Time. For years, in the demanding world of garage door service, it was the one thing dispatchers rarely had enough of. The board was a constant puzzle, technicians needed to be happy, and customers expected seamless service. Adam Cronenberg, COO and partner at Besser Garage Door, knows this challenge intimately. With a wealth of experience scaling businesses and optimizing ServiceTitan, he understood the art and the often-tedious science of dispatching.
"Dispatching's more of an art than a science," Adam explains. "You can tell when it's really good, you can tell when it's really bad, but it's really subjective in between there."
Adam sees the dispatcher as the "quarterback" of the company, making sure everything runs correctly, calling the plays, and dishing out the ball to the "star wide receivers" (the technicians). He believes a truly strong dispatcher has a profoundly positive impact, not just on external customers, but on the internal team as well. Yet, before Dispatch Pro, this crucial role was often bogged down by the mechanical, time-consuming aspects of manual routing and job assignments. Many dispatchers, Adam notes, simply "click and drag with no rhyme or reason," relying on intuition rather than data. This left little time for the vital human elements of the job – supporting technicians, communicating with customers, and ensuring a positive experience.
Enter ServiceTitan Dispatch Pro.
Dispatch Pro leverages data and Titan Intelligence to run thousands of scenarios, identifying the best technician for every job. For Besser Garage Door, this meant a significant shift, freeing up their dispatcher to focus on what truly matters.
"The goal that we had in looking at Dispatch Pro was how can we free up our dispatcher to give more time for them to focus on that important stuff," Adam stated. Importantly, Adam is keen to dispel any fears about AI replacing human roles. "Those dispatchers that hear, 'Hey, we're thinking about adopting this. Is this going to take my job?' There's a fear that AI is going to take over. You need a dispatcher to run Dispatch Pro." He views the technology as a powerful assistant, not a substitute.
From Good to Great: Tangible Impacts at Besser
The results for Besser Garage Door have been clear and impactful. Dispatch Pro has allowed their operations to scale without adding stress to their current dispatchers, or needing to hire more.
"When we started, I want to say we had six service technicians on it, and now we're up to 15, and I still have plenty of bandwidth left in my dispatching department before I would look at bringing somebody else in," Adam shared. This efficiency has become a key factor in their strategy for expansion, including moving into new markets and adding Saturday service. "We were like, 'We need someone to dispatch the calls... Are we going to hire somebody else?' And that was a lot more expensive proposition than investing in Dispatch Pro."
Beyond the numbers, Dispatch Pro has fostered a more equitable and data-driven approach to job assignment for technicians. The system constantly evaluates job urgency, technician skills, and optimal routing, ensuring fairness and maximizing efficiency even when dispatchers are at lunch or in meetings. This eliminates the "perception" of unfair job distribution, allowing technicians to trust the system.
"It's constantly doing that work behind the scenes saying, 'Is this the best job right now to send this guy to based on all the inputs?'" Adam said. This allows the dispatcher to focus on the truly human aspects: "The work of assigning jobs and reading them and trying to look at the history and predicting in your mind what that job's going to be and who's going to be best at it. That time goes away because it's doing that for you. And it allows your dispatcher to really focus on building up and supporting the technician and making sure that that customer is being communicated with." He even recalls a time when technicians thought he was giving them better schedules, even when he wasn't, simply because of his presence – a testament to the power of that human connection.
The Learning Curve: A Journey to Optimization
Implementing Dispatch Pro isn't a "set it and forget it" solution, Adam notes. It's an ongoing process of refinement and understanding. He emphasizes the importance of a solid ServiceTitan setup, as Dispatch Pro can highlight areas where data inputs or configurations might be less than optimal. This "health check," as ServiceTitan's Vincent Payen calls it, forces businesses to optimize their core processes.
"Dispatch Pro is one of those things where you want to make sure your core product and setup is done correctly," Adam advises. "If you take the time to actually use it, you will get amazing results. But it takes involvement and dedication."
Even with minor adjustments and continuous learning about non-job events, zones, and capacity planning, the benefits have been immediate and ongoing.
"Almost immediately... we did see an uptick," Adam confirms, highlighting improvements in customer service and technician satisfaction. The process involved transparent communication with the dispatchers, assuring them this was an investment in them, not a threat. "We went in and showed our dispatcher Dispatch Pro... We were saying, 'This is not taking your job... We're making a tool to invest in you to make you more effective so that you can have a bigger impact on the organization.'"
The Results: Enhanced Efficiency, Increased Revenue, and a Future of Optimized Service
Since implementing Dispatch Pro, Besser Garage Door has experienced significant improvements in key performance indicators, alongside general benefits seen by other residential contractors using the solution.
For Besser Garage Door, Dispatch Pro has been a catalyst for remarkable growth and efficiency:
30% increase in average ticket
9% increase in sold lead ratio
"What a cool revenue driver of, “I have capacity," Adam enthuses, envisioning a future where Dispatch Pro further integrates with other aspects of ServiceTitan, allowing the system to identify spare capacity and automatically generate targeted marketing campaigns. "That micro-targeted, literally, 'The guy is at your neighbor today from 8 to 10. We will give you a 50% off service for your annual tune-up if you book today. Here's the link.'"
Beyond Besser Garage Door's specific achievements, Dispatch Pro delivers substantial benefits for the average residential contractor:
We crunched the numbers*: a typical job visit involves 36.19 minutes of drive time, and technicians spend an astounding 266.34 hours idling per year. Dispatch Pro's smart technician routing and advanced algorithms significantly reduce these inefficiencies, ensuring technicians are dispatched to jobs that minimizes their drive time and maximizes their results.
The results speak for themselves for residential contractors using Dispatch Pro:
10% decrease in drive time per visit
21% reduction in idle time
2x dispatcher efficiency
Imagine the impact on your bottom line if you could minimize drive and idle time to complete more jobs every year with the team you already have in place. Dispatch Pro makes it possible, allowing businesses to maximize their existing resources and unlock new revenue opportunities. For Besser Garage Door, it's been more than just a tool for assigning jobs; it's been a testament to how the right technology can truly revolutionize a business.
