How ServiceTitan helps Chipper Plumbing and Radiant ‘blaze their own trail’

Getting laid off is scary. 

Getting laid off on the same day as your father? That’s unique. 

But that’s exactly what happened to Josh Allred, who’d worked at the same plumbing company as his dad for years. 

“So, what do you do when you don't know what the hell you're doing and you're afraid?” Allred said. “You go out and you buy a couple tools.”

Together, Allred and his dad did more than buy a couple of tools: In 2013, they founded Allred’s Plumbing & Radiant in King County, Wash., a residential service and repair company. Recently, they rebranded to Chipper Plumbing and Radiant.

Chipper has five trucks on the road, and brought in $2.4 million in revenue last year alone. But Allred isn’t done growing the company. To build on its success, the company acquired one of its best tools by joining ServiceTitan, the all-in-one software built for the trades. 

“We kept hitting this ceiling where we tried to grow and we'd get bounced back down, and it always came down to a process issue,” Allred said. “Because of what I can set up in ServiceTitan, I really feel like I can build proper processes now and have them automated, easy to understand, and I can know they're getting done (properly).”

There’s a lot of money to be saved in working more efficiently: By the end of this year, Allred said the company is ready to add up to three new trucks to its fleet, and hit $3.2 million in sales. 

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Knowing your pricebook

In the early days of their company, Allred would show up to a job site in a printed T-shirt and Carhartts while his dad made sales and worked the phones back in the office. They didn’t have a roadmap for how to run a business—after all, their experience was in the trades. 

The software they were using at the time wasn’t doing them any favors, either. According to Allred, calculating job costs was a “very difficult and time-consuming” process, and the reporting features were mediocre at best.

“(We) didn't have tracking, (we) didn't have alerts,” he said. “A lot of the reporting in the old software was basic. You just kind of had to read (reports) and go, ‘Okay, well, this is how they calculate it and we just have to know that and account for it.’”

But things changed for the better when Chipper joined ServiceTitan in September 2022. Now, Allred has tools to move faster and more accurately when quoting and planning projects. The estimate builder especially stands out. 

“In about five minutes, I can have a professional-looking task for (techs) to present, with pictures and everything,” Allred said. “I know how much I’m paying out for materials and labor before (techs) even present something.”

And if a customer wants a special fixture—which happens often in residential business— Allred’s team can easily add the item to an estimate. Making it even simpler is ServiceTitan’s Pricebook Pro, which dynamically updates prices when the market rises and falls. 

“I can make sure that my costs are covered before we even present something on some of the bigger projects,” Allred said. “I just click the button and I know what to expect.”

Winning with software

While Chipper has been using ServiceTitan for only around six months, the team has already embraced many of its features to streamline the business. Here are some of their favorite tools:

• Marketing Pro: Chipper recently started using ServiceTitan’s Marketing Pro to enhance its customer relationships. The software allows Allred’s team to automate marketing emails, see how their Google Ads are performing, track unsold estimates and even respond to customer reviews. 

• Inventory: Instead of being in the dark when it comes to truck replenishment, Chipper’s team relies on ServiceTitan’s inventory feature. By keeping accurate records of what’s leaving the shop, Allred said he can “really lean up my purchasing by only buying what we’re selling.”

• Customer relationship management: Say goodbye to disorganized customer records. ServiceTitan keeps all customer information and job histories in one easily accessible place. It also can record customer calls, which has helped Allred better support his customer service reps if there’s an issue, and gives techs the chance to listen to calls before arriving on site.

While he’s a fan of these features, Allred is especially fond of monitoring Chipper’s Titan Score, which evaluates if the company is utilizing the platform to its fullest potential. To him, it’s actually pretty fun to watch.

“Everybody makes fun of me about the Titan Score, but I'm trying to hit that leaderboard,” he laughed. “I hover right around 200 points.”

A ‘desire to improve’

When Allred thinks back on his career before Chipper, he remembers feeling antsy at that old plumbing company. 

“There wasn’t much drive for growth over there,” he said. “It was just, we go in, fix things and we move on.”

But Allred is an optimist—just look at his company’s name, a deliberate play on the word happiness. His desire to continuously grow has led to Chipper’s success, and it's a trait he sees in ServiceTitan, too.

“The thing I love about ServiceTitan the most is not even something to do with a specific area of the software,” he said. “What it ends up being is their desire to improve.”

For example, when he first started using ServiceTitan, he spent two hours trying to make automatic tags for purchase orders, so his office team would know when an order arrived. A week later, he got a note from ServiceTitan saying the platform released that very update. 

“Another one that happened is when I went, ‘Man I really want to barcode all of my trucks and all of my warehouses so (techs) don’t have to type in all their materials all the time.’ Guess what? Bam, they’re coming out with barcodes this year.”

This cycle of improvement is important to Allred. After all, he doesn’t view Chipper as solely a plumbing and radiant-heat company. He wants it to be a fulfilling place to work, a place people want to see succeed. It’s his way of creating a legacy for his family—and beyond.  ServiceTitan simply allows Allred and his father to accomplish their dreams a little faster.

“We wanted to blaze our own trails,” he said. “So that's what we did.”