Steps, Not Scripts: Building a CSR Workflow that Works in ServiceTitan

Every CSR has a workflow, whether you’ve written it down or not. It’s the set of steps they follow from the moment they answer the phone to the moment they book the job and end the call. And in ServiceTitan, a missed step doesn’t stay small for long.

Kristen Wagasky, Consultant at Powerhouse Consulting Group, has more than 8 years in the trades, working in HVAC, solar, and pools. She has been a CSR, dispatcher, bookkeeper, operations manager, and business manager. She knows the job from the headset and from the manager’s desk.

Her first piece of advice might surprise you: skip the script.

“People will know when you’re reading from a script,” she said.

Instead, Kristen gives CSRs clear steps and lets the conversation flow naturally. Here’s what those steps look like.

Part 1: On the call

1. Greet, then listen. Use your company’s greeting, then switch into active listening and data collection. The customer is giving you clues from the first sentence.
2. Find or add the customer. Check whether the customer is already in ServiceTitan. If not, add them.
3. Ask probing questions. Customers don’t always know what’s wrong. A “leak” might be a drain problem. “It’s just not coming on” could be a clogged line or a frozen condenser. A few good questions give your technician a much clearer picture.
4. Fill in the required custom fields. Many companies now use required custom fields on the booking screen. One of Kristen’s favorites asks whether the caller is the right person for the tech to contact on site. If not, there are fields for that person’s name, a separate phone number, and whether they prefer a text or a call. The tech can find it fast from the field.
5. Attach the equipment. If you installed the AC and they’re calling for an AC repair, attach that equipment to the job. Kristen’s rule: do everything you can ahead of time to make it as easy as possible for the tech.
6. Leave the marketing campaign alone. If a campaign fills in on its own because the customer called a tracking number, don’t touch it. If nothing fills in, ask, “How did you hear about us today?”

The key word is today. Kristen isn’t a fan of the “existing customer” campaign.

“There’s something that made them call you today,” she explained. “And that’s what you want to track: how they got to you today.” 

If a past customer Googled your number and clicked to call, you paid for that click. Marking it “existing customer” throws off your marketing ROI. The same goes for a vague answer like “I’ve known you were here for years.” That isn’t truck graphics, even if it feels close.

7. Book it or send it to dispatch. This part depends on your company. Some CSRs book straight to the dispatch board and give the customer a day and arrival window. Others send the job to an unassigned queue, and the dispatcher calls the customer to schedule. Kristen sees a healthy mix of both. Pick one and make sure everyone does it the same way.

Part 2: The step everyone forgets

Kristen’s most-observed overlooked step is call classification.

With ServiceTitan phones, CSRs have to click the call bubble to answer. But most companies use a third-party phone system that’s connected to ServiceTitan. Those CSRs can answer without ever clicking the bubble, and the call often gets logged as abandoned.

Abandoned calls skew the CSR’s KPIs and the whole company’s dashboard. If a CSR misses the bubble and can’t reclassify the call themselves, they should tell a supervisor who can.

“Those abandoned calls can be a thorn in a call center manager’s side,” Wagasky said.

It’s one of the first things she retrains on and writes an SOP for with new clients.

Part 3: When the phone isn’t ringing

Downtime is still work time. Between calls, CSRs can:

• Confirm tomorrow’s appointments. Next day only; going further out isn’t worth it.
• Call on membership expirations before they lapse.
• Schedule recurring service events for members.
• Follow up on expiring credit cards tied to memberships so no one misses a payment.
• Help with AR calls. Kristen saves this for experienced CSRs, not new hires, and it matters most for companies that don’t collect payment on site.

In Kristen’s experience, happy calls usually come from a service manager or lead tech, though a CSR can handle them.

Part 4: Measuring the workflow

Here are the numbers Kristen watches:

• Booked call rate. This is the obvious one.
• Outbound calls over 30 seconds. Anything shorter is usually a voicemail. Over 30 seconds means they talked to someone.
• Average inbound call time. Most inbound calls are simple: schedule and move on, or a quick invoice question. Kristen expects an average of five to six minutes at most, and even five might be too long. If she sees eight to ten minutes, that’s a coaching opportunity.

To see what a CSR did in ServiceTitan:

• Audit trail. Shows what happened on a specific job.
• Office Activities report. Shows what anyone did in the system on a given day, like booking jobs, answering calls, taking payments, and posting payments. Kristen had it sent to her for office payroll.

One catch: not everything is logged. Adding a note to a customer account, or adding a note to an existing job, won’t show up. Pair the report with your phone system’s data, like idle and away time. That matters even more when your CSRs work remotely.

Part 5: Train for consistency

Every customer should get the same experience, the same information, and the same courtesy, no matter who answers.

Kristen’s favorite training tool is the mock call. Train new CSRs first, then sit next to them while they walk through a pretend call in a training account. Don’t prompt them. Let them work through it on their own.

Then make it harder. Kristen loves writing scenarios designed to trip CSRs up, because real customers will. Calls never go the way you planned them in your head.

Where to start

If you fix one thing this week, fix your abandoned calls. Check whether your CSRs are clicking the call bubble, and make sure someone can reclassify the calls that get missed. Clean call data makes every other number easier to trust.

Want help building CSR workflows your whole team can follow? Powerhouse Consulting Group helps skilled trades companies create ServiceTitan SOPs, training, and reporting that keep every call on track. Let’s talk.