AI for the Trades — no contractor left behind

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ServiceTitan made waves earlier this year when it announced new cutting-edge AI solutions, allowing its customers to automate, predict and optimize across their businesses during Pantheon 2023.

The star of the show was Jason AI, modeled from Jason Brady owner and CEO of Edmond, Oklahoma-based Above and Beyond, which provides plumbing, HVAC and electrical services. Brady introduced himself to the audience, saying a fun fact about him was he loved corvettes and the Oklahoma Sooners. Next, Jason AI mimicked the same thing on the big screen before being prompted to try it again in "chaos monkey mode."

"That sounds dope. Hello everyone. My name is Jason AI and I'm from the great state of Texas. Fun fact about me. I love little tiny economy cars that are slow and hard to get into, especially ones that aren't made in America. And my favorite sport is breakdance fighting," Jason AI said to the laughing audience.

"Something has changed," says Vahe Kuzoyan, co-founder and president of ServiceTitan. "If we tried to do what you just saw a year ago, it would have looked like those old Conan skits where it's just the mouth moving and the head stays the same and speaking in a robotic voice. And while this year, it took a laptop and some technical skills to pull that off, we had plenty of imperfections. We still had things like 3D motion of the head blinking, eyes, smiles, and most importantly, Jason's voice. And it even writes funny jokes, all made possible by the same underlying technology advancements that power the features we're going to show you today.

"We're not here to impress you with our deep fake skills, even though it's really fun," he continues. "We're here to talk about how we're going to help you unleash the power of AI to run a better business. Our job is to make sure that, as the competition evolves and begins to incorporate AI deeper and deeper into how they operate, you are not caught with a knife in a gunfight. Because guess what? In a world of knives, a gun has just appeared. And even though no one has really figured out yet how to use it exactly the right way, it's likely not going to take too long before the bullets start flying. Ultimately, it's about empowering you to take control and shape your future by using the power of AI proactively versus having to react on your back foot."

The evolution of AI will happen quickly, Kuzoyan notes, and ServiceTitan considers it a responsibility to explore the depth of how AI will change the world and ensure that, in the battlefield of the trades, its users are equipped for success.

"The features we are releasing today are the first batch of this new generation of AI products that are ultimately there to ensure that your future happens for you, not to you," he says. "The stakes are too high for this industry and this community to be left behind like we were during the previous technology waves when our dads asked Ara and I to help them find software 20 years ago, when the gap between what was possible technologically and what was available to this industry was so big that we ended up making it our life's work to close the gap to make sure that the next time a contractor's kid is tasked with finding a solution for their family business, they're not embarrassed and frustrated with what they find."

The Fifth Industrial Revolution

Anmol Bhasin, chief technology officer for ServiceTitan, has worked in AI for close to two decades, building a multitude of applications using predictive algorithms. "One of these algorithms is called a neural network. At a very basic level, a neural network is essentially a model of our brain. In our brains, we have brain cells, we also call them neurons. In a neural network, you have nodes. Neurons get connected in the brain through what we call synapsis. In the artificial neural network, these are called connections. So what ends up happening in a neural network is it effectively takes input and generates predictive output."

Historically, neural networks would have only dozens of nodes which would do simple things, Bhasin explains. However, about five-six years ago, deep neural networks were developed which changed the game.

"We went from dozens of nodes to tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands," he says. "And these deep neural networks gave these, these new innovation superpowers. One of these applications is effectively the ability to process language. One, you know — we call them large language models, and some of us have already used it in ChatGPT. At the very basic level, ChatGPT is taking input, the prompts you provide, and it processes this information through the nodes that have knowledge accumulated through the training and outcomes. That’s what we call generative AI.

"However, in the last year, something groundbreaking happened," Bhasin continues. "Remember I told you the number of nodes in these deep neural networks went from dozens to hundreds of thousands? With this new computing power advancement, we now have millions of nodes in these neural networks. Millions. It doesn't match up to the human brain, which has about 86 billion neurons, but you know where this is going. It is so big that I might as well call it the fifth industrial revolution."

The previous four industrial revolutions were, of course, machinery, electricity, computers and the internet.

"This revolution will be fast," Bhasin says. "It will be profound and disruptive — not just locally, not nationally, but globally. It'll reshape how humanity operates, our learning, our interactions, our investments, planning and recreation. Simply put the way of life as we know it. And while it presents challenges like the one you saw earlier today, it holds the promise of making us a superhuman. We at ServiceTitan have wholeheartedly embraced this AI revolution, and we are bringing it to you through ServiceTitan features placed just in the right context, delivering ‘Automated ROI. That's a little cute play on AI. We simply ask you to embrace it, adapt to it, adopt it and thrive."

ServiceTitan’s new AI-powered products include the Ads Optimizer, which maximizes the ROI of every dollar spent on an advertising campaign by educating Google Ads to focus on potential customers who are actively looking for service providers while avoiding users who aren’t. The feature also predicts which zip codes will have the most demand and automatically prioritizes ads for those specific locations.

Dispatch Pro was also announced. This product runs thousands of scenarios to get the right technician to the right job, allowing dispatchers to invest more time delivering a superior customer experience. Dispatch Pro’s algorithm also finds the best technician for every job based on the technician’s specific set of skills, recent sales performance, proximity to the job and more – all to maximize profit.

Next, Integrated Financing gives contractors the tools they need to grow their business and protect their margins. The feature allows ServiceTitan’s customers to strategically control plans from multiple preferred financing providers on a single job, improving their customers’ approval rates. It also gives technicians confidence in offering plans that will ultimately win more high-value jobs easily.

Lastly, Second Chance Leads automatically detects unbooked phone calls from potential customers within minutes of the call ending, and specifically flags missed calls that the algorithm believes can be saved. The tool works in the background to identify missed opportunities.

ServiceTitan announced during Pantheon that Bears Home Solutions, a 24-tech shop based in North Dakota, one of its beta testers for Second Chance Leads, generated $52,000 of additional revenue during the month of July, paying for its entire Phones Pro subscription many times over.

The value of AI forecasting

One of the educational sessions during Pantheon 2023 covered AI-powered forecasting through Titan Intelligence, which, while not available currently, will be coming very soon.

"Coaches don't call plays without checking the stats first. Neither should you. So let's talk about how all of this relates to your business," says Juliet Armour, principal product manager, data, for ServiceTitan. "What if you knew how many calls you were going to get next week? If you had a forecast predicting the number of calls you weren't going to get next week, what would you do differently? Who would you call if you had that forecast in your hands predicting the number of calls and jobs that you were going to get for the next month? Or not going to get the next three months? How would you change your business strategy? Would you modify your hiring plans? What about your marketing budget? If we're predicting a big increase in demand next month and 20% of your calls are maintenance off, would you reschedule this or maybe hire an overflow bonus? These are the types of questions that demand forecasting can help you answer.

"Maybe you log in and you see a report which shows you month by month your predicted calls, jobs and capacity," she continues. "We can plot your forecasted demand against your plan capacity and highlight where you are over or under to show you where actions need to be taken. We use your historical data and combine it to factor in recent trends, long-term trends and seasonality. And we can we combine this with third-party weather forecast data."

AI-powered forecasting can help contracting businesses in a multitude of ways, but one of the most impressive features highlighted was the Job Value Predictor (JVP), which helps predict the revenue of each job. Meaning contractors should have an idea of what they’re going to sell, Armour notes.

"If you know what you’re going to sell, we can predict the parts list for each job on the schedule," she says. "But the power is in the aggregation of this data. Knowing what you need for each job is great, but knowing what you need for all jobs next month is really awesome. If we know how many jobs we are going to get with demand forecasting and we know how much revenue each job is going to generate, and the parts list is just the icing on that cake. So if we can predict the revenue, that's the jobs that are coming in next month with demand forecasting and we know the parts needed for every job, we can create inventory forecasts. And if we know what inventory we're going to need next month, we can automate that purchasing flow for you. So you never run out of what you need and you never order too much just in time, just in stock, just in the right truck and just in the right technician's hands when they need it the most. Never lose a job because you didn't have the part in stock. Never have to call a customer and ruin their day because they're going to have to wait a month for you to reorder that part so you can complete that repair. Never have to run to Home Depot and overpay for overpay for something because your warehouse didn't have it in stock. Never waste money ordering parts that you aren't going to use and have that inventory sitting around taking up space and burning a hole in your pocket. Order exactly what you need and not a bit more. That's what demand forecasting. That's what automated purchasing based on inventory forecasting can do for you."

Contractors react

Brady, who generously volunteered to be turned into an AI, has been using ServiceTitan since 2017. His company is one of the higher adopters, with a Titan score of 232.

"We have a couple of the pro products, but we try to use every feature that's in ServiceTitan, whether it's estimate templates to adjustable capacity planning," Brady says. "The more features we found that we use, the more money we make, the more productive we are, the more efficient we are, the better our company runs and the less issues we have."

When Above and Beyond first started using ServiceTitan, the company was in the million dollar range. Brady spent the first three years doing it the way he though ServiceTitan should work. Once he started following ServiceTitan’s operations, his company jumped to $3.46 million before skyrocketing to $7.1 million last year. This year, Above and Beyond is on track to make $10 million in revenue.

After the Titan Intelligence AI announcements, Brady is excited about the future. "It's just game changing. For our company, the call center is going to be amazing. We’ve been on Dispatch Pro since it was a hidden feature like two and a half years ago. It is the best. To me, if I was going to buy one feature of ServiceTitan, I would buy Dispatch Pro hands down. It has told us when guys are going to quit before they quit. And we can see that because the Titan Intelligence basically takes all your jobs, technicians’ selling closing rates, time on jobs and average tickets — it takes all these things and it lets you know what's going on. We had a guy that was our rock star. Everybody has one. Previously, we would feed him jobs, then we started noticing Smart Dispatch was not assigning jobs. We got to looking and saw his sales factor was down and he’s not turning over leads. We went from a human saying, ‘This guy is our rock star, we have to give him every lead every time,’ to realizing that he’s not our rock star. It puts the jobs where they need to go to make the most money to get the most revenue to benefit the company."

Brady notes that is a big deal because if he can take his closing rate from 40% to 60%, he saves money on marketing to drive it there. "It’s a huge financial impact to our company."

ServiceTitan also debuted adaptive AI, which will become the future of the call center.

"Anybody who's a contractor knows that it's hard to get an answering service to answer the calls the way you want, using your wording, saying the things you want doing it," Brady says. "Having that will take pressure off of our call center to hurry through calls. We track our booking rate and cancelled jobs monthly, so that will definitely help us improve that canceled job rate because I think there are some people who do just want to get through that call."

Portland, Oregon-based Lovett Services, a plumbing, drain cleaning, excavation and drilling company, has been using ServiceTitan for two and a half years.

"We’ve grown quite a bit since we’ve gotten ServiceTitan," says Jesse Sticka, IT director, Lovett Services. "Some of it was strategic planning, but ServiceTitan really helped us streamline our processes. Before that, the system we had was very chaotic with a lot of different processes, 10 different ways to do the same thing and not all of them efficient."

Sticka is also excited about the new Titan Intelligence products announced at Pantheon.

"Giving the trades a chance to be current and not be left behind is exciting," he says. "The Dispatch Pro and the AI dispatch is something we really need to implement. I don't have it currently, but I know the ROI on that, being able to pick the right technician, taking the emotional piece out of it and just looking at the facts is going to be huge for us.

"AI is going to impact everything going forward," Sticka adds. "The easy stuff we’re already doing. Once people can see that it can create their marketing material and draft emails, clean up invoice summaries, it’s going to be a game changer."

Brady advises other contractors that they have to put in the work to make ServiceTitan work for them. "Nobody is going to ride in on a white horse and make ServiceTitan work. If you’re not willing to put in the work, it is not going to work for you, and neither is Sera or Housecall Pro, ow wherever else you go. You have to u in the work to set it up and make it work for you. If you do that, the ROI is immense. When we stopped trying to fight ServiceTitan and did it the way we were supposed to, we had huge growth just from doing what ServiceTitan said to do as a best practice. Our five-year goal is 56.3 million. We know how we're going to get there. We know our call count, we know our budgets, we know the techs and vans we need — we have it all mapped out. We couldn't really do that until we set ServiceTitan up to figure out all of our metrics and see everything that happened. Once we did that, it's over. We'll hit that goal, no problem."