Not too long ago, Chesapeake Electric – a 100% service business in Annapolis, Md.—found it was having a difficult time getting ahold of customers for follow-ups to address recurring service.
So Chesapeake turned to ServiceTitan, the cloud-based software for the trades. It set up an automated text campaign on Marketing Pro that provided a scheduling link via Scheduling Pro, which then sent information directly to the dispatch board via Dispatch Pro.
The process led to an easy-to-implement solution that shows the benefits of end-to-end automation with the Pro Products in ServiceTitan.
What used to take two or three hours to make calls to find, set up and dispatch work came down to a matter of minutes, all done through ServiceTitan’s Pro Products and Titan Intelligence—ServiceTitan’s AI—on the software’s platform.
“Before, our people couldn’t keep up with the demand,” said Ryan Deshaies, founder, owner and president of Chesapeake, now an $8 million business. “Now we’re booked out two weeks on recurring service jobs, and it’s happening automatically.
“It’s increased revenue on our recurring services exponentially.”
Maximizing what’s possible
Deshaies opened Chesapeake in 2014, and five years later decided he was not up to date with technology. That led him to ServiceTitan.
His decision to add Pro Products was based on maximizing what ServiceTitan offered. He first added Marketing Pro, which allowed him to develop campaigns within the software.
“Literally, if you go on Marketing Pro, there's already a prebuilt, recurring service, text message campaign,” he said.
Scheduling Pro allows customers to book a job on Chesapeake’s website or through a link in a text message or a QR code sent via direct mail.
“(At Chesapeake Electric) every job that runs through Scheduling Pro is fully automated until the technician steps on the customer's doorstep,” Deshaies said.
When he paired Scheduling Pro with Marketing Pro, Deshaies found the two work in unison to find customers and book jobs. He next added Dispatch Pro, which has features that allow the business to assign jobs based on each technician’s skills.
“The more we let Dispatch Pro operate, the better our average ticket and the better opportunity that technician has,” Deshaies said. “All that it involved was to enter the link from Scheduling Pro, send it out, and then Scheduling Pro books it. Dispatch Pro already knows what to do with it.
“The beautiful thing with it is once you set it up, it’s running automatically and seamlessly. I don’t have to update it, I don’t have to worry about what it’s doing.
“It operates every single day. It doesn’t call out sick. It doesn’t complain.
“It just does its job.”
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Field Pro completes the puzzle
Finally, Field Pro allows Chesapeake to better coach technicians with an AI scorecard that uses recorded conversations between techs and customers to analyze their performance. The resulting coaching ensures the team adheres to its standard sales processes.
The approach benefits the business and the technician. Deshaies learned that with just a 10% increase in close rates, which happens with high adherence to Chesapeake’s process, the technician could earn an additional $40,000 in performance pay for the year.
“The only bad thing to do is not to do anything at all when it comes to Field Pro,” he said. “I can’t imagine operating our business right now without having that in place.”
While artificial intelligence can cause apprehension because it’s new, its benefits are clear.
“We have AI pretty fully integrated into our business,” Deshaies said. “But it’s not a replacement for people. It’s an enhancement to what they already do. It allows people to be creative, and it frees up more time to focus on what’s important – which is the team, our customers and growing their individual skill set.”
One example Deshaies pointed out was call center managers or dispatchers. At times they might have found themselves working a 12-hour day. With AI, he said, those hours can be tapered down, which brings job satisfaction up.
Taken together, Deshaies calls the end-to-end automation within ServiceTitan “smart.”
“We really want to be great,” he said. “Without ServiceTitan, we wouldn't be able to deliver the service that our customers expect.”
