Lessons in Change Management From Scaling ServiceTitan Across 500+ Locations | Podcast Ep. 101

We want to be able to make the franchisees more efficient, more profitable, really work on running their business instead of working on running their business. Why are we doing this? It's so franchisees can benefit from using the core product of ServiceTitan.

Welcome to Mastering ServiceTitan, where you get expert advice from power users. I'm your host, Josh Liu, and today I'm joined by Adam Terranova, the Senior Director of Marketing at Authority Brands. And we are talking about change management at scale. So Adam, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Josh. Happy to be here.

So quick intro for those who don't know Authority Brands. Uh, can you share a little bit about, uh, what is Authority Brands and what's your role there?

Authority Brands is a large company. We have 15 different brands. The way I would describe it is there's 2 divisions. There's the trades division and then there's a non-trades division. Trades division, Being heavy in heating and air conditioning, plumbing, and electrical. My role here is I oversee the marketing function of the trades division for franchisee success and brand success.

And the last time we talked, one thing you mentioned that just blew me away was you guys rolled out Service Sign across over 500+ locations, which, before we started recording, I think I said, I don't think I've ever spoken to somebody who's rolled out Service Sign at that scale. Maybe first, what made you guys decide on ServiceTitan? Um, yeah. And, and when was that?

Yeah, it was quite an undertaking, right? Let's just start and admit that one upfront. Um, but the biggest reason that we wanted to go with ServiceTitan is a good number of our franchisees were already using ServiceTitan. We were on a different, a different platform, but it was ServiceTitan core products is What really drew the decision, along with the franchisees already using it, endorsing it, preferring ServiceTitan over other solutions, is what got us— was what got us to switch to ServiceTitan. That was the why that was in there. And, you know, the operational efficiencies of the ServiceTitan, when I listen to Ara, I think about it like it was built for how to run a construction or a trades-based business. That was the key. And I think that was the big reasons that both the franchisees and the brand and ABB leadership wanted to make that change to Service Line.

That makes sense. And once that decision was made, what does the process look like to roll out Service Line across that many locations?

That is insane. So it's a little bit of organized chaos, but I mean that in a good way, right? So you have some people that want to go fast and right away. Others that want to be last, and it's really just sorting through everything. I would say to go through the process, you have to start with the vision. Why are we doing this? You know, the answer is we want to be able to make the franchisees more efficient, more profitable, and really work on running their business instead of working on running their business. Start with the vision of why are we doing this, and then what's in it for me? Will naturally come, and then the rest comes down to understanding, knowledge, risk tolerance. For those of us in the heating and air conditioning business, there's seasonality. I'm not going to be making a service type switch in the middle of a heat wave, right? Like it's just not doesn't make business sense from a focus standpoint. So you have to take a lot of factors into consideration when the change happened and the why.

Right?

Why are we doing this? It's so franchisees can benefit from using the core product of ServiceTitan.

Right. And I imagine there's maybe like a bell curve there of people who are really excited and tech-forward and want to use ServiceTitan, and maybe some that just really like, I want to be the last guy. How do you then start to schedule out that implementation? Do you engage all of that across all those locations?

There's a lot of different mindsets for it. And it's one of those things where it's just like, So many things are right at the same time, and then you just have to you know look at and dissect what it's going to be. We definitely made some mistakes in in some of the selections and processes. We got a lot more right than we did than we did wrong. What I mean by this is like what's it going to impact at that unit level economics and the franchisee? We know we have a goal to get to everybody on service time, and we're there, but it was more along the lines of how do we get everybody there? Because some franchisees may have 6 months' worth of data. Some other franchisees might have 16 or 20 years' worth of data. So you have to kind of choose who between there. While it might be like, oh, let's start with the hard guys first, we also are partners with ServiceTitan and we can't overwhelm this system of how we do it. So it's a combination of mixing, matching. And again, there's a lot of rights at the same time for that. I mean, you know, seasonality being another piece of it. For the heating and air conditioning piece in particular.

As you went through the process and look back, are there any key lessons or advice or even tactics that you can share with some folks listening who maybe are expanding and want to implement service site across multiple locations?

Yeah, so I mean, there's 2 aspects of it. I mean, one, be organized to be clear. What I mean by clear is to the end users, train and Training, I think, is one of the bigger pieces of it. Today's world, you just can't send a help article and go. You have to actually get the person to understand the why we're doing this and then train them of how to do it. So it's a lot of time, training, understanding, and just working through a lot of the challenges of implementation of there. Now, to be clear, I want to move on to say I oversaw the pro products implementation of this. So while I had awareness of it, it was not my core responsibility. My responsibility started with, you know, the Pro products, Scheduling Pro and Marketing Pro across the entire system as we went through that one.

Yeah, let's dive into both of those Pro products. First, what was the decision process like? Did it take a lot of convincing? And which one did you start with? Yeah, what was that early part like?

We started with both at the same time. If I could go back and have a crystal ball, I would probably start with Scheduling Pro first. Because if you think about ServiceTitan, at least the way I can verbally visualize it for everybody is you have a big ball. This is ServiceTitan Core. It's everything you need to run your business. But then think of it like a cell or a molecule. The first, I forget what the technical term is, off of that has to be Scheduling Pro. Because when you're sending emails and saying, book an appointment now, you can't do that if you don't have Scheduling Pro. You're not engaging with the consumer in the medium that you're communicating with them at. Think about how many emails you get, like, call today for this special offer instead of click now, book it, be done. So that's the difference in between there. That would be my advice for others, right? Start with ScheduleOne Pro, get that perfect because it will open up doors to many other Pro products. But with that, I want to call out one thing. Scheduling Pro or any other Pro product does not work well if the core products are not set up and operating 100%. They will find more flaws. And it's not that Scheduling Pro is broke. It could be something was not set up correctly or set up the way that Scheduling Pro needed it to be. So change management of like, I always did it this way, is the bigger change in the rollout process. You may have always done it this way and it worked for you. But if you do it this way, I can implement Scheduling Pro and get booked online. And then you don't have a senior technician doing a filter change. I'm using extreme examples, but, you know, hopefully you guys can hopefully follow me.

That makes sense. Across the different locations, for those who are a little bit more resistant to scheduling, uh, Scheduling Pro, or maybe a little afraid, what helped them get across those challenges?

Well, Scheduling Pro, it's all about the opportunity, right? We know the world's getting younger. We know that the world is becoming more digitally focused in between there. Lots of generational research between the boomers, Gen X, Gen Y, millennials, Gen Alpha. Lots of research out there. We know that it's going to change and we need to have the ability. So ServiceTitan Core is really good because it can manage your dispatch and everything you need. Of how to run the business. Scheduling Pro gives you the option to expand it out, right? If you go back to COVID, and I'll use COVID in the restaurant industry, think about virtual kitchens. You have the same platform. How are you taking orders? Now you're going through and ordering on DoorDash or Uber Eats or Grubhub. It's the same concept as that comes through. How wide can we make the umbrella for a customer or consumer to book with us at a time that's relevant for them and that works for the company. That's the beauty of it.

For, uh, those who are starting to roll out Scheduling Pro, did you guys start to see like some people were lacking some things in core and had to catch up a bit? And if so, what are those core, I don't wanna know, maybe it's like prerequisites that companies should have before they even think about Scheduling Pro?

Oof, you're getting really deep into the operational side of it. But having the business unit set up right, the jobs and the techs are the, are the 3 big things, right? To really make sure that you have that set up correctly so you know you're getting the right person. Because what Scheduling Pro will do is instantly say Adam has this skill set and is available at this time, whereas Josh may have this skill set, some of it might overlap, but is available at this time. So when a service comes in and says, I need this, Well, Josh does this, Adam doesn't, it's only Josh's availability. Whereas if it's both, then it's, it can work that way. So it's a pretty powerful product. Again, the goal to me of ScheduleOne Pro is how wide can you open the funnel?

It's so funny because the business units, the skills, it seems like something so basic and actually gets mentioned a lot on this podcast. But when people go and look and actually try to revamp it, they find probably there's a lot of nuance there that they're missing before they try to implement some change like this.

And then off of that, right? I think of it, you know, I think I'm still using my molecule statement. Yeah. ScheduleMyPro. Now that opens up MarketingPro. It can also open up DispatchPro and other elements that are from there. But MarketingPro, now you can book appointments through SMS, appointments via email solicitation. Then the other pieces that come out of it, like reputation management, listings management.

For scheduling and Marketing Pro, did you guys consider any like third party or like, you know how some people, they just put like a book online on their native website? I'm curious what made you guys decide to stick with ServiceTitan's ecosystem and Pro rather than a third party?

I think the biggest reason why is there's a shift. And when you do marketing for a long time, you're going to notice different trends that come out of it. Right now we're on a shift where We're looking for consolidation as much as possible. And so one of the decisions was, yes, you could find fragmented systems where you're waking APIs, webhooks, some of those things break. Right now, we really need consistency, and it's a cycle, and I'm gonna call it a 7-year cycle. Right now, we're wrapping everything together in one. I will guarantee you in about 7 years from now, I'll be breaking all-in-ones apart to get back to pricing and operational efficiency. But we're in such a world right now with AI and the, you know, the synchronization of so much data going across there, it makes more sense to have and work off of where my customer records are. And we keep that in one place, and that's in ServiceTitan Core, as well as when I think about PII and other elements, it's not as easy or safe where it's like, oh, download a list and send it off to another vendor. What happens if? So there's a lot of risk in between there. So it was a little bit easier to operate as an all-in-one. 7 years from now, probably be breaking it up.

Well, actually, I don't know. I'm curious about this cycle and this consolidation because it seems like this is like a kind of a zoomed-out philosophy or maybe a trend that you're watching or have experienced. What are you referring to when you refer to this cycle over the years?

So when I'm talking about the cycle as far as consolidation, I'm talking about consolidating listings management, review management, email platform management, SMS promotional cycles, and all those types of things that fall under Marketing Pro and other Pro products that will require the customer data or booking or enable to make the transaction, make the sale. Get the customer what they want, when they want it, how they want it, as frictionlessly as possible. I just made that word up.

So with 2 pro products rolling out and at the same time, how did you do it at scale across so many franchises?

It was tough. It was difficult to be able to do it. There's a lot of lessons we learned throughout the way, but I think what worked best was we can identify one piece of something that we're able to do on behalf of every franchisee. And I'll just use something really simple like reputation management or linking your Google Business Profile. So we're able to go through in every tenant and get that set up for everybody. Then we're able to go another piece across the board with as much efficiency as we possibly can. What I found was what happened was if I'd focus in on one and do 20 tasks, it took a while to get that done. But if I could take one task and do it across hundreds, it would take less time. And now the individual franchisee, again, the purpose of it is getting the franchisee to work on their business instead of in their business. And then their ask and their workload becomes a lot less to be able to do it. So it was more along how do we scale to make it, make it effective for the franchisees or in tolerable bite-sized chunks. So it wasn't a long training session to get this set up.

Right. Because if they have to make so many decisions about how something is set up and then each franchise is doing that and they all look different, I can imagine it just would get insane. Do you have any other examples within marketing or Scheduling Pro where you found like, hey, these decisions we should just make, this is the best practice across?

Um, without a doubt.

Right.

And I'll give you a couple of examples. I, you know, terms and conditions, privacy policies, we all have the same one. It's easy to get somebody to sit there and go through and do every single one instead of being like, oh, where is it? Then you have to search on the website. And we tried checklists prior to, but it just seems so much better that we're able to just do it on behalf of the franchisees in a scalable manner.

Anything else on the marketing side, uh, campaigns, uh, promotions, membership offerings, anything like that that you guys were able to templatize at the top?

Yeah, the email templates, we were definitely able to templatize throughout there. What, you know, we called it a lifecycle in the customer journey. So as much as we could put out there, we would localize it down, you know, using segmentation down to the local level. But then we would also let the franchisee update a couple of words here and there, right? They add a section in about something in their local town. That's great. But if not, we're there to support them with the structural piece of it.

Any secret sauce you can give us about the lifecycle marketing and how you guys— because there's probably so much data and lessons you learn about what works really well. Any tips you can give about how you guys manage your lifecycle marketing there?

That's proprietary information, Josh. But I would say to everybody on this call is, right, always, you know, some of us compete. You know, some of the service titans, customers, and the brands I represent, we compete. As long as we're keeping it focused on the consumer and making it as seamless and as frictionless as possible for the consumer, collectively we all win. So I would just, you know, that's what I would say. We're in this together. The end focus is the consumer, making them customers and making them as happy as possible.

How about opportunities ahead for enterprise, for the franchisee world? Where do you see the future of that going?

So Enterprise Hub, I think, will be super powerful once it really starts to take hold. I mean, it's still in its infancy. All the roll-up reporting and being able to look at macro data across the board will be great. And that's going to only benefit multi-brands, multi-location, you know, clients of yours. So I think that's going to be a great opportunity for everybody in the future. And then I think there'll always be other pro products that come out, like Dispatch Pro, I'm a great proponent of. I think Contact Center Pro seems, you know, really promising. So I'm just looking at all the different opportunities. Again, I use that caveat as right now I'm working on consolidating as much as I possibly can for ease for the franchisees as well as the consumer to make sure that nothing gets lost.

Beautiful. I think there's 3 takeaways from today's episode that I wanted to— maybe we can wrap up with, at least for me. Just to reiterate, server-side core has to be set up properly. Even the basics, you're like, oh, I have my skills and units and all that set up. Let's just look at, look ahead. No, like revisit that because it'll get exposed, the core side. The second biggest topic for me was when you're scaling, you guys seem to have done a really good job making the decisions at the top of the best practices and then just copy paste. Like, we know what's best for you. Trust us, apply it all. And then 3 was, you can't just tell them that. You have to first paint the vision and the why and make sure everyone really believes that before you just say, hey, go do this thing. So those are my big 3 takeaways from your—

And I would say you're right on, right? Like, it starts with the collective vision and then the strategies of how do you get there, and then the tactics that you're actually doing to get it done. If we get alignment at the top part, it makes it a lot easier As we go through. But I will end with this: every Pro product will break or will appear not to be working correctly if ServiceTitan Core is not set up correctly.

Beautiful. Yeah, such a great reminder. I think I heard earlier this morning on a podcast that we need more reminders than we do lessons, and it's, it's so true. So thank you yet again for reminding us how important it is, uh, for that piece. So Thank you so much, Adam, for, for coming on today. And, uh, thank you all for listening.

Josh, always a pleasure to talk to you.

Thanks, Adam.