Interstate AC was tired of living in the past.
The HVAC company that is 90% commercial was “kind of stuck in the old days” with their old software, according to Kitty Dunn, Interstate’s Dispatch Manager.
“We were really excited to find something that pushed us into the 21st century,” Dunn said.
Dunn had come to Interstate AC after working three years for Mike Williams Plumbing, Heating & Air Conditioning, a residential-based business that had been using ServiceTitan. When she moved to Interstate after a move to Nashville, she brought her knowledge of the cloud-based software for the trades with her.
“I told them how much I really loved the product,” Dunn said. “Loved the processes, procedures, how everything was housed in there, and that ServiceTitan continually keeps improving the software.
“(ServiceTitan doesn’t) stand for status quo.”
Dunn did not waver, even though she knew there was a significant difference in emphasis and process between residential and commercial businesses. Buoyed by her knowledge of and belief in ServiceTitan, Interstate AC added the software in January 2022—and has not looked back.
“I think just the processes that can be put into place to make a commercial company work really well are leaps and bounds from any system that I have seen,” Dunn said.
And she said that while ServiceTitan originally was written as a residential-based software, over time it has worked to adapt itself to commercial use and listened to its commercial customers. And she can see the results.
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“What ServiceTitan offers for a commercial customer, even being residential based, has been awesome,” she said. “The fact that ServiceTitan is continuously improving is a huge deal. We want to stay relative with our competitors without constantly having to switch softwares. ServiceTitan has given us that ability because it’s always taking into consideration what the customers want.”
Dunn took a bit of a meandering route to the trades. She went to college to be a paralegal, but didn’t find a fit in that career. She’s always liked customer services, and found a job as a CSR with Mike Williams in Central Illinois. She grew in different jobs at different places, from Dispatcher to Lead Dispatcher to Operations Coordinator to Dispatch Manager at Interstate.
“I was looking for a job and found my passion,” she said.
Dunn said 90% of Interstate’s work is commercial. When it looked into switching softwares, it had been using tablets for only about a year, and much of the work was still done on paper. Two or three demos of ServiceTitan led to the final decision.
In explaining the benefits of ServiceTitan in a commercial application, Dunn gave a laundry list of positives. Among them:
Key information at techs’ fingertips
With ServiceTitan, the ability to upload documents, proposals, pictures and blueprints for major projects has added on-site efficiency.
“A lot of that is just so useful with our construction team,” Dunn said. “We'll do multimillion-dollar jobs and we have all these units to install, and they need to go in specific places. So for those guys to have all of that information at their fingertips has been amazing.”
Techs on a job know that when they arrive at the project, all information will be in the service agreement for that company. The office can also provide a full description of units affected, what time the customer is open (remember, it’s mainly commercial) and the on-site contact.
“It definitely has helped them not have to rely on calling into the office,” Dunn said.
Information includes equipment lists at the job site, the location profile (which was not available before ServiceTitan) and the PDF of the contract.
“It helps them be more efficient and self-reliant, which they enjoy,” Dunn said. “Being a commercial technician, they don’t really want to talk to the office, they just want to get to their job, get it done and move to the next.”
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Task management
All information and communication about a job stays with the job. “Even when you close it out, it’s still there, still findable,” Dunn said.
One example: Interstate AC keeps all its permit information linked to the project.
“When was their permit pulled?” she asked. “When did we do a final inspection or a rough-in inspection? Did it pass? Did it approve? We use that task management almost as a checklist without having to flip through all the paper that they had at one point. That’s been a huge thing.”
Dunn said Interstate can now submit a permit in seconds, as opposed to several minutes.
“When you are adding those five, 10 minutes up, that creates a lot of productivity.”
Overall increased efficiency
Let Dunn explain.
“We've been able to have individuals (on the office side) who have left the company to go back to school, (find) opportunities closer to their home, move out of state … different reasons,” she said. “Because our productivity is so high within the office, we've not had to replace that employee. We've been able to manage all of our tasks, and then some, in a much more efficient way.
“We save overhead all the time because we're able to work with less people within the company and get the same amount, if not more, work done.”
Simplified dispatch procedures
Interstate added what it calls a “dummy technician,” where it places all scheduled calls. It then calls up the dummy tech’s route, inputs the technician’s last address and finds the closest address for their next call.
The process utilizes ServiceTitan’s ability to store job sites and eliminates the need for Google maps and typing in addresses.
“That has helped proficiency and drive time tremendously,” Dunn said.
Major benefits don’t stop there
If there was an “aha moment” when Dunn and Interstate truly knew ServiceTitan was going to provide major benefits, it came when it was able to track projects with progress billing in new construction work. Anyone working projects and large jobs knows the benefit of progress billing, which invoices the bills for work as it is completed and avoids having to wait for all work to be finished before the company is paid.
Dunn didn’t stop there, though. She mentioned several other benefits ServiceTitan brings to commercial work, including:
Using zones to prioritize technicians for calls
Internal communication using task management
Allowing the sales team to place their own calls without calling in to sales or dispatch to place them.
Having calls routed through ServiceTitan
Tags to visually identify account details
Forms for techs that are triggered through tags, which means techs complete the forms and the rest of the team is aware of the progress
Smart logic on required forms, which produces check sheets pertinent to the work being done and tailors the questions to the specific work completed. “They're not having to look through 50 forms trying to find the form they need for that specific call,” Dunn said.
All factors add up to ease of use, peace of mind that information gets where it needs to be, and increased efficiencies.
“I've seen ServiceTitan make a lot of progress in commercial and trying to be more of a commercial mindset,” Dunn said. “It may not be the same workflow that a residential company uses, but we've been able to find a workflow that works well for us in that construction world by just thinking outside of the box a little bit.”
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