Dispatching for home services takes dedicated employees who know how to allocate your company’s resources effectively with speed and efficiency, while also handling a multitude of other tasks. But what if you could cut their workload in half and give them more time to help drive revenue for your business?
That’s exactly what Emi Woodall, Director of Implementation for Aire Serv of Tipton County, Memphis, and Jackson, discovered since adding ServiceTitan Dispatch Pro to her toolbox six months ago. Her Aire Serv is part of Downing Management, which also includes Glass Doctor, Molly Maid, and Five Star Painting, and is projected to reach $33 million this year.
“Our job opportunity average across the eight locations has increased by $87,” says Woodall, and the capacity for her eight dispatchers has more than doubled. “We've had some really great success with Dispatch Pro.”
Dispatch Pro, part of ServiceTitan’s suite of Pro Products, automates much of the dispatching process by assigning the best opportunities to the best technicians using real-time data, proprietary algorithms, and machine learning for the best results. While Dispatch Pro works to maximize revenue for your service business, dispatchers can focus more on helping customers and assisting crews.
“It makes it so much easier for our dispatchers to get everything done because they're not constantly having to choose the right tech for the right job,” Woodall says. “And when a call comes in, they don't immediately have to get it assigned. Dispatch Pro does it for them, and the technician is able to keep rolling. It just makes everything flow so much better.”
In a recent webinar, we introduce Dispatch Pro to Neighborly, the world’s largest franchisor in the home services space, with 27 brands and more than 5,500 franchises earning $4.1 billion in system-wide sales in 2023.
“Dispatch Pro has huge potential for franchisees. Whether you’re a small shop with just a few technicians or a larger one with dozens of techs, this tool allows you to work smarter, not harder,” says Brett Kawanami, ServiceTitan Strategic Pro Account Manager.
Let’s take a look.
Changes in Dispatching
In the past, companies relied on their dispatchers to know and do everything, from monitoring activity in the office and mapping efficient routes to sending the right tech with the best skills or closing rates to convert more sales.
“Anytime you're using a system that relies a lot on human knowledge, there will naturally be some kind of human bias. Or you might have favorites, people who historically were great, but who knows where they are this month,” Kawanami says. “You really want to make sure you're not playing favorites, and if this is actually the best person for the job.”
Today, companies may use rules-based dispatching, where they dispatch jobs based on a specific technician batting order. Using technician data to assign the batting order gives you some visibility into the process, but it may not account for all of your job types and skills or alert you to a tech who may be slipping or falling behind. It also won’t tell you if the dispatcher is playing favorites with some techs over others.
With data-driven and AI-powered dispatching, you can harness the power of Dispatch Pro to partner with your dispatchers, ease their load, and allow them to provide better customer care.
“We're not trying to replace dispatchers, we're actually trying to partner with them,” Kawanami says. “There’s just so much math to calculate, all these different scenarios and drive time, and what's the profitability potential of this job?
“We can let computers do the things they're good at, but then let your dispatchers, the humans, do what they're good at. The computer is the IQ, and the people are the EQ side of Dispatch Pro,” he adds. “There are so many ways we can let both sides do what they're good at to increase the overall outcome.”
The #1 newsletter for the trades.
Dispatching Difficulties
Dispatching for home services can be a complex job that requires excellent multitasking and problem-solving skills. Essentially, decisions made by dispatchers can determine how much revenue your business earns.
But it becomes difficult for dispatchers to do their jobs well when they lack visibility into job details and real-time data on technician performance. This can result in missed opportunities, job callbacks, too much time driving, and poor customer service.
“Make sure you are sending the right technicians to the right job,” Kawanami says. “That way, you can maximize potential revenue, maximize your technician's time, reduce stress and time on your dispatcher, and drive a great customer experience.”
Recognizing how critical the dispatching role is to the home services industry, we developed Dispatch Pro as a tool dispatchers can use to perform their jobs at an even higher level.
“Making sure your dispatchers are performing at their peak can mean the difference between sending a tech who will sell a $300 service charge or someone who will be able to sell a $10,000 install job,” Kawanami says. “That’s the difference we're really trying to capitalize on.”
Dispatch Pro: The 3 Pillars
Dispatch Pro works for all sizes of companies, as long as the business’s priority is maximizing revenue, and not simply scheduling routes. Dispatch Pro uses your own ServiceTitan data to assign the best tech and maximize profitability based on the following three pillars:
Elevate customer experiences
Increase dispatcher efficiency
Maximize profitability
1. Elevate customer experiences
Rather than staying micro-focused on the job board, Dispatch Pro gives dispatchers the freedom to spend time updating customers, taking care of technicians, or making adjustments on the fly.
2. Increase dispatcher efficiency
Dispatchers no longer need to guess about tech performance or manually double-check routes. With Dispatch Pro to calculate the heavy loads, dispatchers gain efficiency and can spend more time on what really matters—your customers and crews.
3. Maximize profitability
Using data-based decision-making, Dispatch Pro chooses the right technician with the right skills to maximize profitability based on factors such as the technician's recent sales performance, their skills, their drive time, and the profit potential of the job.
Kawanami says one West Coast client with about 15 locations gained so much efficiency through Dispatch Pro, they were able to send technicians to one additional job from each location.
“Can you imagine that for your business? What would that revenue impact be?” Kawanami asks. “That's the power of utilizing Dispatch Pro.”
Power of Dispatch Pro
With more than 300 customers on Dispatch Pro, ServiceTitan conducted a recent survey to see what kind of results businesses are getting. Here’s a snapshot:
2x increase in capacity per dispatcher
13% median increase in revenue growth
5% median increase in average ticket
While the latter two stats focus on revenue increases, the first one means Dispatch Pro cuts in half the time dispatchers previously spent on dispatching duties, so they can refocus on crucial business operations, like assisting customers and techs.
“What we've seen is that our customers are able to scale up beyond the usual 10 to 20 techs per dispatcher. We've seen that go up to 50, and even 75, depending on your processes,” Kawanami says.
Kawanami shared some other exciting stats for Dispatch Pro, including:
11% year-over-year increase in sold lead ratio for Dispatch Pro customers, compared to 5% for non-Dispatch Pro customers.
48% year-over-year increase in total technicians, compared to 17% for non- Dispatch Pro customers.
6% year-over-year increase in total revenue for Dispatch Pro customers.
4% year-over-year increase in average ticket, compared to 2% for non-Dispatch Pro customers.
Woodall says her dispatchers love Dispatch Pro, especially since they’re no longer getting hounded by technicians to assign them the best jobs.
“Our dispatchers are not playing favorites because everything is data-based,” Woodall says. “Every bit of information that's going into ServiceTitan is based on the performance of that technician, and that’s what determines the jobs they go to, not the dispatcher. Our dispatchers have had so much less stress.”
They also gained more time to focus on other aspects of the business as well as learn more about utilizing the full power of ServiceTitan.
“If our dispatchers are running behind, they're not having to do all of the other things like making sure all the calls are assigned, and they're able to keep our customers more informed,” Woodall says. “And ServiceTitan has so many cool features…like capacity planning, technician shifts schedules, the tags, the skill levels, all of those things play a huge part in Dispatch Pro.
“If you have all of these things set up correctly and you figure out the flow, this product, it's like none other,” Woodall says. “It's so helpful for our business.”
How to Use Dispatch Pro
In her live demo of Dispatch Pro, ServiceTitan Senior Solutions Engineer Jenny Nguyen explains how the tool works and describes a few possible scenarios where it can help lighten the load.
Scenario #1: Dispatch Pro auto-assigns jobs
“Anytime your CSRs book out the job, typically they're not assigning a technician. It gets booked out and it goes into the unassigned tray,” Nguyen explains. “With Dispatch Pro, it's going to automatically pull that job from the unassigned tray and automatically assign it to a technician.
“Once that automatically gets assigned, then Dispatch Pro continues to reoptimize every 10 minutes, running thousands of scenarios and simulations, all while ensuring that every job is up-to-date.”
Scenario #2: Job is running too long
Delays can happen on certain jobs, and your techs just need to notify the front office when they’re running behind.
“From there, all dispatchers need to do is extend the job and, within 10 minutes of reoptimization, Dispatch Pro is going to take that job that's overlapping and it's going to move it over to another technician who is available,” Nguyen says.
Scenario #3: Tech calls in sick and all jobs must be rescheduled
Once the dispatcher inputs the tech as absent for the day, Dispatch Pro automatically takes the rest of the jobs and disperses them to other technicians who are available and have capacity, rescheduling the entire job board within minutes.
Nguyen says Dispatch Pro works to increase revenue per technician per hour, assign the right technician for the right job, and maximize every job opportunity.
“It reoptimizes every 10 minutes and within those 10 minutes, it's playing chess, moving those pieces around, and finding the perfect fit for your technicians,” Woodall says. “It looks at technician skill sets, the arrival windows, the availability of the technicians, and then most importantly, that predicted revenue.”
To use the full power of Dispatch Pro, Nguyen recommends fine-tuning technician skill sets, service zones, and your arrival window times within the ServiceTitan app. Skill sets ensure the right tech gets assigned, service zones keep drive times in check, and arrival windows improve customer satisfaction.
“Dispatch Pro takes away that manual guesswork that all your dispatchers have to do on a day-to-day basis,” Nguyen says. “It really allows them to focus on the art of dispatching, such as calling customers back, rescheduling, maybe checking some parts for the warehouse, and then most importantly, just being able to be more proactive in communicating with technicians.
“You still have full autonomy over your dispatch board,” she emphasizes. “Even though it's utilizing AI to match the right technician to the right job and reshuffle these jobs throughout the day, the most important piece is anytime you want to intervene or make any changes, you can simply autolock a job by dragging it over to another technician or just turning off Dispatch Pro for that job entirely.”
>>Find more tips on how to use Dispatch Pro by watching the full Neighborly webinar here.
Dispatch Pro is part of ServiceTitan’s suite of pro products, all designed to work together to help businesses grow by automating and leveraging the real-time data they already collect as part of the core package.
From generating leads to booking jobs, assigning technicians, selling on the job, managing fleets, and remarketing to customers, ServiceTitan Pro Products cover the entire workflow.
In last month’s webinar, we unlocked the power of Marketing Pro for Neighborly contractors. Stay tuned for the next Neighborly webinar on Fleet Pro.
