7 Dispatching Tips For Contractors To Increase Profit

What's going on everybody? It's Richard Coburger here, the blue collar nerd. And in this video I'm going to be giving you tips for dispatching in your home services company. Now I think dispatching is a really underrated role both in terms of how difficult it is to do correctly and how big of an impact it can have on your bottom line. Now when it comes to dispatching, the first thing you need to do is decide what it is you want to optimize for. And a lot of people when asked that question will say, well I want to optimize for profit and, and yeah, of course everybody does. But what you have to decide is what do you believe is going to be the biggest driver of profit? Because on one end of the spectrum there is optimizing for efficiency in route, meaning that you want to be optimizing for shortest possible drive times. Whatever technician is closest to the job, that's who should get sent. And then on the other end of the spectrum is optimizing for putting the right technician on the right job, you, meaning that like if a call comes in that has a potential for a big ticket, you are going to send a technician who has the best probability of getting that big ticket, even if they're a little bit further away. And this isn't one or the other, it's a spectrum and you have to decide where on that spectrum you are going to fall. If you have more of a volume based strategy, meaning you need to get the most calls in in a single day as possible, then your dispatching strategy will probably be a little bit more towards optimizing for routes. However, if your strategy is more centered around lower volume, higher average tickets, then you'll probably want to veer more towards the right tech, right job mentality. Now no matter where you fall on that spectrum, a good software is definitely going to help you be more efficient. Now if you're dispatching more on the right tech, right job side of the spectrum, couple big things you want to make sure you get set up in your software. One is technician skills, meaning you will assign skills required for certain types of jobs. For example, a no cool call on the H Vac side would require the skill troubleshooting. And then you will assign skills to your technician that's going to prevent any mistakes where somebody gets sent out to a job that they're not equipped for. Like in the example we just gave, we now know that a maintenance only guy is not going to get sent out on a no cool call because that maintenance guy will not have the troubleshooting skill. The other thing you're going to want set up is some sort of a technician scoreboard that your dispatchers have access to. That way, your dispatchers are going to know who's pulling in the highest average tickets, who's turning over the most leads, and who's causing the most recalls. It's also important that that information be updated frequently, at least daily, but even more often would be better. And that's because things change. And it's important to know who's hot right now, because maybe the technician who's typically your top tech is having a bad week. Maybe they've got something going on at home that has them distracted, and this particular week they're not top tech. Well, if that's the case, then whoever is top tech this week should be prioritized for any high potential calls. Now, when optimizing for distance, you're definitely going to want to have some sort of map that lays out all of your calls for the day and where all of your technicians are. This is the ServiceTitan YouTube channel, so I can only speak to that software. But In ServiceTitan, the 2.0 dispatch map is the place to get that information. There you'll be able to see a color coded map and you can make a cluster of calls just for a technician that is in that zone. You also have the option to use the optimize route button, and that's just going to algorithmically place all of the calls in the best possible order for distance. And that feature is really great. If, for example, you have commercial clients that you've promised a day to, but they don't really care what particular time you get there. But for the residential space where people are taking off of work and you're promising them specific time slots, that feature might not be quite as helpful because we do have to consider what time the customer is expecting us. So for those types of scenarios, it's better to have the dispatcher on the 2.0 dispatch map so that they can decide where to place the call in the first place. Now, my next tip is that if your dispatching strategy leans more towards the right tech, right call mentality, then it's important that you have that conversation with your technicians and explain to them why, why we're doing it that way. Because if you don't explain the strategy to them, then here's exactly what's gonna happen. One day they're gonna pass each other on the highway and they're gonna call each other, hey brother, where Are they sending you? They got me going over to Alpharetta. Seriously? I just left Alpharetta. What? Where are you going? They're sending me to Buford. I just came from Beaufort. Dispatchers, man. Then your dispatchers take all the heat for doing what they're supposed to be doing and the technicians will start to backseat dispatch because they think they can do it better. Because from their perspective, the dispatchers, they're sending technicians all over the world for as far as they know, no good reason. So let them know what the reason is and make sure that they understand that ultimately it's going to set them up for more success and set them up for bigger paychecks if they're paid on commission. Now my next tip is to set up and use some sort of capacity planning. Capacity planning is when you intentionally under book on days where you are anticipating high demand and fully book or intentionally overbook on days where you're expecting little to no demand. For example, if you're an H VAC contractor in the Southern United States, then you know that during these summer months you are going to have higher demand and more demand calls coming in throughout the day versus in the fall. You're anticipating much fewer demand calls and so you'll book a lot more maintenance throughout the day. Now when you are anticipating high demand, then it's important that you front load any pre scheduled work as much as possible for that day. For example, if you are that H Vac contractor in the summer and you know that you have a 98 degree day coming up, but you have two pre sold repairs for your technician to do that day, then you want to do whatever you can to book those two pre sold repairs in the earliest time slots possible. That way the open capacity is available when people call throughout the day with demand calls. It's usually not a good idea to leave your first time slot open as open capacity because then if nobody calls in, you've just burned that slot. Now, in the slow season when demand calls are very hard to come by, totally different mentality, then you want to book up most of your day. Maybe leave a couple of time slots open towards the end of the day for potential demand calls. If you are expecting a couple, or if you know that you typically get a few nobody home type of calls or canceled calls, then go ahead and overbook the day a little bit. Now my last tip is to stay in constant communication with the dispatchers about what the dispatching priorities are. Because as we just went over, the dispatching priorities aren't always the same. You also have to make it very clear to your dispatchers what exceptions to the rules exist, if any. For example, if you have a membership program and one of the perks of that membership is priority scheduling, then it's important you communicate to your dispatchers that exception. And it's also very important to very clearly define what priority scheduling means to your dispatchers and to your customers. For example, if you have a customer who really wants a 5pm maintenance during the busy season, does priority scheduling mean you're going to give them that? I don't know. That's up to you. But make sure your dispatchers know what your answer is. Anyways, that's all I got for today. If you would like even more dispatching tips, then check out this awesome blog post by Servicetitan. I'll put a link in the description below. Or it's possible that you're watching this video on that blog page already, in which case just scroll down. Be sure to hit like if you liked this video and found the content valuable. And subscribe to ServiceTitan's YouTube channel if you've not done done that already. Appreciate it. Peace.