Worried about making the jump to ServiceTitan? Why two companies say it’s worth it

Two years ago, MaKayla Backer sat in an interview for a job she really wanted: a front office role at J.E. Shekell, a residential and commercial HVAC, plumbing and electric company in Evansville, Indiana.

But when the interviewer showed her the field service software they used, Backer was concerned. It was slow, crashed all of the time, and was only accessible from the computers in the office—making it impossible to work from home. 

Fortunately, Backer would only have to use the software for a few months. In July 2022, J.E. Shekell made the switch to ServiceTitan—and Backer was soon booking appointments faster, scheduling techs efficiently and running detailed reports with a few clicks. 

“(The old software) was a dinosaur,” Backer said. “ServiceTitan has been wonderful, it makes our job simpler and easier to get from point A to B (...). It is so much less stressful.”

Efficiency isn’t the only thing that’s on the rise: ServiceTitan has been key in growing and managing the company’s HVAC maintenance membership program. 

“We’ve been able to triple our number of memberships,” Backer said. “We’re able to keep track of them easier, (and) schedule them more efficiently through ServiceTitan. We can see when all of our memberships are due to be scheduled, and send out reminders to customers.”

Trade workarounds for software that works

Cameron Kinnally’s first reaction to ServiceTitan was much different. The director of administration at PIERCE Property Services—a Boston-area exterior building, maintenance and restoration company—had heard that her company was joining ServiceTitan in February 2023. 

And she wasn’t thrilled. 

“We were pretty terrified at first,” Kinnally said. “I was like, ‘This (software) is going to be a nightmare. This is the worst idea ever.’” 

But deep down, Kinnally knew PIERCE needed to update its tech. She was tired of using creative workarounds to get anything done within their old software, and often used other applications to handle scheduling, job costing and estimates.

Fast-forward to today, Kinnally’s job has been revolutionized by ServiceTitan.

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Instead of using Excel to manually schedule techs, Kinnally uses ServiceTitan’s dispatch board, which makes it easier to visualize the day’s appointments and assign techs quickly. Instead of techs Slacking her photos and notes from a job, they now upload job histories, photos and voice notes from the field directly to the job file. Plus, techs can clock in and out of jobs while still onsite, which has improved PIERCE’s job costing capabilities.

“Now, we have very accurate time (for) job data,” Kinnally said. “That’s a 100 percent difference—we basically didn’t have job costing before.”

Fly through your to-do list

ServiceTitan’s suite of tools were designed to help techs and the front office work faster. But there are a few features built solely to delight customers:

• Phones Pro: “There’s no way you could expect anyone to remember exactly what they said on every phone call,” Backer said. But since J.E. Shekell started using cloud-based Phones Pro, Backer can now listen to recorded calls to sort out customer issues quickly, and further train dispatchers and reps. 

• Pricebook Pro: Tired of manually updating its pricebook, but still wanting to protect its profit margins, J.E. Shekell uses Pricebook Pro, which automatically adjusts the company’s pricebook as costs fluctuate. “We don't have to go in and put everything in ourselves to make sure our prices are correct,” Backer said. “That is all done for us, which is awesome because that's a full-time job on its own.”

• Technician bios: Elevate your customers’ experience through automated appointment reminders, complete with a photo and bio of the techs assigned to the job. For Backer, this extra personalization has helped J.E. Shekell cement “lifelong customers.”

Proactive support

Backer and Kinnally both agree that using ServiceTitan has helped them move faster in their day-to-day work, but getting used to the software isn’t something that happens overnight. Moving over old data, setting up workflows and educating employees takes time.

But thanks to a thorough onboarding program and designated customer support reps, Backer and Kinnally never felt lost when learning ServiceTitan.

“(ServiceTitan’s) customer service and the amount of support that (they provide) is phenomenal,” Backer said. “You don’t ever have to sit there and figure something out for yourself. If you look for (an answer) and you can’t find it, you can get help right away.”

For users like Kinnally, who once dreaded using ServiceTitan, that white-glove customer service has made it easier to learn the software—and reap the benefits sooner.

“(Our) onboarding reps are the best customer service people I've ever seen in my life, for any software,” Kinnally said. “I just can't say enough good things about (ServiceTitan’s) support teams.”