It’s a simple concept: Enhancing the customer experience helps service businesses succeed. But when it comes to improving customer service strategies during the busy summer months, your hard-working CSRs and field technicians might need a little boost.
At ServiceTitan, we believe every job this summer is an opportunity to wow new customers and turn them into lifelong, loyal advocates. In a recent webinar, our customer service experts explain:
ServiceTitan features you can leverage to wow your customers
CSR and booking tips to provide great customer support
Creative ideas to maximize the customer experience
In the following recap, learn 10 tips and tricks to providing exceptional customer service in the summertime from Jessy Karolevitz, Call Center Director at Bonfe in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and Brittany Burgess, ServiceTitan Customer Advocacy Specialist.
1. Take the Mental Load Off
Taking the mental load off of your CSRs can help businesses improve the overall customer experience, Karolevitz says. CSRs must juggle multiple tasks throughout the day, from answering calls and capacity planning to booking jobs and delivering excellent customer service.
“What we don't think about is the mental load that puts on a CSR, to be going through four or five different screens with a customer, having to remember all of these things, and perform them at 110% on every call,” Karolevitz says.
Reduce their mental load by providing CSR scripts and automation to enhance their performance.
“It’s not scripting out every word for them, but scripting out the key points and key steps of a call that you want them to get so they don't have to think about what comes next,” Karolevitz says.
Then think about ways to automate the process. What steps can you automate? What tags can you automate? What skills can you automate? What business units can you automate by job types?
“Anything you can do to have them make fewer decisions makes their jobs so much easier,” she adds.
Implementing modern field service technology like ServiceTitan’s Phones Pro also enhances your team’s performance. This cloud-based call-answering system features live call transcripts to help CSRs stay on message and easily answer questions to boost the customer experience.
Phones Pro even monitors the quality of the customer’s call based on certain words or phrases, and labels each live call as positive, neutral, or negative. The call center manager can see that data in real time, and intervene on a live call if necessary.
2. Show Your Team Appreciation
Dealing with customers’ service concerns day-in and day-out takes a toll on your team, so be sure to show them as much appreciation as possible.
“If you can keep your team happy, you're going to keep your customers happy,” Karolevitz says.
At Bonfe, Karolevitz celebrates her team with treats on National Donut or Ice Cream Day, or daily games of Bingo with squares populated by tasks the CSRs must tackle throughout the day. The first to finish gets to stand up and yell, “Bingo!” and receive a prize.
“It's super fun to see the call center get into it, and then the managers run out of their office wondering what's going on,” Karolevitz says. “Just things to really help them feel loved, cared for, appreciated, and wanted at the office.”
Burgess says one of her previous employers allocated a summertime play fund for each team, giving $100 per person to do whatever the team chose to do. For the six CSRs in her call center, Burgess got to spend $600.
“I could bring them breakfast. I could run special contests. One year, we had the plumbing and HVAC divisions go to a baseball game together,” Burgess says.
Another unique way to show appreciation is to send gift baskets to the spouses of your field technicians, who are likely working long hours away from home during the busy summer months.
“That's something to keep in mind, just love on the spouses a little bit, too,” Burgess says.
3. Diversify Booking Options
When you give customers options for booking service how and when they want to, you’re not only creating a better customer experience, you’re also helping to reduce the mental load on your team.
Not every customer wants to call and talk to a live person to book a service job. Some people may start to book a job online, get interrupted by something else, and return to finish hours later. Others may just have a quick question and don’t want to wait on hold for someone to answer.
“There are a lot of different things you can do when it comes to diversifying how you reach your customers or how you allow your customers to reach you,” Karolevitz explains. “One of the great things that ServiceTitan offers is their live chat feature, live services, and online scheduling.”
Features available with Scheduling Pro, another ServiceTitan add-on Pro product, include:
Online scheduling: Allows customers to book an appointment how and when they want. Delivers real booked jobs right into ServiceTitan based on your services, business units, and real-time availability.
Live expert voice: Fields customer calls and drastically increases the number of bookings you can make during busy periods or after-hours, with no need to sort through messages or make follow-up calls.
Live expert chat: Industry-trained agents who engage customers, answer questions, or book actual appointments into ServiceTitan.
In addition, Karolevitz uses Second Chance Leads, a feature available with Phones Pro, to save time and generate additional revenue by automatically identifying and prioritizing unbooked calls for immediate follow-up.
“We have someone who sits down every day and calls back the customers who started to book and stopped, and that process alone has brought in an additional $40,000 a month in revenue to our company,” she says. “Not only are you giving those customers a different avenue, but you're also able to get a customer lead that you wouldn't have had any other way.”
4. Send Notifications to Customers
Booking notifications, dispatch notifications, and arrival notifications keep customers in the loop from start to finish.
“Once you've booked the job, the customer gets a text message or email that says, ‘Yay, we're here to help you. Here's your time and date of appointment,’” Burgess says.
“We also have dispatch notifications. I don't know about you, but this is my favorite,” she adds. “This lets your customer know the technician has officially dispatched and they're coming to their home.”
Dispatch notifications also let you send a photo and short bio of the field technician so customers know who to expect.
“I guarantee if you have this on, you're going to start getting good Google reviews for it,” Burgess advises.
5. Make Tech Profiles
Creating tech profiles to send to your customers gives them peace of mind because they can easily match the photo to the person knocking on their door. It’s also a great way to have fun and make real connections with customers.
“Some technicians are really good at it, and other technicians really struggle to connect with that customer on a personal level. So, we go ahead and start that for them before they even arrive at the house,” Karolevitz says.
At Bonfe, Karolevitz sets a theme for the tech profiles each month. For June, a Father’s Day theme showcased techs doing their favorite things with their dads. For ASPCA’s Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Month in April, she featured techs with their dogs. In September, a back-to-school theme will feature techs with their kids, and October’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month will feature techs in pink uniforms, tutus, and tiaras.
Customers love all of the tech profile themes, she says.
“It's just a great way to connect with your customers on yet another level and to really help your technicians establish that relationship with a customer before they even get in the door,” Karolevitz says.
6. Activate Technician Arrival Tracking
Just like the food delivery services allow users to track drivers in real-time, ServiceTitan users who activate technician arrival tracking with the native GPS can allow customers to see their tech’s exact location as they are driving toward the job.
“This is another really big crowd pleaser for our customers and then they're not calling your dispatchers every few minutes. ‘Hey, you said he was on his way. Where is he? Where is he?’ They can just look. They can check on their own,” Burgess says.
7. Match the Right Tech to the Right Calls
Dispatch Pro automates the process of matching the right techs to the right calls for maximum profitability. Karolevitz says since Bonfe started using Dispatch Pro 2½ years ago, the company has increased its tech-generated leads, conversion rates, and average tickets.
“It's absolutely amazing what it can do for your company. It will match, right down to the job type. It will match it to the skills. It will match it to the right technician to the right job. It takes into account distance versus average ticket,” Karolevitz says. “It weighs it as much as your company wants to weigh it, because you get to set that.”
And one of the biggest misconceptions about Dispatch Pro, Karolevitz says, is that the software automation is going to replace all of the dispatcher jobs.
“That is the biggest misconception that comes with this automation. What it actually does is, it helps your dispatchers focus on the things that matter,” Karolevitz says.
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Imagine a busy summer day, dispatchers and CSRs juggling a multitude of calls, a full-to-the-brim tech schedule, and then an emergency no-AC call comes in. To respond and achieve maximum profitability, you may need to suddenly rework the whole schedule.
“All of that is done by Dispatch Pro. What would've taken my CSR or dispatcher probably 100 different moves, Dispatch Pro does it in 10 seconds, and it does it every 10 minutes,” Karolevitz says.
“And it allows my dispatchers to focus on, ‘Where are my money calls? When am I getting to them? Are we taking care of the customer? Are my technicians getting answers for the things they need? Are they getting the service they need to make sure they're providing the best service for the customer and the house?’” she adds.
8. Upload Photos and Videos of the Job
Even though some consider uploading photos and videos to the job an older ServiceTitan feature, Burgess believes it is still useful in today’s service industry.
“It keeps a digital record. And if you’re like me and you like gamification, it will also boost your Titan Advisor score. It'll help technicians to be able to look back on jobs and see what happened the last time we were out,” Burgess says.
Photos and videos also come in handy when techs try to show the condition of systems to customers in tight spaces or an extremely hot attic. Simply take a video, include the date and time, and explain what you’re seeing.
“It's an OG ServiceTitan feature here, but I don't think enough people are using the video piece of it,” Burgess says.
At Bonfe, if the techs are installing a whole-home plumbing repiping system, they record the entire plan on video, Karolevitz says.
“They'll upload it, so if it's not them that goes back, the next tech that shows up can provide that customer some amazing experience because they know exactly what the technician was thinking and doing,” Karolevitz explains. “They can make sure they're getting the job done right while they're there, and we're not having to inconvenience that customer.”
9. Give Flexible Payment Options
Today’s customers want to pay in various ways, and more customers are seeking financing than ever before, Karolevitz says.
“Making sure that you have multiple financing options is huge,” she says. “ServiceTitan has great relationships with people that do second-chance looks, also.”
With ServiceTitan's Integrated Financing feature, companies empower their sales and service techs to build estimates with multiple options, easily present those options on a mobile tablet, and lead with financing—all from one platform. ServiceTitan’s integrated partners include GreenSky, GoodLeap, Service Finance, Turns, and Financeit (Canada).
Karolevitz uses ServiceTitan’s integration with GreenSky to offer customers a second-chance look when they don’t get approved for financing on the first round.
“What you'll find, honestly, is about 40% of the people that get denied from the original one will get approved with the second-chance one,” she says.
ServiceTitan’s Integrated Financing also allows techs to show customers an estimated monthly payment right on their mobile tablet, with the estimate and financing offer clearly spelled out.
“Being able to present it that way will ensure that your technicians are offering it,” Karolevitz says.
10. Do Happy Calls After the Job
Everyone is busy during the summer, but avoid thinking your CSRs don’t have time to make happy calls. It’s the best way to be proactive about following up on jobs, Burgess says.
“We want to find out: Did the customer have a good time? Were they satisfied with the service? Did anything happen they were uncomfortable talking about? Get some feedback on the technician's performance. Did he look good? Did he smell good? Was he professional?
“How was his quality of work? Did you get all of your questions answered? There's so many things you can find out just from a simple phone call,” Burgess says. “And if the call went well, that's also a great time to ask that customer for a review.”
