The brother-sister team running Beyer Plumbing, one of San Antonio's leading plumbing companies, thrives on competition. To drive the commercial side of their business to the top, James and Liz Beyer knew they needed the most technically advanced software system on the market.
“We looked for something that was going to grow with us, at the same time as they grow,” says James Beyer, Beyer Plumbing President. The company chose to partner with ServiceTitan Commercial Service Software in 2020. Today the Beyers continue to test out new products and features and provide feedback to help improve the software.
“One of the greatest things about ServiceTitan is transparency,” James says. “You get to see every single cost, every revenue, and everything is in real time. You're seeing exactly where everybody is, you get to see how much everything costs. We love that about the system. Efficiency is really huge for us.”
The family-owned Texas plumbing company employs 73, with about 60% of its business devoted to commercial construction and 40% to service for both commercial and residential plumbing customers.
“If water runs through it, we do it,” says Beyer Plumbing Vice President Liz Beyer.
Regardless of the scope of work, Beyer Plumbing relies on ServiceTitan to power both its commercial service and construction divisions. In a recent webinar, the Beyers explain how they use key commercial features and workflows to streamline tasks, manage projects with ease, and ensure success in every project, big or small.
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Why ServiceTitan Commercial Service Software?
Both James and Liz joined Beyer Plumbing in 2015, then spent the next five years learning the business from their father. They quickly discovered the company was still using the same antiquated software system it had been using for the past 20-plus years.
“We came from a system that was not easily manipulated,” says Liz. “It wasn't intuitive, and it wasn't easy to update. The pricebook was a headache, and there was hardly any transparency or reporting. We just got to the point where technology outgrew it, and our business outgrew it.”
Once the Beyers onboarded with ServiceTitan, they both dove in to take full advantage of everything ServiceTitan has to offer, including many of its Pro Products such as Pricebook Pro, Fleet Pro, Phones Pro, and Marketing Pro.
“Pricebook Pro is one of my favorite ones. We've had it for over a year,” says James. “Since we signed on and redid our pricebook, our revenue was able to grow an average 20% in both commercial service and residential service. And our average tickets have gone up 26% in commercial and 36% in residential.”
Liz says Phones Pro enabled Beyer Plumbing to easily manage business during the global pandemic in 2020, as well as the South Texas “snowmageddon” in 2021.
“We were able to pick up our laptops, take our headsets, and they were able to do everything from home like they were from the office. Everything connects via the Phones Pro, and that was a huge deal for us just to be able to work from anywhere,” Liz says. “Our customer service has kind of gone through the roof since we've been able to use it.”
With Marketing Pro, Liz says, the company tripled its Google reviews. In addition, ServiceTitan’s accounting features make it easy to track billing for every customer.
“We're starting to get paid within 37 days on average, which for a commercial business, that's pretty good,” Liz says. “It’s made us run so much more efficiently, so much more effectively, and really just helped us take our business to the next level.”
To recap, here are the three main value points Beyer Plumbing discovered with ServiceTitan Commercial Services Software:
1. Transparency & Reporting
With ServiceTitan, James can customize specific reports to land in his inbox on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.
“Reporting is very important for me because I like to see what's going on, what's happening, whether in real time or what happened last month. We have a lot of reports,” James says. And while you can create your own, you can also choose from prebuilt reports inside ServiceTitan.
Examples of reports that James schedules include:
Technician billable efficiency (daily)
Job gross margin (daily)
Open projects (weekly)
Jobs with cost, but no revenue (monthly)
“ServiceTitan has done a great job at creating a dashboard where you can see all these things in real time. It's all real-time data,” he says. “I look at how we spent our time that day, what kind of payments that were made, revenue that day, margins that day.”
Using the reporting available in Phones Pro and meshing it with analytics from Dialpad, Liz monitors KPIs for the CSR team based on call booking, memberships sold, missed calls, and call hold times.
“There are a bunch of different KPIs you could look at. Everything’s at your fingertips with ServiceTitan and Phones Pro,” Liz says.
2. Automation
Beyond the value he finds in automatically scheduling all of his reports, James says Beyer Plumbing also uses the customer-specific pricing automated feature in its pricebook for negotiating rates with certain customers.
“It gives us the ability to go in there, create a whole profile of that customer, what their markups will be on their materials, and what their hourly rate is,” he explains. “When that's applied to the bill or to the customer, anytime you go to that customer, that rate sheet's already picking up, so the technicians don't have to do anything, it's automatically doing that.
“Our commercial business is all done on time and material, so it makes it super easy for us when we do our billings,” he adds.
Beyer Plumbing also uses capacity planning automation to ensure they’re not overbooking, and Scheduling Pro to handle calls after hours.
Back in the office, Liz uses Task Management automation to assign tasks to CSRs to make happy calls or check with customers on unpaid invoices, or to notify service managers when inspections or building permits are needed.
“I absolutely cannot wait until Task Management is available for technicians,” Liz says. “Get on the bandwagon and tell ServiceTitan we need that for technicians! That'll be really huge for follow-ups and all kinds of things.
3. Managing Projects
Beyer Plumbing also takes advantage of new ServiceTitan features designed specifically for construction and commercial service providers on the Projects page, which includes Project Portfolio, Parent Projects, and Project Plan features.
“In ServiceTitan, if you have a project with multiple jobs or if you have multiple jobs, it turns into a project. Sometimes, they’re not real projects, but a lot of times they’re big commercial jobs. So this year, we implemented more of our commercial construction side of things into the projects,” James says. “We're helping them figure out what works, what doesn't work.”
The goal of the new Projects page is to help commercial contractors gain full visibility, accurate job costing and capacity data, as well as real-time project status updates when managing multifaceted projects.
Beyer has also started using ServiceTitan’s commercial service agreements to help sell more memberships, cultivate lifelong customers, and grow top-line revenue.
“ServiceTitan [commercial] has come a long way,” Liz says. “When we first started, there were so many workarounds that we had to do… And now, with all the development they've done over the past couple of years, it's really started to flow a lot better.”
Tools for Success
James and Liz offer some final advice for using ServiceTitan tools to fuel your own success.
First, look up your Titan Score and see how your company ranks when it comes to using the full functionality of ServiceTitan software. Recent data shows the higher your Titan Score, the bigger your growth. Right now, Beyer Plumbing ranks No. 2.
“When we came on, we decided if we're going to pay all this money to have ServiceTitan, we're going to use it to the full potential,” says James. “Liz and I are very competitive. So, we decided to take it upon ourselves to one day become No. 1.”
Like James, Liz also wanted to make sure Beyer Plumbing was utilizing ServiceTitan to the best of its abilities, so she completed the free, self-paced program to become a ServiceTitan-certified administrator.
“It tested my skills, because I don't get to be hands-on in every aspect of it all the time, and it made sure I still remembered things. But then, it also taught me new things I didn't know,” Liz says. “It’s a cool program.”
>>Ready to learn more about ServiceTitan commercial services features? See the latest announcements in our 2023 roadmap.
