Unlocking 186% Booked Revenue with ServiceTitan Voice Agents|Podcast Ep. 103 |Mastering ServiceTitan

Her name is Aria. She was our first voice agent. She's always on time. She doesn't call out sick. You absolutely are still going to need an office staff and administrative support, but your team can be doing things in a much more efficient manner, and you can get to customers during, you know, peak volume and not miss out on opportunities.

Welcome to Mastering ServiceTitan, where you get expert advice from power users. I'm your host, Josh Liu, and today I'm joined by Amanda Root, the CEO at Tri-City Home Solutions, and we are talking all about virtual agents today. And so Amanda, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Josh. Thanks for having me. I'm excited.

Yeah, I know there's so much we could talk about. You have a crazy story getting on ServiceTitan in the first place. You joined Max a few months ago, I want to say. You've adopted VA, you've adopted so many things so quickly. But today we're, we'll focus on virtual agents. But before we dive in, can you give people a brief background of Tri-City Home Solutions?

Yeah, for sure. So we are located in Milford, Connecticut, and we have been in business since 1962. We're family owned and operated. Today it's myself, my brother, my husband, and my dad is still very involved in the business. He said he was retiring a couple years ago when I took over as CEO, and recently he's come back and he's doing a bunch of sales for us, and he's still an amazing mentor. We do heating, air conditioning, plumbing, appliance repair, still drain cleaning, and electrical. A lot of services under one roof. We've kind of added them little by little as The years have gone by. We service the lower half of Connecticut. So if you were to look at the state of Connecticut and kind of chop it in half horizontally, like we would be at that bottom part. We do the whole shoreline and we've just kind of been growing our area over the past 60 years. Tri-City was started, my grandfather serviced just 3 cities. And now, you know, we have a pretty, pretty large service area and a pretty large group of a pretty large team, and it's been a really exciting journey to grow the company. And getting ServiceTitan was honestly like one of the pivotal steps that I would say in achieving some of the success that we have achieved in the last year. We've only been on ServiceTitan for a year and 8 months. We joined in January of 2024. So it really hasn't been that long.

And then when did you guys jump onto virtual agent? I feel like that is one of our most innovative, like AI tech forward products. When did you guys join that?

It was honestly like as soon as it came out. I have been obsessed with the digital space probably for a long time, but AI over the past like 4 years, I would say 3 or 4 years. We've been using different technologies with our fleet, different AI technologies. And so as soon as I heard that the voice agent was available, I was very, very anxious to try it. As like, when I say anxious to try it, I mean harassing people to get one.

Yeah.

So if you, you know, know anybody on that team, like, My girl Lindsay, she'll tell you, like, I was like, okay, give me the agent. Can we launch her? How quickly can we get her? Like, let's train her. We currently have 3 deployed agents. One of them is still in testing, our after-hours bot, Vanessa. She's still being perfected. She's a little rogue right now, but we're getting her there. I wanna say that our first bot went live in maybe January or February. It was early, really early this year.

So it sounds like you wanted to jump right in. How did you frame it to the team, the CSR team, and did they have any concerns? Concerns or objections?

We had a meeting and we demoed her, and we also in that meeting, we tested her in the meeting, like with our call center, and we were like messing with her because part of this process is literally trying to break the bot. Like I tell the developers when we're working together, Once that we go live with this, like, or we're what during the testing phase, like we're going to do everything we can to give it problems so that we can anticipate that and you know try not to have any issues during go live, right? So you know we were playing with the bot and then we had a contest to name her. So her name is Aria. She was our first live agent or see voice agent. Honestly, I was expecting people to have. Some pushback, but nobody on my team really did. We had a really dynamic team, and they are super excited about change and different technologies. What's what's out there? What's available? If something's not working, we're not going to continue to do it. I won't just do something for the sake of doing it. I think that there was like a level of trust of like we're going to try this. We've tried other AI technologies before. Like I mentioned, we have this in these incredible and just. you know, for the audience, like anything that we're talking about, I'm not getting paid to talk about any of this. Like this is just my personal experiences. But one of the first AI tools I started using was with a company called Samsara, and they do our GPS tracking. And they had these cameras that literally watch your driver's eyes, and if they divert off the road, there's an alert that, you know, happens. And it has changed Everything for us. I mean, insurance, everything. It has been such a huge factor. So, you know, we learned early on that AI could be a huge help. We use it in a lot of areas of our business. So when I said to them, like, we could have someone who could help us when— if your call center is as active as ours is, when there's 30 bubbles on the screen, if I'm saying to them, like, there's somebody who can potentially take some of those bubbles away. They don't like to see that. Like, we want, we want our stats to be good. So they were excited. We kind of had, um, a little bit of a collision of pro products. So we had like a tale of 2 pro products. So we had Marketing Pro and we also were just going live with the Voice Agent and I was training our new marketing intern on Marketing Pro. And that was the day that I had just gone live with Aria. So we had turned her on. It was a Friday and it was like a really calm day, kind of like it is now, like 3 o'clock in the afternoon. Everyone's kind of winding down for the weekend. And my call center manager was like, hey, we have Aria on. She's been doing really well. How do you feel if I ask anybody if they wanna take a nice early Friday? And I was like, yeah, do it. Let's test her out. So she did, and I was just sitting in my office and training Sophia on, um, how to do a drip campaign in Marketing Pro. For anybody listening that's ever done any marketing, you would never send like the first email of a drip campaign at 3:30 on a, on a Friday afternoon. That's just like, no. But instead of scheduling it, I scheduled it, but I scheduled it for like now. So I was like, this is how you schedule things. And then I did the first one for now, and then I just saved it and we went about our, our business. About 5 minutes later, we were doing something else and I was walking through the call center with Sophia, who's our, you know, she also films all our social media content. So she's like ready with the iPhone at all times. And one of our CSRs, well, she, she was the only one left. She turned around and gave me this look and she— What did she say? actually like gave me like the double bird and I was like, what? And she pointed to the screen and it was just like green bubbles, early bird special, early bird special. And I was training Sophia on our early bird tune-up special, which is like our most popular email campaign. And our customers like wait for it to come out every year. And that freaking phone went bananas. And Aria didn't know that I was sending this email. Nobody knew I was sending this email. So I had to jump on there really quick and be like, Aria, make sure you give them the special price and tell them that like, we're sorry if they got the email and you don't know about that. Like, tell them we're sorry about everything. It's fine. And she actually did. She did really well. She helped during the overflow on Monday when the rest of the people called in. And she also like is able to direct people to book online because we have that online booking capability. So it's really great, and our team was able to see. I mean, it was a shit show. I'm not oh there's one. I'm not gonna lie. There's a TikTok on our account because Sophia was literally videotaping the whole thing. Like our call center manager was like hunting me down, like chasing me. She said like you're fired. I was just dead when I came. I couldn't believe that I did it. I was like oh my god! I sent. I I couldn't believe when they were. I was like early bird.

What?

But it was fine. Everything was fine. We booked those tune-ups sooner than we were, you know, but I think like you have to be afraid not to fail with these things and like, what's the worst thing that's gonna happen? The other way that I looked at it and the, the other way that my team talked about it was I was like, okay, let's think about like some of the worst CSRs that have ever worked here in the history of Tri-City. Aria can't be as bad as some of them.

It's such a good way to frame it. It's like we have hired people much worse than the voice agent. Literally.

Yeah. She's, she's so dependable too. Like she's always on time. She doesn't call out sick, follows her scripts. I mean, people, sometimes people need to talk to a human. It's not gonna be the silver bullet of everything. She can't do everything that your customers need. I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that you can. You're not going to need CSRs. You absolutely are still going to need an office staff and administrative support, but your team can be doing things in a much more efficient manner, and you can get to customers during, you know, peak volume occasions and not miss out on opportunities. You can also just— it also just helps like direct the flow of calls. We do a lot of services. Our appliance division is, you know, super busy and our call center is very, very active. So this has been really, really big for us having extra support. And we're, when I, once the voice agent after hours goes live, we're going to have to do like a follow-up because I am so excited for that. I've been dying to launch it, but I'm waiting for That one like manager escalation feature because I want the whole process to be automated. For me, like automation and efficiency is the goal. I just want to find as many ways to make our jobs as easy as possible. There's so many things we have to worry about in contracting that I just feel like anything that we can take off technologically and automate it, I want to do it. I want to push the button.

And it's super impressive what you guys have done with it. I want to share some stats that Lindsay sent over a couple weeks ago and You know, even with the crazy marketing debacle and like the rough, could be rough start-ish. Um, but—

No, she, she slayed during that. Her stats were, her stats were off the chart. 'Cause I of course sent Lindsay all the calls. Like I sent her, yeah, day one it was crazy. Yeah.

Wow. But yeah, Lindsay said over the last month, revenue from book calls went up 186% to $3,000. Booking rate climbed at 65.6%, which is up 26 points. Call volume handled by the agent was up 19% to like over 400 calls. Average call duration up nearly 11%, showing the agent is having more substantive conversations, not just like a quick brush off. And that was just over the last month. I'm really curious to dive into some of the details with like how you guys set it up and some of the learnings along the way. Like people are really catching on that this is very innovative. And yet there's still a lot of businesses that are super skeptical and hesitant, just kind of watching on the sidelines. I'd be curious to hear your stories around training it, setting it up, any advice for people who are a bit hesitant? Like, what do those early days look like assessing calls and making adjustments?

There's infinite amount of testing that you can do before you go live. You set it up and you give it the, you know, basic parameters, which your ServiceTitan voice agent specialist will walk you through. Essentially, they'll ask you questions and say, you know, what do you want it to do? You assign it a phone number and you just continuously test that phone number. So constantly calling it, giving it different scenarios, trying to trip it up. But you do, you wanna give it scenarios where you can really push the edge of the AI and see if it's right or wrong. I mean, Listen, it's everywhere now. It's built into— if you're using software that doesn't have AI built into it, you should probably really reevaluate what you're doing. In today's landscape, it's imperative that you're at least exploring the options that automation can do for your organization, the things that automating certain workflows and processes and Anyone who has managed and run a call center, if you tried a voice agent, just try it. The thing is, you're only paying for the calls that it takes. So it was really easy for me to make that decision. Like when I sat down and looked at the, the agreement, it was like a no-brainer. I'm like, okay, if I don't like it, I won't use it and I won't pay for it. Like, okay.

Did you turn it on for certain business units or like certain scenarios, or did you just? How did you—

So how we rolled it out was we gave each customer like an option. So as soon as they went through, we were like, if you would like to speak to Aria, basically only if they were in queue, if a live agent wasn't available, this is the next best thing if you'd like. So it was just an option and that's how we started it. A lot of our customers, they, they've been using us for years and years and years. Not all of them. Of course, we, you know, we service new people every day, but, you know, we've been in the community for 3 generations and people are familiar with us. So when they call in and something, they also know that I try a lot of new things. They know that we try new technology. Like my customers know I have sent, that's not my first unhinged marketing campaign email. Okay? Like I taught myself Mailchimp back in the day. They've been, some of these people have been getting crazy emails from me for a long time. Giving your customers like the chance to try the technology and see what their response is. For the most part, the response has been really positive. Of course, you know, there's so many people out there right now that are, you know, very vocal with their distaste for artificial intelligence. But I mean, it's like the same thing with anything else. People are afraid of change. They're afraid of new things. The technology that's available has come so The voice agent gets better every week. Every week I get on a call and I'm like, okay, what's new? And I know there's something new because I, you know, you get the update, but you literally, I know everyone that is seeing this, the, the, well, maybe they don't see it if they don't have it. So like if you don't have all the stuff, you don't see everything. So that's why I got on Max. I heard about the Max program through the grapevine. Because one thing about me, Josh, is I'm gonna find out everything.

Oh gosh.

And anyone that knows me will tell you that, like, I don't even wanna know these things and they just make their way to me. So I was chatting with a friend of mine who has service AIN. She, um, owns a shop about an hour away from me, was introduced to me through one of our distributors. He was like, you have to meet Stacy. She's this incredible operator. Actually, I think you interviewed her. Oh, Stacy Anapol. Yeah.

Yeah, we had her on a webinar.

Oh, okay.

Awesome.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. It's my girl. Stacy and I were having lunch, and I was telling her about all my problems, my issues, and she was like, are you on the Max program? And I was like, what? What's the Max program? What are you talking about? And she was like, oh, it's this program, and you get all the Max You get all the pro products and you get special pricing on pro products and you have access to a higher white glove team for technical support and issues. White glove, like you're speaking my language, right? So I was like, excuse me. I literally left that lunch. I don't even think I left the table. I may have been at the table with her still.

Yes.

And I was like, excuse me. Why do I not know about this? And then someone got on the phone with me like the next day and told me the details of the program. And it just financially made so much sense because I needed all these pieces in place anyway. Marketing Pro was something that was one of my big drivers for wanting to join ServiceTitan to begin with. I use Scorpion for all of our digital services, so I knew that they were a partner. With ServiceTitan and that I would be able to tie all of my marketing and I would be able to get real attribution. So marketing is actually where my background and my education and all of my formal training was. And if I was to do one little tiny piece of my job and cut everything else out, it would be the marketing piece. Like, that's my favorite part of the business. It's just really fun doing something and watching The results literally happen in front of you. And I was never able to get all those pieces to connect, to really be able to for certain attribute dollars to a campaign, tie every single dollar to a campaign. And so when Scorpion told me like, if you get ServiceTitan, you can do that. So that was like another thing. So I needed Marketing Pro, and then you get a discount on the voice agent if you're on the Max program. I ended up in the long run, like, I'm saving money. In the long run, I'm not going to do anything unless it's saving me money.

Okay?

That's another thing about me. So it's definitely cut our costs and made us more efficient, given us extra capacity in our call center. I don't think that any customers have, you know, taken the stance to not do business with us because we, you know, sometimes Use AI. I would be very surprised to find that out. And I do, you know, I'm an active part of my community here, and I talk to a lot of my customers, and I'm friendly with a lot of my customers. So I ask them, and sometimes they tell me. They're like, "We have some chatbots that are not service Titan. They're with another company that rhymes with the word batch." And some of their bots are wild. And like I've had, so we have this one, his name is Michael, and like Michael has to be reined in all the time. He does very unhinged things. So like I babysit the bots. I will say like that is one of my new jobs. I have to, I had to add that to what we do. That had to be part of everybody's, you know, responsibility. And in order for me to feel comfortable giving that to somebody else, I felt like I really had to like understand it. So for the first couple months, you know, I was really hands-on in that, but now my team handles all of it. When we do go live with the after-hours bot, I will probably be pretty involved in, in the go-live. I'm really excited for that. I can't wait to see how she performs.

So you started with the routing essentially for overflow with the virtual agent, with the voice agents. And then after, uh, overflow was, was stable and good, where'd you go from there?

So now we just took away the, you know, do you wanna speak to Aria? It's just now if they're in the queue, if they're not answered in a certain number of seconds, they just automatically go to her. She attempts to help them, and then if they still wanna speak to an agent, they just get, you know, plopped back in.

Got it.

Okay.

Very cool. And then next step is, is, uh, overflow, or I mean after hours.

Yes. After hours is the, the next horizon, which we're, we're very close to. I have to feel really, really confident, um, especially like on the weekend, because when that goes wrong for the first couple weekends, that's, I'm gonna be watching that. So it's also like, you know, when it's good for me, like I say, it's the only way that this stuff works is when you make it work for you. So I'm gonna have to do it probably after I go away. I've got a vacation coming up.

Gotcha.

They're always like, please don't do that before you go away. So I've already had several requests like, can we just wait until you get back from your summer? And I wait until like the end of the summer to go away because like, this is our— this is my time, right? Like, we're in a heat wave right now and I'm, I'm the only person who's happy.

Literally. Your story is so inspiring. Like, I, I feel like what really came across is just how much you lean in to new technology and new things. And you say things like, when it goes wrong, I'm gonna be there. Like, you just expect that it's not gonna be all perfect and you just dive right in.

No, it's, there's always gonna be a, a hiccup during go-live. 100%. I expect it. I want it to go smoothly. I hope that it goes smoothly, but I also If everything goes smoothly when I'm watching it, it's like, that would be suspicious. I would be even more suspicious if there wasn't a problem the first time that I deployed something. Honestly, it's pretty, it's pretty standard to have to tweak things, right? No matter the best laid plans.

Maybe we can wrap up with one last, like, piece of information or, uh, inspiration or a takeaway for those. I think a lot of people listening to this will feel very inspired. There's probably something on their mind like, oh, I should do this, or I should adopt that, or I should try that. Or maybe they wanna be a leader in their, their business and implement some change and they've been hesitant. What advice would you have for them to kind of basically be more like you and, and dive in, uh, to scary new things?

I think trust in your ability to pivot. You know, most people who are in contracting, They're really good at pivoting and kind of getting the job done against all odds. And so if you can lean into that mentality and just apply the same principles to testing something like an AI agent, it's just like when you go to try something else for the first time, it's not going to be perfect. One of the things that, like, I always say to my kids is Derek Jeter doesn't get up there. I know he doesn't. This is how I make myself look old. This is why they tell me I'm cringe. But like, who plays baseball now? I don't even know. Derek Jeter, back in my day, he didn't get up and strike out and just put his bat away and say, I'm going home. Like, you have to expect that there's going to be little bumps in the road, little challenges, and just trusting that your team has the skillset. You know, we did a lot of training. We did a ton of, we have a lot of support within our team. We built a, you know, we formed these success groups. So it's like a focus group. If I'm going to launch the voice agent, it's not just me doing it. It's me, my call center manager, my dispatcher, a call center rep. Like there's multiple stakeholders that are put on this project and working together to make sure that it goes smoothly. So I think just relying on your team's skills and knowledge and like not being afraid to try it. The ServiceTitan actually, they structured the voice agent product, the sales process of it really well so that you can try it without there being really a detriment to your business. There's no, if you don't like it, you just don't have to use it. Don't route calls to it and you won't pay any money for it. So the way that I looked at it is like, okay, well. I'm just going to pay for the testing calls. They're so cheap. Sell one job off of it and you make your money back. It's really pretty simple. I don't see why you wouldn't do it. I really have a hard time with seeing why you would not. There's no downside to me. Not everything is going to work the first time you do it. It's a daily thing.

It's amazing how much you lean into it, and clearly the results have been incredible. I'm Super excited to follow your journey as you adopt more things. I'm sure one day we'll be on a podcast and the, uh, the robot will be in the background folding laundry. So.

I cannot wait. Like, I'm just, I'm manifesting it right now.

So yeah, thank you so much, Amanda, for coming on the show. Thank you all for listening. And, uh, we'll catch you on the next episode.