ServiceTitan’s Benchmark Report: Challenges and Opportunities in 2025 — AI and More

Did your residential or commercial service business meet its goals in 2024? And what’s coming for the trades in 2025? 

In the next episode of the Mastering ServiceTitan podcast, two leaders from ServiceTitan — Chris Hunter, Principal Industry Advisor, and Deanna Kawasaki, Senior Director of Titan Intelligence — break down the major trends shaping the industry and how the trades can not only survive but thrive.

From the intensifying skilled labor shortage to the fast-moving rise of AI, they share insider perspectives on how ServiceTitan is embedding Titan Intelligence across the platform to help businesses scale efficiently, even when hiring slows. 

Learn what sets top-performing shops apart, why trade-specific AI makes all the difference, and how to future-proof your operations with the right tech, leadership, and strategy.

Two major industry trends to look out for in 2025

The consumer credit crunch

One of the biggest trends or challenges facing contractors in 2025 is the credit crunch many consumers find themselves in, Kawasaki says. Consumers started using their credit cards more in 2023 to manage high inflationary costs, and continued using them in 2024.

“They maxed their credit cards,” Kawasaki says. “We saw that with the replace versus repair ratio.”

So, beyond discounting your prices, what can businesses do to help?

The solution may be as simple as providing multiple options and offering financing on every single call, Hunter says.

“Consumers are crunched, so it's very simple. If they're crunched, give them more options, easier ways to pay if they don't have the money up front,” he says.

According to data released in ServiceTitan’s 2024 Benchmark Report, companies using ServiceTitan to run their business operations tend to fall into one of two groups — they’re either excelling or lagging behind. Kawasaki describes this distinction as bimodal distribution, and it continues in the 2025 Residential Trades Report.

“Everybody I talked to had two different stories,” Hunter says, as he visited various shops to try and make sense of the data. “You could talk to a contractor in the same exact town, the same exact business mix, and one of them would be like, ‘Man, we are crushing it. We're killing it.’ And then you would talk to another one who'd be like, ‘Man. We're just struggling. We cannot seem to get this going.’

After digging into the data, Hunter says they discovered the companies outperforming their counterparts prioritized the best practice of offering multiple options and customer financing.

“Help them get financing for it,” Hunter says. “We've got great solutions at ServiceTitan that integrate all of this.”

>>Listen to our Mastering ServiceTitan podcast on ServiceTitan’s Integrated Financing.

Skilled labor shortage

The skilled labor shortage to recruit, hire, and retain qualified technicians to replace an aging workforce also continues to impact the trades in 2025, even though it gained some momentum last year, according to the Associated Builders and Contractors. The ServiceTitan 2025 Benchmark Report predicts an even bigger shortage than anticipated, Kawasaki says.

“The reason the skilled labor shortage is going to be even bigger than we anticipated is because it’s coming fast and hard, harder than we thought,” she says.

With trillions of dollars in committed investments to the U.S. proposed by the new administration this year, Kawasaki anticipates an increase in infrastructure and housing needs will impact the communities where these new building projects are planned.

“You've got this huge influx of not only new construction and commercial, but also residential servicing because now people are going to feel comfortable to move,” she explains. “My concern is, if another industry comes into your area and they're willing to pay two times the amount, what are your techs really going to do?”

While you can’t really prevent techs from leaving for higher pay, you can work to get your own house in order to prepare for the upcoming surge, Hunter says.

“When people are moving, guess what? The trades are busy. And when people are building in commercial, it trickles down into the residential world as well,” Hunter says. 

To prepare for more work, smart contractors are building that bench of tomorrow’s technicians.

“Now’s the time to start back your 110% recruiting and your building of technicians. Because you're going to need them in the future,” he adds.

How AI will streamline office work and empower technicians

As companies work to recruit and hire new technicians, they’re also using AI to double their output with automated workflows, Kawasaki says.  

“These are like digital employees to help you do some things in the office,” she says, which helps make things more efficient for techs in the field, including a personalized AI assistant built right into ServiceTitan’s legacy Mobile App and new Field App to immediately answer tech questions from the field.

“Keep AI in mind as a way in which to kind of duplicate your effort, duplicate your resources,” Kawasaki says.

Rather than resisting AI, Hunter advises using it as a tool to grow stronger.

“It's really about unlocking expertise in different, specific areas of your business to make your team way more efficient, way more productive, and, frankly, way more smarter,” he says. “That's the beauty of ServiceTitan and Titan Intelligence. It helps you unlock each one of these little areas of your business without you having to be the expert or hiring an expert to do it.”

Hunter also suggests designating at least one person in your company to go through the ServiceTitan Certified User Program to help you unlock success in all areas of your business. 

“I guarantee you, you'll see a huge, huge productivity shift in your business,” he adds.

Future trends and Titan Intelligence

ServiceTitan has been weaving AI, its own brand of Titan Intelligence, into the core fabric of its product offerings since 2022, Kawasaki says, and that trend will continue well into the future. 

>>Register for Pantheon 2025 to learn more about ServiceTitan AI enhancements.

Titan Intelligence is powered by real ServiceTitan data and trade experts.

“It's really ours,” Kawasaki says. “We’re using our information, our data, and our expertise in the realm of HVAC, plumbing, electrical, garage doors, irrigation, roofing, you name it. Ours is very specific to our industry and that's what makes it our secret sauce. We're able to use our data to determine best workflows, best processes, what's going on, and what are the trends.”

For instance, Kawasaki used TI data to spot the repair-versus-replace trend at the end of 2022.

“We started to see the trend. We started to see the ticket volumes change. We started to see the ticket sizes change. We started to see changes in credit card charge amounts,” Kawasaki explains.

In the 2025 Benchmark Report, ServiceTitan uses TI to offer customers a projected outcomes forecast to help manage future trends, such as quickly identifying a surge in job demands or advertising cost increases.

“We're going to tell you how we got there. We're going to tell you what our recommendations are, and we're going to allow you to choose whether you want to take them,” Kawasaki says.

While contractors can use TI recommendations to customize their own secret sauce, Hunter says true success still boils down to a company’s leadership and culture.

“There still has to be a friendly technician in there making that final contact with the homeowner,” he says. “But all the tools that set them up for success to get there, to do the job correctly, to be trained, to have everything optimized, prepares them for that final successful relationship moment.”

Hunter also suggests visiting the shops of other successful contractors to see what’s working and reading the book, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, by John Maxwell.

“It'll change the way you lead your company,” he says.

Leading successfully means you’re always recruiting for new talent and you have proven onboarding and training processes in place.

“Think of recruiting just like you would marketing,” Hunter advises. “You know, you may be really great at going out and getting a customer, but you're terrible at using the same type of tools to go out and find someone to come work.”

And if you’re still trying to do more with less, be sure to check out the new feature, Adaptive Capacity in ServiceTitan, to be released soon. Using smart TI tools and robust reporting data, Adaptive Capacity will help you know exactly what staffing you need throughout the year.

“This one is awesome because it can help you unlock all these different efficiencies throughout ServiceTitan,” Hunter says.

Also, be sure to check out your new Benchmark Report, scheduled for release on May 1.

“It’s published every quarter,” Kawasaki says. “It's part of your core product and it allows you to see where you are relative to customers who are like you.”

You can find this interview and many more by subscribing to Mastering ServiceTitan on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or here. 

Know a business that could use a bit of muscle from ServiceTitan? Refer them here!

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