Transcription
Hello, my name is Adam, and this is my YouTube channel, Adam Fusman. In this video, I would like to share with you guys my thoughts about the wonderful CRM, customer relationship management system, which is called ServiceTitan.
I would like to start with the pros of this CRM system because we've been using it for more than, I believe, nine months, and I already have my own opinion on what's going on with this CRM and what I like and what I hate about this ServiceTitan. Let's get into it. Thank you.
So, the first thing I like to mention is what the CRM system, ServiceTitan, does have: a very wonderful API integration with any other platforms you can imagine. You can pull out all the information you need to Excel files, maybe to Google Sheets, whatever. For example, in our company, we integrate our ServiceTitan with a company which is called Data Cube, and Data Cube prepared for us very wonderful dashboards which we are reflecting in our monitors in the kitchen, and every employee can see this information about how we did, how our sales are doing during the season, months to date, time, or year-to-date time. And this is very great. We can pull any information about any division; we can exactly see how much time every dispatcher spent with each customer and how many memberships were sold by each operator on this particular dashboard. And this is just great, and this is everything thankfully by API from ServiceTitan.
Second thing I like to mention is about the dashboards, and they are in ServiceTitan very configurable. So, in the first place, you can see a very simple dashboard which is just integrated by default in ServiceTitan, and here we have a lot of information. But because I'm running the financial direction of the company, so I pulled the information I would like to see every day. So my dashboard, which I configured for myself, just shows how much money we received from the customers year to date and which marketing programs work much better than others. So I pulled the whole information into just one dashboard for myself, and I called this dashboard Fusment. As you can see, we here have different other dashboards which are made by the different divisions, and they're very happy with it. For example, we can pull the purchaser dashboard, and we can see what kind of an upcoming job report we have here. So we can pull here the data about our calls, what's going on today, exactly what happened yesterday. So we've got yesterday 35 leads; we've got 30 jobs booked. Who made more calls yesterday? Who made more booked calls? We have a percentage of the booking rate of each operator, so it's great; dashboards are great in ServiceTitan, and this thing I very much love in ServiceTitan.
So, the third thing what I love in ServiceTitan is their module which is called Marketing Pro. So Marketing Pro, this is a thing which just shows a kind of funnel where our money flows and how we get all our book jobs, bookings, and whatever, whatever. So I can pull the whole year regarding how much money, revenue, we generated in comparison to last year. We can see here is a kind of little bit wrong information. For example, if we will pull the data for the last 30 days, as it was shown before, I would say it's very close to the truth because in November last year we just started to use ServiceTitan, and we pulled the full information from our previous CRM system and just downloaded it here to ServiceTitan during the integration. And right now it's a little weird; it shows things, but I hope after November we will see the exact numbers which are going to show us how we made the business in comparison to last year. So here's a lot of things we run here; a lot of campaigns. We can see exactly how much money we can spend, how much money we spend for each campaign we're running with our marketing budgets. We have here like direct mail; we have here email marketing programs, so etc., etc., etc., and it works great because before we used to use MailChimp; we used to use direct mail from other companies which didn't work very great. Direct mail is like a questionable thing, but we're trying to use it like from time to time. So it's a kind of good thing that we can track directly just everything from here, from the Marketing Pro tab in ServiceTitan.
I would not mention any other things in ServiceTitan, but it's like a lot of things to know; you can find this in servicetitan.com information, but it's just a great thing to have because the previous CRM system didn't have this feature at all. It did, but it just was kind of limited in campaigns here with ServiceTitan. So we have here the kind of ability to send direct mail, for example, just to our existing customers, but we can also do the acquisition of new customers. So ServiceTitan will pull the database with all new customers in a particular area; you can send the direct mail, and it will just do that, and you will have calls from the new customers, and new customers will appear on your database.
The next thing, the next thing I would like to mention about the pros in ServiceTitan, is the inventory. We didn't have inventory in the previous system. I know the inventory in ServiceTitan is still in a beta version, but it actually works great, and it works great in terms of running all projects integrated with the warehouse, and we're just pulling any materials in our price book and putting them to the final invoice for the customer or even for the estimate. So it's very convenient to have this inventory feature inside the CRM, and thumbs up for this feature, honestly. So inventory looks like that; we have here a lot of things like items going on. I am not very familiar with this thing, but my guys are just very happy with what's going on inside the system. So we can see here the technicians track what we can have in the technicians' track. For example, my track is empty; acquisition requisition for the installations; right now, what's going on with all the sales, we can see in just one place, and this is just great. Thank you, ServiceTitan, for this.
Next feature I would like to mention is called Schedule Engine. So Schedule Engine, this is a thing from ServiceTitan, and the feature which includes taking calls from customers when your dispatchers cannot take the calls or leads directly from your website. So on our website, we have a web chat which is just an integration from ServiceTitan. If the customer will text something here, it will directly send information about this text to the ServiceTitan call center, I believe. So, on the night time, if we will not be able to answer the call from the customer, the call center from ServiceTitan will get this call and will get it scheduled instead of our dispatchers. So this is a very great feature. The other great feature I can say is we can schedule any call directly from our website; it's just integrated JavaScript to our website, and any customer can just schedule anything; they can upload and just ascend directly to our CRM system, ServiceTitan, which is very great, and obviously they can schedule the exact time and date they want to see our technician.
The other thing I would like to mention in this video is trip analyzer between calls. So this feature is kind of in beta right now, but we are using it very well. So ServiceTitan does analytics about how much time every technician will spend between calls, and it will show optimizing ways which technician can be assigned for a particular job. Sometimes we have a situation when a customer would like to see our technician right away, and our dispatcher is able to schedule our technician right away. This is why our technician can make a few calls in a two-hour window, for example, like Anthony right now. If our dispatcher will see that our technician is very close to the customer which is just called right now, they can schedule right away with this particular technician in this area, and maybe this trip is going to take him about five minutes, and the trip analyzer can as well offer to the dispatcher what this call is very well fit for the particular technician who is able to sell something more, who can be able to fix something faster than others, and this technician will be more efficient on this particular call.
The other thing I would like to mention in this video is phone integration. Yes, ServiceTitan does have a feature which is showing the calls during the call from the customer, and it could be directly just scheduled from ServiceTitan itself. Yes, it's kind of a bi-directional thing, I mean a one-direction thing because if the customer is calling to our phone which came from ServiceTitan, and it will be redirected from ServiceTitan to our call center phone, so we will see this call here, and this call will be recorded completely from ServiceTitan. For example, if I pull some of the customer information, for example, like Adam Fusman, I will see all jobs here, and all jobs, all calls I made to our phone number will be recorded. Call may be monitored and recorded for training or quality assurance purposes.
So the other thing I would like to mention in the pros about ServiceTitan is the customer portal. The customer portal is a thing I wanted from the other CRM system because customers can just log in to our customer portal from ServiceTitan and see their invoices, their projects, what's going on with their permits, what's going on with all their payments, and why they still owe some money to our company. And this is very great because before we had to send every time the information about the invoices, whatever the things, and even if the customer does have their own login and password to our CRM system, they can directly adjust the book from this customer portal. This is very great, and I love it.
One more feature I would like to mention about the pros: so recently ServiceTitan announced a new feature which is called FleetPro, and every car track in the company can be integrated with ServiceTitan. So we can see all our tracks where we installed already their webcams, like cameras, and we can see where they are right now. So, for example, right now my vehicle is just right away close to the office, and I can see how many miles I made today or yesterday, and this thing can analyze the behavior of the driver. For example, I can pull my own data, and I will see how I did during a particular period. So last seven days I've got a score from ServiceTitan of 76, and I've got 107 speeding events, driving time 15 hours, and I did a distance traveled of 450 miles. It's kind of great information about the driver and how they are utilizing our tracks. I just installed this camera for myself; I wanted to see how this system does work and how integration works with ServiceTitan, and I would say it works great. I still don't see all the features we were promised by ServiceTitan in the beginning, but let's talk about the disadvantages or cons of ServiceTitan which I hate.
So the first con, disadvantage to having ServiceTitan, and I hate it, absolutely hate it, and all the time it's just something happening, something like new happening with ServiceTitan, and the manager from ServiceTitan is calling us, like making an appointment with the CEO of our company, with Stan, and what's going on. They just have an upsell strategy to everything they're making; they're making some of the like new features, like FleetPro, an upsell. It's kind of, it's not an upsell if they're just like offering what it looks like to me like an upsell, if you are offering something, a new feature, just to deliver to the customer, and all set. Why do you have to charge money for everything you can sell? Like Marketing Pro, it's been released like, uh, yeah, you have to buy it. No, you can, you can just keep it like a standard Marketing Pro, but the feature which they are delivering is absolutely needed for our company, and we just say yes, take our money; we have no choice because we're already in this ServiceTitan, and I hate it.
Second con from ServiceTitan which is just related to the first con: they have a lot of interaction with real people. ServiceTitan is it a platform or something like just came from the HVAC industry? Yes, I understand what the original owner of ServiceTitan, they are like HVAC owners, contractors, etc., etc., but they kind of have the same strategy: salespeople contacting you and then upselling. A lot of interactions with real people, even if this is kind of sub-technical support or something, or like a customer success manager, it's all about interaction with people; they're wasting their time, our time. It's not about kind of wasting, but it is, I don't know. So I know I'm like a millennial right now; the Gen Z is coming; they will not be able to talk with you guys. So think about it because if I want some new feature, should I just like press a button and turn on the feature and just put my credit card information or just agree with new expenses? Why do I have to interact with real people doing all these things just to press a button and new features come up in the platform? I don't know; I have to sign something; I have to spend one hour with a sales rep. I don't know; this is a disadvantage, guys, from your company, honestly.
Next disadvantage of ServiceTitan: UI, user interface. I mentioned already in some of my previous videos on this YouTube channel about how ServiceTitan is awful, but I want to still mention this in this video, honestly. In the last six months, ServiceTitan did a great job; they're trying to eliminate all flaws in their user interface, and they are doing a great job, but still a lot of things could be optimized. For example, how can I pay for the invoice for the job? I don't know; we are contractors; most of the contractors are very small, I would say brain okay, and for us it's, if you will have like a few buttons: do this, do first, do second, the third, do fourth, and get paid, all set. If you wanted to get all these five steps: like send estimate, make a job, close the job, send invoice to the customer, get payment sent, paid invoice with all pictures, all these five steps should be done by different scenarios; it's just an over-complicated process, and our each employee should be trained. Yes, ServiceTitan does have very great training stuff, videos, whatever, and it's worked great, but if you need something like a quick, quick integration, quick transfer from one CRM to ServiceTitan, it wouldn't happen very quickly. The people who are switching from other CRM systems to ServiceTitan are just struggling; we've done the struggle, and we're doing some struggles still by working with ServiceTitan, but we kind of find our way right now because we're already in ServiceTitan nine months, but in the beginning, it was just a nightmare.
Fourth thing: I kind of like it, but I just don't like how it's represented by Blue Collar Nerd in the YouTube channel of ServiceTitan. Ladies and gentlemen, the Blue Collar Nerd, hey, every now and then, every time it comes, honestly, it could be made more official, I would say, and yes, this guy is great, but this is a very, I don't know, it's a very official thing; why are you like pulling the jokes, jokes like what, like that? I don't know, so, or like even singing a song in the beginning of the video; maybe someone likes it. I really like, come on guys, give me the gesture right away, the information I need about the new features, about the new releases; I just don't like it. Let's get to the next one.
So I already mentioned about the PhonePro, and the PhonePro integration; it does have an absolute platform in my opinion, and it doesn't work in all countries because here in San Jose, California, we don't have our own dispatchers here in our office, and all our dispatchers are working abroad, the country, maybe like Russia, Ukraine, Armenia, Mexico; so a lot of people, like Turkey; our dispatchers are everywhere, but not in just one office. We can't make happen the PhonePro integration, and this is a very weird thing, and I hate it because I love to get PhonePro, but I hate it because you cannot just deliver it to us; you may have to just hire someone, more modern-day communication engineers, so because right now it's just, it doesn't work how it's supposed to work, and we still cannot use it. That's where he said.
So ServiceTitan, this is just one CRM platform which could be paid by your supplier and 50/50 proportion. So even if we are paying for ServiceTitan more than twenty thousand dollars for all integrations we have, it's very expensive; it's just, I wouldn't say I'm greedy about it or something; it's just more expensive, 20 times more expensive than other CRMs. I don't know, so maybe you have to just make a simpler version of ServiceTitan and sell it to other people, and then sell the features they may want to see on their site. I don't know; you have to figure it out because right now the old pricing system of ServiceTitan is just a very miracle, and people really don't know about it, how much money they have to spend in the end of the integration with ServiceTitan.
The other thing: ServiceTitan does have a lot of things which are over-promising, like Elon Musk promising about the self-driving better in like six years, and still don't deliver; it's just cannot be done very quickly because ServiceTitan is already an over-complicated CRM system, and there is a lot of connections between every feature inside the system. But yeah, it's hard to tell how it can be done very quickly.
The other thing I very much hate in ServiceTitan is that the technicians should use iPads or even any other tablets with bigger screens because the font inside the application is very small, and some of the guys just don't see what's going on inside. Yes, it could be used on a regular iPhone, but ServiceTitan itself says you have to use a tablet. Come on, guys; nobody is using iPads right now, even if you are millennial or Gen Z; a few years they said, are you normal or what's going on with you? All our guys, 90% of them, are using their own phones for using ServiceTitan, and this everything is happening inside just a small screen. Yes, that's fine, but if this feature is available, you may just have to think about how to optimize this screen or UI for using inside the phone without any tablets because the tablet I just have to run all the time as a second device, and it's very stupid. I have a lot of tools like that in my back, and why should I run with one more tablet with me? This is kind of weird, and I hate it.
Okay, guys, this is all my opinion, and it's not just my opinion; it came from all my company. Right now we have 141 employees in San Jose, and we're kind of not big; we may be just like a medium company who are using ServiceTitan, but we believe ServiceTitan can do better, and I hope you enjoyed this video and find it very valuable for you guys, even if you are from ServiceTitan, because a lot of things can be done in ServiceTitan easily, in my opinion, like adjusted by optimizing some of the features. So thank you for watching this video, and I'll see you in the next one. Bye.