Get More Out of ServiceTitan: The Resources You Might Be Missing | Podcast Ep. 87

How many times have you said, I wish ServiceTitan did this thing? Or hey, I wish the page was actually laid out this way because it would take me less clicks to do what I need to do. The Ideas Portal allows you to essentially submit an idea and then customers just like yourselves can vote on it.

Hello and welcome back to Mastering ServiceTitan. I'm your host, Josh Lew. We bring you expert advice from power users. I am back with Sina Sadeghi, the Senior Manager of Customer Programs here at ServiceTitan. And today we are covering the topic of all the different resources we have here at ServiceTitan to help you continue to learn and grow. There's so many, and there's probably a few you haven't heard about or just didn't know existed. And so, Sina, welcome back to the show. I'm excited to cover all the resources we have.

Thanks again, Josh, for having me. It's always a pleasure to get on this podcast with you.

Yeah, so we've got quite a bit to cover. Um, as I was looking through the list, I had forgot about some of these. There's so many resources that we offer for our customers, and there's kind of 6 big categories. So we've got software resources, we've got programs, kind of some general resources, YouTube/other videos, and of course podcasts, and then events— everybody's favorite. We'll wrap up with the big events, but let's start with maybe some of the software tools and resources for people to do a quick review.

Yeah, and I feel like, you know, the classic knowledge base and academy everyone already knows about, so I won't stick too much time on knowledge base and academy. One of the big things I want to talk about in the software is Titan Advisor. I think that's one of those features that people know about and use, but maybe they're not utilizing it to its fullest potential. So Titan Advisor essentially just shows you how much of the software you are using and how well you're actually utilizing it. Think about it as like a gamification of the software usage. And, uh, someone on, uh, who I work with named Tim, he always calls it a business coach. And I think that's a fantastic way to think about Titan Advisor.

And that's that little rocket ship icon, right? When you log into ServiceTitan, that little rocket ship in the top right.

And once you click in, it'll give you a score. And we also have a program, which I'll talk about a little bit later in this podcast, and we will help you boost that score for free.

Perfect. Yeah, Titan Advisor, I think, is one we will never stop talking about. That is such a tried and true place to go to in your ServiceTitan account. What do we have up next?

We got Titan Exchange, and this one, this might be one of the ones where you might not know this exists, but if you go into your settings inside of the software and look for Titan Exchange, what Titan Exchange is, is it allows you to grab things and pull them directly into your account. Things like reports, things like dashboards, things like forms. These things have already been built and then you can just grab them, pull them into your account, and then of course adjust and edit them as needed. Don't forget to subscribe to the network first. That's what's going to populate all the information. So we have things like residential, commercial. So make sure you're subscribing to those networks first. Then you can go in and grab whatever you would like and make your edits to make them your own.

Are those templates, um, kind of like best practice templates, or can shops put up their own? And like, everyone— is it like a social thing where people are sharing?

Not yet. Uh, we do have some stuff where you can put some stuff inside of Titan Exchange, but it's, uh, usually at like a much, much higher level. Think of it as things that we know people use, we know people like, and then you can just grab them and pull them right into your account and edit it to make your own.

Awesome. I bet anyone can visit that and find some goodies for their account there.

Yes, memberships dashboard. Trust me, go to the Titan Exchange and grab the memberships dashboard.

Shout out to the memberships team. Um, cool. So we got 2 more software resources to go over here. Uh, what are these next ones?

The next one I want to talk about is Atlas. Atlas is ServiceTitan's AI, and the reason why I want to call this out is A, Atlas exists today in your account. When you go to your help, that little question mark button, there's a button at the very bottom that says get help and you can access Atlas today. Atlas is essentially today a conversational chatbot where you can ask it different things, where to find specific things, and it's really useful, but where it's going to go and the things that we're building, Atlas is truly going to be a game changer. So I wanted to make sure to throw that in. Because what exists today is just the tip of the iceberg for Atlas.

That's exciting. I think I've got 2 webinars lined up already about Atlas. I know more stuff is coming out. How about this last software resource, the Ideas Portal?

The Ideas Portal. And I'm going to speak directly to customers right now. How many times have you said, I wish ServiceTitan did this thing? Or, hey, I wish the page was actually laid out this way because it would take me less clicks to do what I need to do. The, the Ideas Portal allows you to essentially submit an idea and then customers just like yourselves can vote on it. And we take that stuff very seriously. Obviously the best feedback we get is from customers using these products day in and day out. So Ideas Portal, if you've ever wished for something in the software, the Ideas Portal is your way to get it in.

Where do they go to find the Ideas Portal?

Inside of your knowledge base, you can access the ideas and also a customer resource hub, which we'll talk about in just a second.

Okay, awesome. So that wraps up the software resources. Hopefully you knew about most of those, uh, but if not, we had some refreshers. Now on to, I'm going to guess, your favorite, the programs.

It is my favorite. I might be biased, full disclosure, but I truly think some of the programs that we have here at ServiceTitan are extremely unique and and we want to make sure that our customers are extremely successful through all these programs that we've created. The first one is going to be called Ignite. And essentially what Ignite is, is it's a group-based program that's completely free to any ServiceTitan customer. And we've set up this program as essentially new customer training. Think about it as a program where you're new to ServiceTitan. You want to make sure you have those foundational workflows down. That's where you can come into Ignite. It's 6 weeks, 1 hour a week, and at the end of Ignite, we would hope you have your foundation solid for your usage of the software, making sure you got all those foundational workflows down.

Awesome. So Ignite, that's the foundation. How about Ember?

Ember's that next step. We talked about Titan Advisor a little bit earlier today. Ember, again, group-based program, completely free. And we focus entirely on Titan Advisor. So there's different stages throughout Titan Advisor, and we really teach to those first couple of stages, launch and acceleration. We will go through different features inside of Titan Advisor to make sure you're getting that success criteria and you're getting those points so you can increase your Titan score. Again, 6 weeks, 1 hour a week, and again, it's free.

Perfect.

And then once you graduate from Ember, once you graduate from Ember, you get to our most advanced program, which is Spark Sessions. Spark Sessions is entirely discussion-based. We get you in a room together with other non-competitor contractors, and we talk about a particular subject. One month might be dispatching, another month might be memberships, and we want you to invite those people who are in those day-to-day. If you've got a membership coordinator, a dispatcher who you want to bring in, We allow you to bring them in and we just talk about both the software and the business as a whole. So any person on ServiceTitan inside of the trades should be inside of Spark Sessions because essentially it's a best practice user networking group, which we think has been really successful and customers have been finding a lot of value from.

Yeah, it's so easy to get stuck in your bubble, right, as a business owner. And you know, you're tackling all the things that you're tackling, but it's What a cool opportunity to connect with other people going through the same thing and, and just share challenges and resources, best practice, kind of like the whole idea of this podcast, but for you guys live in person all the time, which is really cool.

Yes. Over Zoom. We are on Zoom, uh, but there is some in-person opportunities, which I'll talk about when we get to the events. But if you've ever asked yourself, how does somebody else do this? I know I'm not the only one who's dealing with this. I wonder how somebody else solved it. That is basically your cue to say, I need to join Spark.

Perfect. So we got Ignite, leveled up to Ember, to Spark, and then what's, what comes after that?

So those 3 programs are sort of on its own. And one other callout I will say for our programs, Ignite, Ember, and Spark, is you can join any one of them at any point. If you've been on the software for a few years, you feel like you've got the basics down, you can go straight into Ember. or if you're like, hey, I know Titan Advisor, my team uses it well, you can go straight into Spark. So I just quickly wanted to call that out. The other program that I would like to talk about is the Torch Network, which I sort of consider ServiceTitan's membership. It's free to join, but there's certain requirements that you'll need to get into the Torch Network. And then you'll also get exclusive access to things like networking opportunities, things like betas, things at Pantheon that are exclusive to the Torch Network. And as always, Torch Network has the best swag.

Flag. That's true. Is that the one? Are they the ones who get that leather jacket, or is that the next program we're going to talk about?

That is the next one, uh, STCU. So shout out to Daniel Combs for STCU. STCU is essentially our certification, and what's really nice about this certification is there's levels to it. So there's multiple levels and there's role-based certifications. So if you're a dispatcher and you're like, I don't need to know accounting, that's not my wheelhouse. I don't really need to worry about that. You can just take the dispatcher role-based certification, for example. But whenever somebody asks me, I just hired someone brand new, where should I send them? What's something that they should be doing? Every time the answer is going to be STCU. So for anyone out there, if you've got a brand new employee that you just hired, please. STCU is where you want to go. It's free. It's at your own time, at your own pace. And I truly think it gives one of the best foundations for the software.

Perfect. And then wrapping up, we have STCP. I think this is the first time I've heard of this one. Which is this? What, what is this last program here? STCP.

STCP. The first thing I will say is this is paid. It's essentially consulting, uh, for the customers. And these are basically, uh, organizations that we have certified. We've said yes, they know their stuff, they are STCP certified, and you can essentially hire a consultant to come on site. So if you've been a customer saying, you know what, I just need to get someone out here for you for a few days, look at my software, the way it's set up, see if I can optimize or gain any efficiencies. That's where something like an STCP can be extremely useful. They are consultants, they are paid, but they have been verified by ServiceTitan for knowing their stuff.

Got it. Okay. I do know what STCP is. I've had a lot of STCP, uh, providers here on the podcast. It was the acronym that totally threw me off. Um, so we covered all those programs. Where do people go if they want to join or learn more about some of these?

What a fantastic segue, my friend Josh. That is where the Customer Resource Hub comes into play. I like to think of the Customer Resource Hub as a one-stop shop for almost all the resources we have. So everything that we've talked about so far, you can find inside of the Customer Resource Hub. And what's lovely about the Customer Resource Hub is you can access it right from the software. If you click your profile icon in the top right, you'll notice one of the options is Customer Resource Hub, and that will take you to a one-stop shop of so many different resources. It's truly one of the best things. If you take nothing else away from this, take away the Customer Resource Hub, because that houses basically everything we're talking about today in one place.

Perfect. So that is the link I'll include in the description. Rather than like linking 500 things in here of all our resources, we'll put the hub in there and you can access it all through there. The next one I almost forgot about— I remember, I think when I first joined ServiceTitan 5 years ago or so, we were working on this one. Can you share about the, uh, Contractor Playbook?

The Contractor Playbook is really useful for the business side of things. It's less software-oriented, it's more of a business side playbook. If you're asking questions like, how should I set up my chart of accounts? How do I set up an amazing culture at my company? The business side of things, that's where this Contractor Playbook comes into play. It essentially has different chapters that you can go through. And if you just want to look at, let's say, the chart of accounts chapter, you can do that. But it's a really nice way to sort of see what is like the quote unquote gold standard, the best practice as a business using ServiceTitan and how can I implement that at my shop.

And we've got a few other general resources here in the category. Let's, let's go through the next one, Masterminds.

Masterminds. Masterminds is essentially our forum. It allows you as the customers a centralized place to talk and discuss things with one another. It's also monitored by ServiceTitan, but Masterminds is a place to get resources, ask questions, um, and even get some files. I know that Masterminds has a lot of great files, things like forms that people have uploaded. So essentially think of it as a place where all of the customers can sort of interact with each other, and it's hosted on Facebook.

On Facebook. So yeah, you can search up— is it just called Service Titan Masterminds?

Yep.

Okay, perfect. Search that up on Facebook and you will find us there. I feel like masterminds is like you get the extremes on both ends. Something's broken, or oh my gosh, I love this new thing. So it's cool to see our most engaged customers on masterminds. Yeah, we've got a few more here in the general resources. We've got CSM and support.

CSM and support, I really wanted to throw into here because I think of CSM and support as two completely different things, and some people might think that they're the same. So the way that I think about CSMs and support, I'll start with the CSM side of things. When you're talking to a CSM, they are your proactive resource, and what I mean by that is you're looking ahead. And an example I can give is maybe you're about to create a new division for your company. Maybe you're about to buy another company. That is a great opportunity to reach out to your CSM and say, hey, we're thinking about adding a new division. We're thinking about buying another company. What are some of the features that I should be looking out for so you can get trained ahead of time before you do things like that? So I always like to think of CSMs as forward thinking. We're being proactive about something that's coming down the line. Support is reactive. Something happened. You've got an error. Maybe the software, uh, isn't working the way it should be. Something has happened and you are reacting to that thing. That's where support comes into play. Anytime y'all get errors, anytime anything happens in the software that it shouldn't, that's when you're reaching out to support. My advice when talking to support, have as much evidence as possible. Screenshots, job numbers, videos. Whatever resources you can give that our support team can use to diagnose those issues, it helps so much. So that's really my advice when it comes to support. Have as much sort of quote unquote evidence when you're going to support so that they can just jump right in. They don't gotta ask you the questions. They can just start digging into whatever issue you've got.

That is such good advice and framing. Uh, I'll double down on the support side. I know the engineers work really hard to find exactly where these bugs are coming from and try to reproduce it. So if you could tell 'em exactly what happened, how it happened, here are the screens, Here's the error, like screenshot everything and send it all to them. Uh, they'll be so grateful. This next one in the general resources category, Toolbox. Can you tell us a little bit about Toolbox?

Yes. So the Toolbox also lives on the Customer Resource Hub, uh, which is extremely useful. The Toolbox is also, uh, sort of like a one-stop shop for a ton of things. It focuses on the industry side and the strategy inside of the trade. So, uh, I know there's tools like calculators inside of the Toolbox. I know there's a lot of, uh, webinars. Webinars and things like that that you can find inside of the toolbox. Think about it as something where you're looking at it from the industry side of things, which is extremely useful.

Got it. And is that on the website, or where does that live?

Yeah, inside of the Customer Resource Hub, there's like a View Toolbox button. You click that and it'll take you right into the toolbox.

Okay, perfect. So if you want to go check out a calculator, you'll probably find it there. Um, we've got a couple other Inventory office hours, and then our favorite CSR Lunch and Learn with Angie. Tell us about these.

Yeah, I just wanted to call out the office hours. We have a few different types of office hours, so just wanted to sort of mention that office hours do exist. If you're running into an issue on a particular subject, it's always great to ask your CSM, hey, is there office hours that I can attend to get these questions answered? They're usually led by the product experts, so it allows you essentially a chance to ask those questions and get those answers. There's different types of office hours, so be sure to ask your CSM what sort of office hours we offer.

Yeah, perfect example of like the looking forward, for example, of like, oh, we want to implement inventory. Maybe we can go to an office hour, poke around a little bit.

Exactly.

Questions. Cool.

And then, yeah, we've obviously got the CSR side of things with our queen of CSRs, Angie. There's something called a CSR Lunch and Learn, and I believe it's monthly. Let me look at my calendar to double check because it's coming up actually this week. Monthly. It's monthly on the third Thursday. And essentially Angie just sort of runs a meeting where CSRs can come and join. They can ask questions, they can learn more about it. But what's really nice is it's led by Angie and it's all going to be CSRs who are coming into that same place who are probably having the same sort of issues.

Such a good resource. And I'm so glad we included that. Uh, now let's move on here to a different type of resource for all you YouTubers and video watchers out there. We have got a few of those lined up for you. Looks like 4 of them. Let's start off with Field Features with Margo.

Field Features with Margo. This is for my technicians out there. When we have new releases on the mobile side, and I actually just spoke with Margo right before this, I know they're doing something for the FMA side of things, our new mobile app. Field Features with Margo essentially talks about the updates that are happening to the mobile side, which is really nice of Margo to do. So if you're a technician and you want to learn about some of the new features that may be coming to the mobile app, Field Features with Margot is a great resource for you.

Got it. And where do they go to find that?

On YouTube, ServiceSigns YouTube. It's a playlist called Field Features with Margot.

Okay, perfect. And then of course, our favorite blue collar nerd on YouTube. If you haven't heard of him, you're probably living under a rock at this point in the ServiceSigns world. But just in case, who is the blue collar nerd? Where do they go to find him?

What's going on everyone? That is a Blue Collar Nerd's tag catchphrase, but a Blue Collar Nerd essentially goes over the release notes that we have and he breaks them down in everyday language and he comes from the trade. So he's really easy to understand. He's hilarious. And if anyone knows Tom Howard, there may be some Tom Howard sightings in his videos, but It's a really cool way to sort of learn about releases, learn about different features with everyday language coming from a contractor who's been in your shoes.

Perfect. And then we do have an episode with, uh, Richard Koberger from the Blue Collar Nerd early in the Mastering ServiceTitan lineup. And so if you wanna learn more about his backstory, a few underrated features, uh, that he thinks everyone should use, check out that episode, um, in our program here. And then, uh, the next one, Tad Tuneup. I know you've been really close to this one. We've done some of that. Maybe even here on the podcast in, in some ways. But yeah, tell people what the TAD Tune-Up is.

TAD Tune-Up. So essentially what it is, my team and I record videos on specific Titan Advisor features. So if you're someone who doesn't want to join Ember, maybe it's, uh, it's too much of a time commitment or whatever the case may be, but you still want to learn about Titan Advisor, once again, you can go to ServiceTitan's YouTube and you can watch this TAD Tune-Up playlist. We go through different features inside of TAD. We show you any setup items if setup is involved, and then we show you the actual usage part of it to make sure you're getting those points. So if you're someone who likes to watch a video and then do the thing that you've been watching, TAD Tune-Up is a great way to learn more about Titan Advisor and learn more about specific features and getting those points.

And then last one here on the video front, we've got Back to Basics the webinar series?

Back to Basics. Shout out to Natalie. Back to Basics is essentially a webinar series that really, it's sort of in the name. We focus on the basics. If you are brand new to the software, maybe you're a brand new employee and you're wanting to learn more, Back to Basics can be a great place to get a foundation and learn about specific topics at an extremely basic level. We're just going back to basics, no pun intended.

And I do want to plug, uh, just our ServiceSign webinars in general. Those are all accessed through serviceign.com/webinar. You can see the Back to Basics ones that are coming up. You can go back and watch any of the webinars on demand. We basically have a webinar every week, I feel like, these days. And so yeah, check out the different topics on there for more webinars. And then, uh, this next topic, I'm smiling here because, uh, yeah, maybe we can talk about some of the podcasts that we do here.

Yeah, I mean, I could sit here and talk about a podcast, but why would I talk about it when I've got one of the folks who leads these podcasts? Josh, let me ask you, what about the Toolbox for the Trades with Jackie podcast?

Yes, Toolbox for the Trades with Jackie. Oh my gosh, this podcast has been around. I, I don't even know how many episodes we're at. We're in hundreds of episodes now. And this one you can think about as like the high-level best practices industry knowledge, leadership, change management, private equity, like big topics going on in the trades, trends that are happening. That's where you go for those types of topics. We, we just had Amanda on who I met at a conference and she came to speak about leadership development for women in construction. So that, that's like an example of the how wide ranging the topics and how high level it can go. And then obviously we've got the podcast you're listening to right now, Mastering Service Titan. This one is almost the opposite. It is like hyper nerdy, super specific. We're going in-depth product knowledge. How do these things work? What's challenging about it? What are prerequisites to use these pro products as an example? How do you roll it out to the team? All the nitty gritty details of how these features work. This one is for you. And then last but not least, the last category of resources here. Probably everybody's favorite unless you're super introverted, but even them, I think they can get a lot of value from these, but it's our events.

Yes, our events. Uh, we have two, I would sort of say big, big events, uh, Toolbox Live, which I alluded to a little bit earlier in the podcast. I like to think of Toolbox Lives as mini Pantheons. They're at a much smaller scale. Think anywhere from, you know, 15 to 30 different companies. And they're going to be at different locations and usually focused on a specific topic. So I know there's a financing edition for the Toolbox Live. There's been pro editions. Um, and essentially it's just a mini Pantheon where different customers join at a certain location in person and you talk about those specific topics and really bounce things off of one another, which is really fantastic. It's a mini Pantheon, which I think a lot of people get a lot of use out of.

Awesome. And for those, I think you go to service-sign.com/events and you should be able to see. I think we've got one upcoming here in Glendale for anyone here in SoCal, and then we've got one in Denver, Colorado in June as well. So go to service-sign.com/events and you can register there. And then our favorite, probably— I've said favorite too many times, but this one, this one we saved the best for last, I think.

Last but not least, Pantheon. Pantheon is our huge user conference. We do it once a year. Things like networking, things like training events. We also usually have a musical guest and we vibe, we have a good time. If you've ever wanted FaceTime with executives, FaceTime with product, maybe you've never met your CSM and you know they're going to go to Pantheon, or you just want to be at the biggest industry event inside of the trades. That's what Pantheon is. This year we're going to be in Orlando. It's in October and it's going to be massive. So if you need training, if you want to meet with other contractors, if you want to meet some of the execs and get face time, if you want to talk to product, Pantheon is the place to do all of those things. And again, it's in Orlando and it's in October this year.

And me personally, I was like fanboying when I saw Andrew Huberman and Peter Attia as guest speakers last year talking about health and wellness and longevity. Every time I have people on the podcast, I can't say the number of times that Pantheon was the thing that pushed them to the next level and also helped them discover like the cutting edge, latest, newest, biggest product announcements I feel like are all at Pantheon. So if you really want to keep a pulse on like the future of the trades, I think that's another huge piece of, of what Pantheon is all about.

So that's a great call out looking forward at the features. And one other thing I will mention for Pantheon is, uh, I know because customer and they use Pantheon as their benchmark. And what I mean by that is they'll go to Pantheon, they'll learn about the new features that are coming throughout the year, they will implement those features, they will report on those features to see how it's been impacting their business. And a couple months before Pantheon, they'll digest, they'll look at how it went, and then they'll go to Pantheon again and do the same thing over and over. And I just thought that was an extremely creative way to use Pantheon as a benchmark for your own business and how you're using ServiceTitan.

That is so smart because Pantheon is a crazy opportunity to learn and to get exposed to what's next. And so yeah, that's a cool season that they do. Like they implement, they review, and then they get ready to prepare for all the craziness that's about to come. So that's awesome. Cool. Well, thank you so much, Sina, for joining us today. I think, I think you've got the record. You've been on Maybe 4 times now.

I love it. Let's go. It's always a pleasure.

So thank you for coming back on the show and thank you all so much for listening. And we will link the Customer Resource Hub in the description so you can access all these resources. I hope we pointed out at least a few that you didn't know existed and go get some help, go get some learning, and I will catch you all on the next episode.

Thanks again for having me, Josh.