HomeX’s Four-Week Path for Training Confident CSRs | Podcast Ep. 96 | Mastering ServiceTitan

What I've experienced as I've been doing it the last 2 years is that people will come back from that shadowing experience and I'll ask them, how do you feel now? We feeling good? How we feeling? And they're like, ah, I feel so much better.

Welcome to Mastering Service Titan, where you get expert advice from power users. I'm your host, Josh Lew, and today I'm joined by Jax Youngdahl, the training specialist at HomeX., and we are talking all about the call center at HomeX. So Jax, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Yeah, thank you for having me. I'm super excited to be here. My counterpart Tim was just on here not too long ago to go over technician training, so he obviously connected me with you to do the call center side of things.

Yeah, I'm so glad he did. Tim has been on the show twice and our episodes have been amazing and he was like, you have to talk to Jax. And so I'm really excited. Uh, for those who don't know you, maybe can you share a little bit about yourself? Holmics, and just give us a lay of the land of the call center you guys operate.

I am a training specialist here, like Josh said, and I focus on the call center. I've been doing this for 3 and a half years now, 3 full years as a training specialist, pretty much dedicated to the call center. But I also do a lot of other types of trainings, acquisition trainings, stuff like that, where you actually have to go to the platform to train on, you know, ServiceTitan or phone systems or Usually I'm the phone system girl, so I'll go and I'll do that. But I actually started out as a CSR, and it was a time where I just needed a job. The unemployment wasn't getting me through, and the company that was hiring at the time, I didn't even know that it was Helmec Services Group. I thought it was Gem Plumbing and Heating. And to my surprise, they were like, it's not Gem Plumbing and Heating, it's the company that owns Gem Plumbing and Heating. So it was kind of interesting to see that kind of unfold in front of me, but it was a time when the call center wasn't even open yet. It was actually being outsourced to Canada, but they realized that outsourcing the call center was actually doing them more harm than good because of the lack of training that we were able to give them, because of the lack of attention to detail that we could give the customers. And that call center was focused on other things, not just booking calls for us, for other companies as well. So they brought the call center in-house, and there was only 2 companies at that time, and we have since expanded to 4 companies that we are taking calls for, but not just 4 platform companies. We're talking acquisitions within those as well. At least 12 different companies at this point, which is really cool for me to be able to see the development from 2 companies to 12 and be able to be a part of more than half of those as well. Was really cool because I never foresaw me being a part of something like this. Having no experience training whatsoever, completely self-taught, that's kind of cool for me. I mean, I tell everybody though, I can talk to a brick wall and we'd have a great conversation. But as long as you can talk to people, you know, and as long as you enjoy meeting new people and teaching people new things and seeing that moment where everything kind of clicks for them, that gives me a lot of joy. It's what's kept me here. It's actually the longest job I've ever had. Which I tell people all the time because I don't know why I do, but I just feel like when you stick to a company that you actually enjoy, you'll be there for as long as you enjoy it. And I'm still here and I still very much enjoying it. So HomeX has been around for a little bit though. They've been around since 2017. That's when the idea was kind of founded. And then from there, the growth really picked up, I would say, in like 2023. And that's when we kind of picked up getting more and more acquisitions and kind of more what we call tuck-ins, where the company just kind of goes right underneath an existing company. So, I do all of the new hire training for the call center. I also do the ongoing training when we have time for it, of course, not during peak seasons, right? I do anything else that they need me to do.

Amazing.

Anything else.

Yeah. It's amazing that they grew. So, the call center now handles calls for 12 different companies across many trades and And how many, around how many agents do y'all have?

So when I first started, 'cause I do think it's important to note that when I first started, there was probably about less than 20 agents. Now we're up to 60+. Wow.

And then I know right now you're in week 2. We're gonna break down the 4-week training process that you go to and how many new agents are joining you now.

So it always varies, right? Because of call centers. But right now I have 10 people in my class. Wow.

That's amazing. Yeah.

The biggest class I've had is like 30-something people. The smallest class I've had is 4.

Okay. Gotcha. So that is awesome to hear and amazing to see the growth and, uh, for you to be right at the front training all the CSRs coming through for the last few years. In our last time we talked to you, broke down the 4-week training process of how you take them through basically no, nothing all the way to week 4, taking calls in service Titan. I would love to go through the 4 weeks, the topics, and then also the ServiceTitan side as well for each. So, uh, what does week 1 look like?

I'll explain why it's 4 weeks first, just because when you're talking about working within the trades, you inherently have to know the information and the questions to ask, right? The probing questions to ask. And that's when you can manipulate ServiceTitan to help your CSRs. Right, with job summary questions, with custom fields, that type of deal, right? So if you know what you want your agents to ask, then you can manipulate ServiceTitan to get the information that you're looking for. So I have it structured over the 4 weeks for us to focus on different topics every single week. And I've realized that if you can give it to them in smaller increments at a time, and then you have a lot of conversation around those topics, they're able to retain that information. I also did a really fun thing that I'll explain when I go over week 1, but I started chanting with them. What we do during week 1 is we review basically what HomeX is. I go over who I am, what the team is. We do an introduction to the leadership team so they're familiar with all of the faces. I think it's super important that you establish the leadership team at the beginning of the training. Preferably day 1 and day 2, because they know that they have ample support across their entire career here. And I want them to feel that immediately when they are on day 1. I get them set up too. I, I created a training guide. It's about 100 pages that has step-by-steps of every single thing that we talk about. I give them water bottles, notebooks, sticky notes, highlighters, pens, a magnet, a fidget spinner too, because I know that if people don't have something in their hand, it'll be their phone. I have never met anybody who does something like that. And I've asked people, does that— have you met anybody that's where you've done a training in the past that's given you fidgets before? And I kid you not, it changes the game. They have those things in their hand all the time, just fidgeting away. And they're so cheap on Amazon, you might as well just do it. And they love it and they appreciate it and they feel like we, you really thought about them. So the way that week 1 goes is we set up the structure of, you know, what the next 4 weeks are gonna be like, 'cause that's also important to set the, the right expectation. But we focus very heavily on service calls and how to book service calls within ServiceTitan. So then we go shift into the dispatch fees, we shift into the scripting and what that looks like, and basically how to utilize your resources to the best of your abilities. I don't give them all of the resources right away because that's extremely overwhelming for anybody, especially because we use multiple different softwares on top of ServiceTitan to help us through these calls. So you kind of give them a little bit of it at a time so it's easy to digest, right? You don't eat the whole cake in one bite. You eat it in pieces. So you have to think of it like that. You don't want to bite off more than you can actually chew. And these people are doing the same thing and you can kind of see in their eyes when they, when you start to lose them a little bit. So you have to know when to reel it, reel it back in. When we start with service calls, what I do is I explain the calls tab in ServiceTitan, and I go over very heavily what the calls tab is, calls tab is. And our phone system connects with ServiceTitan, which is good because when the customer calls in, it pops ServiceTitan up for us, and because we're dealing with multiple companies, it pops up whatever company they're calling, which is great. Now we're not in different tenants. We actually utilize Enterprise Hub rather than just the standard, you know, Go Account for ServiceTitan. We'll go over the different job types, we go over the business units and what those mean, marketing campaigns and stressing the importance of making sure that if the marketing campaign is there, don't touch it. It's all you gotta do, you just don't touch it. And if there is no marketing campaign, you know, asking how they heard about us, because that's super important just for our marketing team in general. Talking about different priorities. We have a prioritization matrix that we follow. I train, but not only do I train, I then go over all of the different examples and I have them tell me what they would prioritize the job as. A lot of these calls are whatever the agent believes to be an emergency versus a non-emergency. And the way that I train is, and I, I heard this from the person that actually trained me, is it might not be an emergency to you, But it's an emergency to them. You want to treat it like that, right? But that doesn't mean that it's an actual emergency. You have to focus on what the customer is saying while also following the process that you have in place at your company, right? Or the process that we have here. We'll go over all of that. We go over the custom fields. We do have custom fields that populate based on the job type that the agent has selected. So for example, if you're booking an AC call, We have a custom field for the location of the equipment, for the age of the equipment, for the dispatch fee that you're quoting, and if the job is COD, meaning that the payment's due at the end. Then we also have job summary questions attached to each job type too, that helps the agent through those calls. So things that they should say on every single call, like a drain call, do they have city sewer or do they have a septic tank? But somebody that's just off of the streets like I was, Right? Well, not off the streets, but you know what I mean? Coming from a different job that had no trade background whatsoever. I didn't even know I had a septic tank growing up. I just knew that the grass was squishy in certain areas and that was gross and nobody told me about it until I started this job. So, you know, you're starting these people from scratch and you always, every single day, have to keep that in mind. You cannot just assume that they know anything. When you assume something, 9 times out of 10, I find that I'm wrong. So I try not to. Then we go into the script. We have a script that we follow, but it's not something that they necessarily have to read verbatim. It's a flow, right? And the conversation can go differently on every single call. There are some calls that there just is no script for because it's off the cusp, right? I've found that if you can train the agents to handle those types of conversations, even if they don't know what to do, they can confidently figure out what to do without letting the customer know that they don't know. The last thing that the customer wants to hear is, "I don't know." And they want to be clear as well. They want to know exactly what's going to happen next. So I always focus on what's the game plan. After you book this service job, what expectation are you going to set with the customer? And we use a series of disclaimers. So if you're booking a service call, you say this disclaimer. That's that has the dispatch fee. If you're booking a recall, right, we have to go back out for work, you say this disclaimer. If you're booking it same day and there is no ETA, we try to avoid saying that there's no ETA because the customer will just go to another company to try to get an actual ETA. So it's really, you have to kind of pick apart what you're saying to the customers now and try to figure out psychologically what's gonna make more sense. If I avoid no ETA, well, what can I say instead? I'm gonna say, I'm gonna get a technician out to you as soon as one frees up. Now that sounds a heck of a whole lot better than, sorry, no ETA. And then utilizing your resources, we do have a knowledge base. We have an AI tool that we use that basically pulls up information for, uh, for agents. We utilize just Outlook and Teams as well, just for communication purposes. But that first week is a lot of discussion. It's a lot of answering questions. And I think it's important to say, and I actually just thought about this not too long ago, but every single first week of training, people will say, I'm so sorry, I have a stupid question. Or, I'm so sorry, I have a dumb question. And like week 1, I'm like, first of all, there are no stupid questions. There are no dumb questions. You're coming into this with no experience whatsoever, right? You have no idea what you're doing. That's what I'm here for. So you kind of give them that reassurance. Now, as week 2, week 3, week 4 comes around, they'll still say that. They'll still say, I have a dumb question. I have a stupid question. I kind of reframe their thinking a little bit to say, all right, let's not call it a dumb question. Let's call it a validating question. A validating question is not, it's the same question. It's just, it's not that you don't know the answer, it's that you know the answer. You just need validation that that's correct. This class that I'm in right now, they stopped saying stupid questions and they started saying, I have a validating question. And it just made my heart just so happy that they were saying that because I don't want, I don't like anybody to think it's the same difference as constructive criticism versus feedback. One you can see as just criticism, the other one you can see as feedback, and you can see those two phrases a little bit differently. So that's what the week one looks like and you kind of have to take it a little bit slow because if you throw too much up at them at once, I've lost people in the first week of training because we threw too much at once and people are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I was just making donuts at Honeydew Donuts before this. I don't know what I'm doing in this, right? So then, you know, putting the 4-week program together really makes it digestible. Wow.

What a beautiful description. And I can already get a sense and get a feeling of that learning environment, that positive learning environment right off the bat. You mentioned, you know, ServiceTitan along with some other software tools, and I feel like people have a different range of how comfortable they are with technology. Um, how do you feel like the CSRs come in and like look at ServiceTitan for the first time and any advice you would have for that, that first impression of learning all the different tools?

I do utilize Service Titan Academy. We were talking about this earlier, actually, when we spoke last, but they just upgraded the Academy interface that they have. So it makes a lot more sense now, and it goes at a slow pace, and it goes at a pace that they can kind of control what they're clicking. And so during the first week, I kind of intro that a little bit more so than me just explaining it. People like to do things themselves. That's one of the learning styles, right? I think it's kinesthetic. I can't think of it. I think it's kinesthetic.

Yeah.

Where it's, it's more, um, you want it, you need to do it yourself type of deal, right? Whereas there are some that are visual learners where they need to be able to see that what you're doing and then they can copy what you're doing. And so I realized that Academy kind of tailors to all of that. So that's one of the things that I'll use. But I also ask people, I'm like, have you ever used a booking software before? Because I have, but it was a, you know, one of those ones that probably cost $20 a month and it was for a massage place and it was a very small business and it was nice for what it was. But the amount of information that ServiceTitan can hold, I basically tell them, you're gonna be living in this, get used to it. That's it. I've had people that haven't used a computer in 30 years. That's somebody in my class right now. She hasn't touched a computer in 30 years. You know, we don't know if that's the truth or not, but, um, I was very concerned about that, of course, because service signing is all on the computer. I found that as long as you're willing to have patience, and you have to exercise patience, 'cause it can be a workout sometimes. That's why it's exercise. They will be able to figure it out. I've had people that have completely changed my mindset around giving people a second chance where I really didn't think that they were gonna be able to pull through. And I know that's very negative of it, but you can, you can start to see the people that struggle, you identify those people. But the something about myself is that I don't necessarily give up on those people, which also facilitates that positive culture. And if we have to go a little bit slower, then we're gonna go a little bit slower. Mm-hmm.

So in week 1, do they all get access to ServiceTitan and they can use it like throughout the week whenever they can click around in academy? They get assigned everything in academy. Day 1.

Day 1. Yep.

And then, uh, moving into, so we covered service calls, you go over the resources. How about week 2 now? What do you do?

Oh wait, I never told you about the chant.

Oh yeah. What? Yeah.

What is this chant? I needed to tell you about the chant. So you know how people remember things or retain things better when it's in like a song form?

Yeah.

So one of the things that, that I go through during week 1 is not just service calls, but I also go over the industry knowledge. Which is HVAC, plumbing, drains, electrical, generators, what companies do what, the resources that we have around that, the different HVAC systems, right? Because you have to identify what has vents, what has baseboards. I would start chanting, okay, when I say boiler, you say baseboards. Boiler, boiler, baseboards. And then when I say central air, you say vents. Central air, central air. And everybody's so, everybody's smiling, everybody's laughing because it's like kind of embarrassing. But at the same time, it's fun.

Yeah.

And it helped them remember. And then throughout the rest of the week after that, it was, oh, right, baseboards, boiler, or oh, vents, central air.

Right, right, right.

And all of a sudden they start to remember it. 'Cause I can sit here and say all day long, a furnace has vents. But as soon as you throw in a chant, or as soon as you throw in something catchy, all of a sudden they're like, oh, I remember this now. It comes back a little bit better. I just wanted to point that out. And I hadn't done it before until this, this class I started doing it. They were like, you should, you should make a song. I was like, I don't have time for that, but I can try.

That is amazing. That sounds like such a fun learning environment. It's cool to hear you implemented it this week. It just shows that you're still adapting and constantly making changes and improving.

I don't think I've ever followed the same schedule twice.

Wow.

I change it up. You have to tailor to the people that you have. You also have to tailor too to what you're capable of going over in that particular day. You know, everybody has their days. And so if you kind of assess the vibe and figure out, all right, well, I don't know if I should go over memberships today. I don't think everybody's, you know, like, oh, you know, and I need people to be on their game. So I'll say at the end of the day, listen, we're going to go over a lot of stuff tomorrow. Have your coffee, have your energy drink, have whatever you need, and then come in ready for the day. I try to make the training fun. Which is also an advantage that I have having been self-taught is because I do it my way. Mm-hmm. Which is fine.

That's amazing. So you're actually in week 2 currently with the new class. Yeah. And, and what are you all covering in, in week 2?

Memberships has been the biggest thing, but it's also a pain point because as I mentioned, there are 12 different companies or so, you know, around that many. Every company had a different membership plan. So I had to create a resource for everybody to be able to utilize where it wasn't on paper, because I found that if I kept putting things on paper, they would change. Then here I am going around killing more trees than I need to, and I don't want to do that. So I digitized a lot of things. I learned this from the person that trained me. Well, when I was in a CSR training was, if it's not evergreen material, don't put it in paper. If it's firm and it's not changing, then that's evergreen material. You can use that. But if it's going to change, make it digital. And people are on their computers all day anyway, right? So we're focusing on memberships. We talk about how to book estimates as well, and we go over every single type of job that would constitute a free estimate, whether it's from a technician or whether it's a Comfort Advisor. I use my whiteboard and I say, what do you think should be a free estimate? And so now that kind of opens their mind a little bit to think, well, what's the difference between a service and an estimate? And I go over what I call red flag words or trigger words. And there's 4 of them. There's quote, install, price, and there's one more and I can't forget, but you get the gist. But they're red flag words, which means that just because the customer says that they want it, doesn't mean that that's what we can give them. So they might say, hey, I want an estimate on a new HVAC system. Perfect. We can do that. People say, I want an estimate to fix my HVAC system. Well, we can do that, but I'm not booking an estimate. I'm booking a service call. And that changes my job type and my business unit and my availability and my custom fields and my job summary questions in ServiceTitan, which is why it's so important for me to spend almost 2 hours just going over the difference between What is a service? What is an estimate? So that way when my agents hear those trigger words, they'll know what job to actually book and have confidence doing it too. So we focus a lot on that and also just what is the process to getting a new system? I realize that if the agent can explain it to the customer and then we can go and we can do those steps, then the customer's gonna obviously trust us because We followed through on our expectation. Maybe I explain it a little bit too much and I find myself, I love talking as you can tell, so I find myself maybe overexplaining, but I also feel that the more that you can really dive in and the more that you can get people to be engaging with you and asking those questions and following up, like my, one of my favorite things is when somebody goes, okay, so they'll go out and they'll do this and And then they'll do this. And I just kind of listen to them repeat what I said. And sometimes it can be a little frustrating if they're going slow because I just want to get to the next thing. But you almost have to sit with that for a minute and just think, this is how they process. Let me help them process this because maybe how they're processing this right now is how another person is going to process it as well. And them saying that one thing, might've just given the aha moment for the person sitting next to them. So we do a lot of that. And then in terms of how I teach memberships in Service Titan, I go over the memberships first, just in general, but I also go over the building value around memberships and when you should plug a membership, right? So like a non-member calling in looking for a maintenance, my first question is, are you looking for a one-time maintenance or are you looking for something routine that you can get done every single year? That's gonna help prolong the life of your system. That's gonna differentiate the customer who's interested in a plan versus who just wants to book the job and not call again for another 3 years. I try to keep it very basic in ServiceTitan. I just show them the, we call it a shell, the membership shell. So you go to the location or you go to the customer profile, you click memberships, and then you click into the membership. The recurring service events though, are one of the most important things when it comes to a membership, because that's how you track your deferral revenue, or at least we have it set up to track deferral revenue, which means that we don't actually take the amount of the membership upfront. We track how much we get from the membership based on the amount of maintenances they've received. So if they, if their membership is $500 and they have an AC and a heating system, $250 goes towards the AC, $250 goes towards the heating. But what happens if the agent forgets to attach the visit? Right? So now all of a sudden you have this recurring service event sitting in limbo, but it was already done. To another agent though, it might look like it wasn't done. Or it gets dismissed and that was supposed to be deferral revenue that we counted, but now it's dismissed. I teach them not only what they're supposed to do, but the implications of what happens if they don't. But I always say, and this was going to be the one of the last pieces of advice that I give. But I'll plug the seed now, is everything is fixable. So, like, if you forget to attach that recurring service event, or you forgot to do this, or forgot to do that, ServiceTitan will allow you to fix it. You just might not know how to do it, but ServiceTitan will allow you to fix it. But, you know, they have so much knowledge base, and you can ask questions to Atlas and all this stuff that, you know, you can really figure it out on your own. But that's kind of how I, I try to keep it super simple. I'm mostly going over though, the value and how to sell the membership without it sounding salesy. I talk about it as if I'm selling the customer on a different perspective. So maybe they came in thinking, well, I just need the maintenance one and done. But, you know, maybe I also am thinking about redoing my bathroom, or maybe I'm getting an electric car soon. I might need a car charger. The benefits of the membership can translate into, into future services. Now that's a selling point. So it's when, kind of like when to hold them, when to fold them. When should you sell it? When should you not? And then also identifying what membership they have in ServiceTitan too. And we utilize tags for that. That's the best way too. But without the resource that we have, we call it a membership playbook. It's just a really colorful and in-depth Excel spreadsheet. There's nothing crazy about it other than the information that's in there. But they just go into there. It tells them, you know, what plans are on auto renew, what plans are manual renew, and all of that. Then usually what I'll do is I'll follow up the membership training with a Kahoot, if you know what Kahoot is. But I personally, I love Kahoot. I love playing games. And even the, the older people that tend to be in the class, because I'll get age ranges from 18 to 75. Right. It tailors to all of those people though. And then I give out Amazon gift cards as prizes, as an incentive to do well. And it goes over every single thing that we talked about the membership, and that helps break it up. They get excited. And then I have consolation prizes for the people who don't win as well, because in my eyes, everybody's a winner.

Amazing. A question about, um, you know, with memberships, with the deferred revenue, and is the visit checked off or not? Yeah. Do you have any alerts or anything in ServiceTitan to catch if like there was a human error made just to make sure at the end of the day that the you're all fixed.

We do have, and this is more at the platform level that this would happen, but for example, one of our platforms, they have an alert set up for any maintenance that was booked, whether it's member or non-member. So she's almost acting like a filter to look at the booked job, and if it did have a member tag attached to it, that the visit was attached. If she starts to notice, okay, there's a repeat offender here. Then she can send that back to us and we can coach that agent on how to do it. I catch it myself too sometimes, and then other agents will catch it as well because they'll start to see the visit that's showing, but then you'll see the job was already completed, but the visit never attached. So there is somebody kind of filtering it, but it is, we do utilize alerts in ServiceTitan to do that.

Gotcha. And then, uh, how about week 3? So we got service first, now we got membership sales, and then what do we go into in week 3?

So week 3, you have to think of week 3 as they are established at this point. So now you want to talk about the more complicated processes. You don't want to talk complicated processes the first 2 weeks. You got to save that for week 3, then you can throw it at them and they won't want to quit right away. So we go over converting estimates, converting service and maintenance estimates. We don't touch sales estimates, that has to go through our salespeople and we'll, you know, try to warm transfer them over, but we go over conversions. So how to sell an estimate and turn it into a job. We take deposits for it, we book it, we place it on hold, and then we actually utilize task management within ServiceTitan as well. To then task it to the correct department. And we actually just rolled out, or I had the pleasure of being able to roll out task management across HomeX several months ago. And there's always negative feedback, but there's been mostly positive feedback about this. And it also started to help us pinpoint where the problems are. Like, the point of task management is not just to task people with things,, but it's also to start to see the common trends. Maybe there's problems at the platform that can be fixed. Maybe there's problems in the call center that can be fixed, and task management has really highlighted that for us.

Yeah, I think in our last conversation you called it passing the baton. You wanna make sure that—

Oh, I love passing the baton because the call center, you're a middle person, which means that half of the time you'll be able to help the customer. The other half of the time you have to pass the baton. And if you pass the baton with a lack of information, that person's not gonna catch you. If you pass the baton and the person never takes the baton, is that on the call center at that point, or is that on the platform? But whose fault does it really matter, right? The fact of the matter is that the customer never got followed up with. That's what we care about, right? And we try to have a first call resolution, but in the call center, that's not possible all the time. In a smaller call center, maybe. But for the, the scale that we have here, it's not possible. So passing the baton properly and efficiently is why we utilize task management.

So does task management help to cover the selling, converting, the tech leads, and the non-bookable jobs? I know these are like all topics, the complexity of it, uh, in week 4.

It helps with the conversions and selling and converting estimates. Tech leads are mostly handled by our dispatchers, but if they do overflow to us, we're just booking the job.

That's it.

Just booking the job. We'll book it as a lead, of course, through ServiceTitan. And then non-bookable calls, this is more of a discussion. This is a discussion. I, I stand in front of the whiteboard and as I ask them, I'll write down their answers. But I'll say, what would you consider to be a non-bookable call? Because there's a ton. A non-bookable call, Anytime that I have to reach out to the platform, to me is a non-bookable call because I, I wasn't able to handle it myself. And that's one of the things too, is that I take calls, I take calls in front of my new hires and I just tell them, all you have to do is be quiet. You don't even have to do anything, just be quiet. And I have them on speakerphone and they listen to the customer and they listen to me. They'll call me out if I do something wrong. I don't usually, but if I do, It's all about just identifying where your opportunities are. Where's the opportunity? That customer who's maybe interested in a membership, how can we get them signed up? The customer who wanted a copy of their invoice and you notice that they're a member, can we book their maintenances? It's how you turn non-bookable calls into bookable calls. It's more of a, a mindset where you have to think, what can I, what can I do to this for this customer that is going to help my adjusted booking rate? Because that's something that we track here, is the adjusted booking rate. So week 3 becomes a lot of conversions and a lot of role-playing around those conversions, tech leads and role-playing around those tech leads. But then what I do is I'll put a bunch of examples up on the board and I'll have them go through and one of them will be a conversion. One of them is a member maintenance. One of them is an estimate. One of them is, one of them is a service, a non-member maintenance. Throw everything that we have taught them in the middle of week 3 at them. And that's where you gauge and you see where they're at. And that's where you can pinpoint maybe who's struggling a little bit. So by the middle of week 3, after I've kind of explained all of the processes, now they start to shadow way more. They're not just shadowing because shadowing to me is just sitting back there like, eh, what are they doing now? You know, that's, that to me is not shadowing. If I see somebody on their phone, that's not shadowing. If I see somebody like looking at the screen like this, looking over somebody's shoulder, pointing at things, asking questions, that's shadowing. But at week 3, we're beyond shadowing. We are at a point now where you're either navigating while the person that you're shadowing is talking to the customer, or you're talking to the customer while the person you're shadowing with is navigating. You could call this a soft introduction to the phones. And what I've experienced as I've been doing it the last 2 years is that people will come back from that shadowing experience and I'll ask them, how do you feel now? We feeling good? How we feeling? And they're like, ah, I feel so much better. Or I had this one call and it was kind of tricky, but I feel like I killed it. And then we have a whole 1-hour discussion about all of the calls that they listen to. That is where they learn so much information because now they're relating it to something they actually experienced. That's kind of like the cool moment where we have, if you have the ability to do that and you're okay with them doing that, let them nav— they're doing it right now while I'm talking to you. They are, they're navigating while the person is talking. It's week 2, so I said, you can do that. Week 3 though, I expect them to start at least talking to a customer. Because when week 4 comes around, that's the nesting period. That's when I say, spread your wings, I'm gonna push you out of the nest. But I'm there. It's like, I pushed you out of the nest, but I'm watching you. I'm still watching. I'm still lurking around. If you have questions, I answer them. If you have an escalation, I take it. But if I have an escalation, your butt is right next to me and you're listening to how I de-escalate it. Because you can use what I say in the future to help yourself.

I wanted to highlight something. So you said, uh, the first thing you have them do when they start to actively shadow is you have your current CSRs take the calls, but they're sitting there navigating. They take the mouse and they're in the driver's seat. They're in the driver's seat using ServiceSign, booking everything. Maybe the person taking the call is helping pointing every now and then. Okay, got it. So that's the first time they kind of get that active practice. Then the next step is they're taking the calls, but someone else like the current CSRs, are they're navigating. So they can just do kind of one half, maybe they start with the navigating half, then later they start with the talking half, and then after that they put it together.

Exactly.

That is amazing.

We utilize dual headsets, two headsets with a splitter, and it's not like a general splitter though. It's this, this complicated one. They're kind of expensive. I didn't realize how expensive they were for them to be not as good quality as you would think that they would be. What can happen too is let's say that agent has bad anxiety around this, right? That happens. And I'm never gonna push somebody on week 3 to do something that they're not comfortable with, but you almost have to have that reality slap in the face to say, this is happening next week, whether you want it to or not, this is your time to do it. And if you do make a mistake, well, guess what? The dual headset, one flip of a switch, and the person that you're shadowing with is now in control of the call. So that's like the beauty of dual headsets. On top of that, they can also hear the customer, so they're getting both sides of the conversation as well. If you're only hearing one side, you're not really getting the full picture. So we'll start that week 2, and then week 3, I put a little bit more emphasis on, all right, try to at least talk to the customer once, because I find that if they can talk to the customer just one time and they come back into the training room and they hear everybody other— every other person's experience also having take calls, it motivates them to do more the next day. They just have to have that, let's call it inspiration from other people.

Got it. So we got first week service, second week sales memberships, third week kind of everything else. And meanwhile, they're, they're dipping their toes in more and more into this active practice. And then, uh, week 4, the nesting period, uh, what does that look like?

So not every call center would have the ability to do this. It depends on the setup. But what we have put aside is, I think it's about 8 cubicles and they're all in the same section. So they all sit there and that's their like temporary desk. We tell them to get comfortable, but not too comfortable. If they want somebody to shadow with them the first day or two, we can do that. But they are driving and talking at the same time. So navigating and talking, but they have somebody sitting behind them in case they need a backup. And sometimes this is a trusted agent, you know, maybe somebody who's been with us for longer than a year and a half, 2 years, or it's a team lead, just depends on who's available. But I actually did this, I started doing this thing where during the nesting period on week 3, so Friday of week 3, I ask people, I say, raise of hands, who wants somebody to shadow with them on Monday? When it's the nesting period. And, you know, I'll have like 3 or 4 people, right? But come Monday, I don't ever bring it up again. I don't bring it up. What I do instead is I just say, all right, let me know if you need anything. I don't ever bring it up. And then they go midway through the day, they'll be like, wait, wasn't I supposed to have somebody sitting with me? And then I say, yeah, but look at you now. You don't even need somebody and, and you forgot about it. You don't even need it. My last class, they didn't need a single person to sit with them. Wow. Because they just, they forgot. And like, that's what people will do. They'll forget that that was the, that was the idea. They'll just want to do it. So if you just let them, don't get in their way.

Yeah.

Just let them do it. And listen, if they mess up, move on. Learn. Learn and move on. Know how to handle it for the next time.

That's that little push out of the nest. Like, yep. And they got it. They started flying even if they didn't believe they could.

Yep. Wow. Exactly.

Beautiful. What an awesome 4 weeks. I love how structured it is with the company knowledge, how you guys have things set up along with the ServiceTitan knowledge and how to like marry the two. Throughout this training, are they also assigned academy videos to watch like throughout each week?

Not throughout each week. I mostly keep that to week 1.

Okay.

Um, because the information ramps up in week 2. I mostly do, um, prepare to launch CSR. That's what I'm mostly doing, cuz that goes over the booking, job booking basics. And I'll also assign like new customers and changing customer accounts, changing location accounts, that kind of stuff. So I assign it, but I only require it during week 1, and I'll carve out maybe like 6 hours of week 1. Like I'm not doing this the entirety of the day. That was actually my training. Because they didn't have enough material for us to go over. So they would just put us and make us do academy for like 8 hours in a day. But that was like the old academy where it went, you know, just like a little bit slower than where you can click now. So, yeah.

Gotcha. So yeah, it's very, very structured. And then, uh, maybe we can wrap up with any kind of broad advice for a new CSR, maybe like new CSR managers, people bringing in an influx of CSRs or want to get better at training. Any, like, common challenges or advice to pay special attention to for those learning service time for the first time?

Yeah, I actually have a couple. The first one is be patient with the customers and be patient with yourself. The be patient with yourself is arguably one of the more important ones, especially if you're not really good with technology, maybe you're coming back into technology, Or maybe you are really good at technology, but it's just a new software that you're learning. You have to be patient with yourself. Also have some confidence in yourself, right? Like, make it— don't make it seem like the customer thinks that you don't know what you're talking about. My thing is confidently place somebody on hold. I'll always say that. Don't ever give a nod to, ooh, I don't know what to do. Say, you know what, let me place you on a quick hold. I'm gonna look into this for you really quickly, okay? And then you place them on a hold. That way they never know that you don't know. We don't want the customer to know because as soon as they are on the line with an agent who doesn't know what they're talking about, or who maybe is talking out of somewhere they shouldn't be talking, then it gets dicey. Then they start to ask more questions. Those questions we don't have the answers to. Overexplaining is not the same as effective communication. So that's the biggest thing. Is don't overcommunicate to your people, but also, or to your customers, but also have some patience with yourself as you're doing this. And don't let anybody know that you don't know. Fake it till you make it. That's like a very common phrase that everybody knows, right? Fake it till you make it. That's what you gotta do sometimes. And because the way that we have our structure set up is there's support everywhere. So when you place that customer on hold, utilize your resources. Utilize your team leads. Utilize me. I'm on the floor when I'm not in new hire training. I'm helping people. I'm taking calls if I need to. I'm doing all of that because there's not a position that I won't go down to, to help whenever I can. And that's just the mentality that I have. Some people don't have that mentality, but I feel like that is what helps you connect with people. My last thing that I'll say is, and I tell this to every one of my new hires, and I've already said it on this, but Everything is fixable, especially in ServiceTitan. There's one thing that can't be fixed. Josh, do you know what it is?

What you say to the customer.

What you say to the customer. There you go. Exactly. Everything is fixable in ServiceTitan. That's one of the benefits of using ServiceTitan is because if you do, like, you sold an estimate to the wrong person, you put a tech lead on the wrong job, you didn't book a recall and it should have been a recall. You put it to the wrong customer account, you put it to the wrong location, whatever it is, there is a fix for it. Whether you know that there's a fix or not, there's a fix. The only thing that we can't take back is what we say. That's my advice. Make those mistakes. Make the mistakes in ServiceTitan because you learn from them and then you do better the next time.

Wow. Jax, you are such a gift to this community. I can totally see why you're, you're such an amazing trainer, and I think any CSR would be very lucky to be able to go through those 4 weeks with you and work Hell Mix. Even me, I remembered what you said in our last call about Eugene. I was surprised. I had no idea. And I was like, I don't know why it just clicked. You, you taught it to me once and I still remember it for some reason. So I think it's just how genuine you are, how much you care clearly comes through this process, how much just care you take in, in every interaction and everything you're saying, uh, and, and training people on. So I appreciate you coming on the podcast and sharing all this, um, to to our customers and our, our audience here so they can apply it themselves. And, uh, gosh, I'm gonna have to, have to have you back on one day for task management. I have not covered that topic and you guys just rolled it out to everybody, so.

Yes.

That would be a great one. But, um, thank you.

We've gotten a lot of feedback, so let me know whenever.

Sounds great. Thank you so much, Jax, uh, for coming on the show. And, uh, thank you all for listening. We'll catch you on the next episode.