Avoid these Costly Membership Setup Mistakes in ServiceTitan

Aren’t memberships great? You sell a maintenance or service plan to a customer, and you revisit them next month, maybe next season, or even next year. Easy, right?

It sure should be, but it’s important to think about the steps you take to get to that point of functional, streamlined, revenue-generating, and even worry-free memberships. It’s just as important to avoid these common membership setup mistakes in ServiceTitan.

Ongoing vs. Fixed Memberships

Should you choose to utilize ongoing memberships, make sure you set up automatic billing runs to generate the invoices. Or, if you prefer, the invoices can be generated manually, but must be assigned (and actively managed) to a team member.

It’s also important to ensure that the permission to automatically save card information is turned on, so your technicians don’t forget to manually save the payment information. This can become a pain when your office staff has to follow up with customers to ask for the card information again – which could potentially cause a lack of trust from the customer.

Choose Your Revenue Method

Many people are daunted by setting up Deferred Revenue on Memberships, Dayla says. However, doing so can help your business by having projected and steady revenue throughout the year! Proper setup will, in fact, make a company’s success easier in the long run! NOTE: Deferred Revenue is a configuration your CSM will need to enable in your account.

💡 Powerhouse Tip: Build a custom Dashboard for your Deferred Revenue to keep an eye on the deferred amount that has been exported. This allows you to quickly view a total of deferred revenue to compare with your accounting software, as well as view any “projected balance” discrepancies.

Build Your Membership Program

What services will your memberships include? How many visits will a customer receive with their membership? Are your plans one-size-fits-all? These are just a few of the questions you’ll need to answer before launching your membership plans.

When creating your memberships in ServiceTitan, PCG Consultant Kirsten says it’s important to be sure you take a few steps in Pricebook:

• Create a category for your memberships
• Create a subcategory visible to selling techs
• Create a second subcategory, hidden from techs, for any office-specific tasks, such as membership deferred billing
• Build invoice templates first, followed by recurring services
  • Heads up- these two can be tedious!
• Finally, build the membership

A lack of information can lead to frustrated customers who may cancel their membership. Remember, descriptions for your membership tasks are customer-facing. PCG Consultant Kacey recommends including your membership benefits on your service tasks to ensure your customers have a clear understanding of what they gain by becoming a member.

PCG Consultant Alishia notes if you offer more than one service per year (for example, two seasonal HVAC services), you must apply an offset. Otherwise, the manual change of a recurring service event date is often missed, and leads to services in the past that are never delivered. 

💡 Powerhouse Tip: Want to be sure your memberships are set up correctly? In ServiceTitan, search the keyword “incorrect” in Reports. Run those three different reports to gain insight into where your Memberships could be set up incorrectly – and costing you money!

Train Your Team on Memberships 

Anyone in your organization can offer memberships! That is, of course, with proper buy-in. One of PCG’s lead consultants, Dayla, says to set your company apart from the pack, think about your memberships from the customer journey.

“Having your whole team (CSRs, Dispatchers, Techs, Sales, Managers) trained on the membership offerings is key,” she said. “When your team understands why these are important and believes in the membership, they will all begin offering them, talking about them, and recommending them.” 

One way Dayla has achieved this was reviewing Membership benefits at a company meeting, followed by listening to a recording of a CSR offering and selling a membership. Then, the team saw a dispatcher filter the unassigned job tray by priority, and finished with watching a Senior Tech perform a Tune-Up on a piece of equipment at the shop, while completing a Tune-Up checklist. 

“We’ve also offered free memberships to employees,” Dayla added. “This serves to educate the team, keep it at top of mind for everyone, the team is included in what we offer, and how we schedule and perform these visits!”

It’s also important to ensure your team is using the appropriate RSEs when they book the membership visit, especially if you’re using Deferred Revenue. By not adding the RSE to the job, the revenue will not be recognized. Be sure to dismiss old RSEs on a regular basis, or the Deferred Revenue will continue to grow in deferred, not be recognized, and will negatively impact revenue reporting.

If a customer calls for demand service, your CSRs can easily see if there is an RSE due on the call booking screen, and can add the RSE to the job to save your technicians a trip – positively affecting operational efficiency and revenue! 

Be sure to coach your CSRs to utilize the Follow Up tab to manage your members’ expiring credit card information, expiring memberships, and recurring service events that are due. STAY AHEAD of expiration dates to avoid a disruption in membership services and benefits – and revenue.

Overwhelmed by Memberships? If you’re in need of a refresh, build, or clean-up for your Membership program, Powerhouse Consulting Group can help. See how we helped Rainaldi Home Services [link Case Study] implement automated billing runs for Memberships! Reach out to us today for a free Discovery Call to see how Powerhouse can help you streamline your ServiceTitan Memberships.