’t have to think about it. Every five minutes, it’s refreshing,” Leege says.

It also takes any favoritism out of the equation when manually trying to schedule 60 calls a day for the Chicago HVAC-plumbing-and-electrical company. Rather than being locked into certain routes, Althoff dispatchers began thinking a little differently.

“We started to see the bigger picture and why things were moving on the dispatch board,” Leege says. “I could really see our jobs getting put in correctly, because with Dispatch Pro you know instantly if they’re not. If a business unit is wrong, if a job type is wrong, if a skill is wrong, it tells you.”

Dispatch Pro also allows you to customize your priorities.

“Say this guy is in Chicago and I need to get him to Lake Geneva. How am I going to do that where it makes sense and it's still profitable?” Leege says. “What’s cool with Dispatch Pro is, you can set it. You can focus on routing, you can focus on profitability, and then do everything you want in between.”

And the best benefit of Dispatch Pro? “The paper is gone,” Leege says. “We’re not doing that anymore.”

Implementing Dispatch Pro

Leege’s best advice for implementing Dispatch Pro? “Don’t be scared of it,” she says.

Althoff Home Services found itself in need of another dispatcher at the beginning of 2024, Leege says, but rather than hire a new employee, they decided to give Dispatch Pro a try.

“We have a young dispatch team, so they were really kind of excited for something new. I think they're less scared of technology than a lot of people,” she adds.

Leege notes that dispatchers might be reluctant to use AI dispatching, thinking it would put them out of a job. To combat that, she recommends including your dispatchers in the implementation process. 

“We involved our dispatchers in the whole process, which was helpful for us,” Leege says. When we did our onboarding, they were like, ‘Oh, you have all these people.’ And I said, ‘I want them to be a part of it. I don't want them to feel like we're doing this, and in two months they're going to have no job, which is a thousand percent not the case.’”

As a bonus, the dispatchers learned how to use Dispatch Pro faster and became excited about it. 

As for when to adopt Dispatch Pro, Althoff handled the setup in the shoulder season. This is advised, as there are a number of settings you can adjust to maximize the tool, including:

• How to balance revenue versus drive time

• Maximum drive time between appointments

• Importance of end-of-day proximity to technicians' ending location addresses

• Which job types have higher priority

“We didn't have skills set up,” Leege says. “So we had to sit down with management and figure out who's assigned to what skill, make sure every job type had a skill, make sure every technician had the right skills, and determine how long jobs take.”

Althoff chose assisted setup, so she could ask questions and leverage ServiceTitan’s expertise during the setup process. 

“I recommend the assisted setup,” Leege says. “Could I have figured it out on my own? Yes. Would it have gone as smoothly? No.”

Once you apply all your settings, let the system do its job, even if you don’t understand the choices it’s making.

“It's AI. It's learning. It takes a certain amount of calls per job type to learn each technician,” Leege says. “Don’t override it. And if something doesn’t go right, ask why. Don’t just move it and move on. Maybe it's the way you have it set up, and you can fix it easily. And if something’s truly wrong, you should report it.” 

After launch, Leege notes it took about two months for Dispatch Pro, or as their company lovingly calls it, “Donna,” to get through the learning phase.

“Our dispatch team really embraced it. It wasn’t a painful two months,” Leege says. “But that’s about how long it took to learn our existing technicians and get used to the job types.”

Donna frees up time for Althoff dispatchers to accomplish more in a day.

“Before they were so focused on the routes,” Leege says. “Now they can order parts, call customers, and communicate better with technicians.”

You can find this interview and many more by subscribing to Mastering ServiceTitan on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or our website, or search for Mastering ServiceTitan in your favorite podcast player.

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