Forty-thousand dollars.
That’s the annual potential benefit that ServiceTitan’s Field Pro could provide each technician at Chesapeake Electric in Annapolis, Maryland.
Forty-thousand actual dollars. Merely with the 10% increase in close rate and the observed increase in average ticket achieved with Chesapeake’s standard sales process, which Chesapeake refers to as “bookmarks.”
“Gold nuggets are available to them within the Field Pro product,” Chesapeake president and founder Ryan Deshaies said. “I think it’s great what Field Pro can do for the company.”
An add-on to Service Titan, the cloud-based software for the trades, Field Pro allows a business to record, with the customer’s permission, an interaction between the technician and the customer. Titan Intelligence—ServiceTitan’s AI—then assesses the discussions based on standards/bookmarks input by Chesapeake, and gives each conversation a scorecard.
“We ran the math,” Deshaies said. “And with a 90% bookmark adherence based upon their average sale and their close rate, if you increase their close rate 10%, that's an extra $40,000 in their payroll for the year,” Deshaies said
The business benefits, the team benefits. Most important, the customer benefits.
“It gives a better customer experience, and the technicians have a better experience as well,” Deshaies said. “When a technician leaves the home, they feel good about the level of service that you've provided. That's what's going to bring you joy in your career. Field Pro helps us accomplish that.”
Having an impact
Deshaies opened Chesapeake in 2014, three years after he started working on his own.
“I never thought I would start a business,” he said. “But I started this one because I wanted to have the same impact on other people that I had on my own career.”
For five years, Chesapeake used QuickBooks, paper tickets, Google calendar for schedules and a carbon-copy paper ticket system. Deshaies admits the system was antiquated, and his interest in technology led him to upgrade. He was introduced to ServiceTitan in 2019, and started his journey with the software that same year.
“You don’t know what you’re missing,” he said, “until the solution is presented to you.”
When Chesapeake started using the software, service was 15% of its revenue and generated, in Deshaies’ words, a few hundred thousand. Now Chesapeake is a 100% service business that expects to take in $8 million in 2025.
“There’s such a huge gap between ServiceTitan and every other field service software,” he said.
Deshaies has explored ServiceTitan’s Pro products, finding benefits from Marketing Pro, Dispatch Pro and Scheduling Pro.
Field Pro, which provides key information to technicians, streamlines workflows and integrates with the entire ServiceTitan system, was the most recent addition.
“We’re able to use a best-practice system that’s integrated into Field Pro, and it monitors how well we’re performing against that,” Deshaies said. “We'll make more progress in three months than we would make in three to five years without that product, just because we're able to fine-tune and see what's really going on in the field and help better support our technicians and their advancement.”
A process–and an opportunity
Deshaies maximizes Field Pro by clearly explaining its processes to Chesapeake’s team. Technicians then are expected to utilize the process. Through AI, the scorecards provide insights about individuals and the team as a whole. That provides a great coaching opportunity for all.
“There is absolutely one-to-one training, but when you’re having a team meeting, we’re talking about team growth,” he said.
Chesapeake is careful about using the reviews in a positive manner. Deshaies said its goal isn’t to sell per se, but to listen to the customer and meet their needs.
“It's all on the customer to let us know, based upon the questions we ask, what they're looking to accomplish,” he said. “You reward the technicians and you train based on the information you receive.”
In just 30 days, Deshaies said, Chesapeake saw a 5% increase in adherence to the standards in its in-home process. Overall, Deshaies said bookmark adherence is at 60%. Seeing that figure led him to do the calculations, using data provided by ServiceTitan, that produced the $40,000 figure.
“That’s not smoke and mirrors,” Deshaies said. “That’s hard data.”
Chesapeake’s desire to be great
Deshaies talked of a friend who has a plumbing/HVAC business, but does not use Field Pro. Deshaies said he advised continuing that way would keep him from reaching where he wants to be.
“The only bad thing to do is to not do anything at all when it comes to Field Pro,” Deshaies said. “I can't imagine operating our business right now without having that in place.
“We're really not focused on being good, we really want to be great. Without ServiceTitan, we wouldn't be able to deliver the service that our customers expect.”
