Jamie Heindl awoke with an ominous feeling on May 11, 2022.
Her Madison, Wisconsin, home was unseasonably warm after the temperature outside shot to 100 degrees. Heindl, the sole HVAC dispatcher at All Comfort Services, turned on her air conditioning for the first time all year on that spring day. And she knew everyone else in the Madison area would be doing the same thing.
She arrived at the office early that morning, already on edge. Heindl was in her third year as a dispatcher, her first at All Comfort. She took pride in her work and was good at dispatching. But this unexpected, three-day heatwave had the potential to make her stressful job overseeing 14 residential HVAC techs even more unmanageable.
Like most dispatchers, Heindl thrived on being organized and having a sense of control. But lately she was always playing catch-up. All of her daily brainpower went into scheduling the right tech for the right job. She never had time to invest in training. To learn something new. To read her emails. To slow things down and regain a sense of control.
“I felt stuck. I felt like I couldn’t grow,” Heindl said. “I knew I was smart and that I could do other things and help in other ways. But there was no room because they needed me and my full brainpower to do that one thing: Manage the schedule.”
That morning, she attended the daily tech meeting. But she had to leave early because she kept getting alerts on her phone.
“Booked this job.”
“Another job booked.”
“Can we fit this job in today?"
She rushed to her desk and started mapping the schedule. She knew she needed to prioritize membership customers. That certain emergencies took precedence over others. That she had to pair her hot-hand techs with the high-ticket jobs, and optimize their schedules. She was trying to focus. But the alerts kept coming in.
“Booked this job.”
“Another job booked.”
Heindl was panicked. It felt like all eyes were on her. She knew her role as dispatcher was critical in this moment, and she wanted to rise to the occasion. But by mid-morning, she noticed a shocking conclusion: They were already overbooked.
Just then, All Comfort’s general manager, Nick Chacos, stopped by her desk.
“Hey, how’s it going?” he asked.
Heindl took one look at Chacos. And then she started to cry.
Easing the burden
After that chaotic heatwave, Chacos searched for a dispatching solution.
Heindl had finally opened up to him, explaining that it felt like she wasn’t good at her job and that every day felt like survival. He knew it wasn’t her fault. It was the heavy workload. The easiest solution, he figured, was to hire another dispatcher.
But then he saw a video from ServiceTitan’s Pantheon 2022 that talked about Titan Intelligence (TI). TI is a suite of artificial intelligence (AI) software solutions that leverages the power of AI and the data of ServiceTitan customers (with their consent), and informs and optimizes decisions in contracting businesses based on data, in real time.
One of those new solutions was a smart dispatching product called Dispatch Pro.
Chacos was intrigued. He looked into it, and learned that Dispatch Pro could help All Comfort pair the right tech with the right job, automate efficient routing, save gas money, increase revenue, and most importantly, ease the burden on Heindl—all with the help of AI.
“The more research I did, the more it sounded exactly like the solution that would improve the quality of life for our dispatcher,” Chacos said. “It was taking the emotion out of our dispatching and allowing us just to use raw data.”
He shared his findings with Heindl.
“Keep an open mind,” Chacos told her. “This is just an idea.”
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Here to help—not replace
Naturally, Heindl’s first thoughts when All Comfort committed to Dispatch Pro was, “Oh my gosh, you're trying to kick me out. You're taking away my control. You're taking away my job.”
But throughout onboarding, ServiceTitan stressed a different message: Dispatch Pro is here to help you, not replace you.
Still, Heindl was wary.
“I literally thought, ‘There is no way this is going to work,’” Heindl said. “I was aggressively skeptical. The Dispatch Pro team and ServiceTitan absolutely had to prove themselves to me.”
The first “prove it” moment for Heindl was scheduling. The task that had required all of her daily brainpower was surprisingly eased by a software that now assigned every job, taking into account the right tech, route optimization and idle time.
Heindl was impressed. On top of that, she enjoyed receiving technician KPI emails from Dispatch Pro that explained the software’s reasoning. Those insights opened her eyes to things she ’d missed.
For example, Dispatch Pro identified one of All Comfort’s quietest techs as a high-performer. This tech had great technical knowledge and provided good customer service. But sometimes, he’d get a little too techy with customers and with Heindl, leading to a frustrating communication style. That’s how Heindl always viewed him—smart, quiet, but sometimes difficult to work with.
“I would carry that negative feeling over to the next day and the next day. What I wasn’t seeing was this tech was killing it on three jobs a day. He had high-ticket items and was doing a great job,” Heindl said. “Dispatch Pro made it easy to see the positives and forget about the negatives. It also made it so I have time to get more technical knowledge so that I can have those technical conversations with (that tech).”
But the true “prove it” moment that solidified Heindl’s opinion on Dispatch Pro came a few months after All Comfort went live.
“I went on vacation for the first time in a long time,” she said. “And when I got back, the place wasn't burnt to the ground.”
‘Literally been life-changing’
Recently, Heindl awoke to the first cold snap of the fall of 2023. She turned on her furnace—just like everyone else in Madison—and went to work. Many calls came in to kick off what would become a busy week. And Heindl wasn’t stressed.
“In the past, I would be worked up about who would be the best technician and where (the job) was located,” Heindl said. “Now, I just come in and let Dispatch Pro do its thing.”
Heindl said that the dispatching part of her brain has been set free. She now has time to look into follow-ups, return trips and dig into warranty claims. She’s been able to learn more about the technical side of HVAC systems and not rely so much on her techs. She has time to make small talk with people in the office instead of being locked at her desk. She feels caught up, organized and in control.
“I feel like I'm growing as a person in my career now. I'm able to retain stuff because I'm not in that fight-or-flight stressed-out mindset,” Heindl said. “(Dispatch Pro) has literally been life-changing.”
The other beneficiaries of Dispatch Pro’s success are All Comfort’s customers and the business itself. That’s what Heindl tells other companies when they reach out and ask about her experiences with Dispatch Pro. Many are skeptical, just like she was. Many are looking for a long-term dispatching solution, just like Chacos was. Heindl tries to explain that she was once in their shoes.
She never knows if they end up moving forward with the software. But she feels bad for them if they don’t.
“It feels like they're still heating their home with a wood fireplace. Like, ‘No, we don’t need a furnace. We’re going to chop our own wood.’”
AI is the way of the future, Heindl continued. So why wait?
“If you want to use your rotary dial phones and wood stoves, whatever,” she said. “That’s not going to propel your company into the next century.”
