Tracking and Reporting Demand Calls in ServiceTitan

Demand Calls are an important business performance indicator for many home services companies, so ensuring the accuracy of your reporting for demand calls is important. The end goal is for this data to be easily available to you at any time and a figure that you can trust is accurate. 

Having a clear picture of how many demand calls and system checks your company runs historically, and those on the schedule, helps inform decision-making. You’ll know how many jobs are required to ensure your technicians have a consistent schedule. This means you’ll know when to invest more time or spend into marketing efforts. When you know how demand calls are changing over time, particularly over a year, you can plan and budget your resources accordingly.

Demand Calls in Home Services Companies

What are demand calls, anyway? A Demand Call is anytime a client calls in for a new issue or service needed. 

Some examples of demand calls are: 

• No Heat/Cool
• Plumbing Service Issue
  • Leaky Faucet
  • Pipe Burst
  • No Hot Water
• Backed up drain
• Tune Up Special or One-Time Maintenance Visit

Demand calls are separate from system checks. When you separate these two types of jobs in your data, you’ll know how your marketing efforts are performing and how successfully your team is managing your memberships.

Some examples of jobs that are NOT demand calls: 

• System Checks, such as a tune-up that’s a part of a maintenance agreement – System Checks are not demand calls because they are part of a membership and are owed to clients as being a member.
• Tech Generated Leads (TGLs) – TGLs are not demand calls because they are internal leads. The call the technician was on that led to the tech generated lead could be the demand call unless it was a system check, warranty, call back etc. 

It may be helpful to think of a “Demand Call” as a single opportunity to offer the customer additional work. Thus, any follow-up appointments to that initial outreach would be grouped under that same opportunity. Even though you might visit the service location multiple times, if it’s related to the same opportunity each of those calls should be considered just one demand call. 

• The second, third, or fourth visit to complete the initial job – these wouldn’t count as Demand Calls on their own since they were generated from an initial opportunity.
• Warranty/Call Backs –  would not be considered demand calls on their own since they are tied to the original demand call or the original issue.
• Follow Ups/Quality Checks –  would not be considered demand calls on their own because they are part of the original demand call.

A common question that comes up is if a one-time “tune up or maintenance” is considered a demand call or system check. A System check is a visit based on a membership or service agreement, something that is owed to the client. A one-time tune up or maintenance would be considered a demand call because they are reaching out to the company for a new issue or service.  

 

Pulling a ServiceTitan Report on Demand Calls

There are multiple reports in ServiceTitan that can tell you how many demand calls have been run. The key, when viewing multiple reports, is to stay consistent in what data field you use across all reports. 

One report where you can find your total demand calls is the Business Unit Performance Report. In this report (and any ServiceTitan report), jobs marked as Opportunity will be your demand calls.

We always recommend using consistent date fields/filters. A big one we see in pulling Demand Call reporting is inconsistently selecting Completion Date vs Invoice date. 

If you’re looking at past data we recommend using Invoiced Date so that if you’re ever comparing to any financial data it would be the closest, sometimes a completion date is different than an invoice date but the invoice date is what is used in your accounting software.  

Now that we know what to look for we have to make sure the data is correct! A report is only as good as the data it is pulling, garbage in garbage out. 

To make sure the demand call reports are accurate you have to make sure your business units are set up and used correctly, your job types are set up and used correctly, and you are checking and monitoring results on a regular basis to make sure the workflows are being followed. 

Ensuring Accuracy of your Demand Call Reporting

When it comes to tracking your opportunity or demand calls in ServiceTitan, there are three areas that can significantly impact the integrity of your data: 

• Business Unit Configuration
• Job Type Setup
• Job Execution Workflows

We’ll cover each section in detail below.

Business Unit Configuration

Business Units are the first step to making sure your reports are accurate. 

Having separate Business units for service, sales, install, and maintenance will give you the best reporting for demand calls. You can filter almost all reports in ServiceTitan by Business Unit, making the Business Unit configuration a powerful part of your overall ServiceTitan setup.  

• Service Business Unit –  you would want to look at all opportunities and it would show you the amount of demand calls for service.
• Sales Business Unit – you would want to look at marketed leads KPI so you can see how many marketed leads came in vs tech generated leads. 
• Install Business Unit – typically does not need reporting for demand calls because they are all sold jobs, having a separate business unit for install removes all those jobs from reporting on true demand calls. 
• Maintenance Business Unit – Having a maintenance business unit keeps all your system checks separate from demand calls. You can still use opportunity KPI for the maintenance business unit to get accurate numbers as to how many recurring services you have run as long as your job types are set up properly. 

Job Type Setup

Making sure your job types are set up properly is another way to confirm accuracy in your demand call reporting. You should have clear job types based on your services offered. 

One of the most important settings inside of each job type is the Sold Threshold. The Sold Threshold is what considers a job to be converted/sold. If the invoice total is above the sold threshold then the job is considered a sold job/converted. Service Jobs should have a sold threshold $1 above the service fee/dispatch fee.

Another important setting is the “no charge/unconvertible by default” checkbox for each job type. 

• Demand calls should NOT be marked as “no charge/unconvertable by default”, 
• Non-demand calls within a service business unit should have this setting checked.

Making sure the job types are set up properly and marked as “no charge/unconvertible by default” or not impacts the reporting accuracy directly. We don’t want to include warranty job types, call backs etc in our demand reporting. If a job is marked as “no charge/unconvertible” and work is performed, if the invoice amount is above the sold threshold, it will still count as an opportunity. It is best practice to keep the sold threshold for the non-demand job types in a service business unit the same as the demand job types as a fail safe. 

Job Execution Workflows

Once everything is set up properly with your business units and job types, it’s time to make sure everyone from the call center to the accountant uses appropriate workflows and someone is checking the accuracy of the data regularly. 

The call center needs to make sure they are booking the jobs correctly and putting the jobs in the correct business unit and selecting the correct job type. 

Once the job is booked it is on the dispatcher to be the next set of eyes and make sure it’s accurate before sending the technician. 

The technician needs to follow the workflow of creating the estimate/invoice accurately. 

Once the job is complete there should be a debrief process either by the dispatcher and/or the service manager as another check of accuracy during the process.

The last set of eyes would be the person in charge of exporting the invoices, they can spot check or look for any anomalies for invoices that may look out of the ordinary for specific job types or business units. 

Tricky Workflow Example

There are times that the “no charge/unconvertible” may need to be unchecked/checked for a specific job. Here’s an example of a not-so-uncommon scenario demonstrating this workflow.

—–

Technician Jaxon is dispatched to a demand call for a leaky kitchen faucet at customer Genevieve’s home. Jaxon provides Genevieve multiple options to fix the leaky faucet ranging from a quick repair to a full replacement. 

Genevieve decides she wants to replace the kitchen faucet, she never liked it anyway! Genevieve signs the estimate, Jaxon lets her know he will need to order the faucet and come back to replace it, he heads to his truck to call the vendor and order the faucet. 

While Jaxon is outside Genevieve calls her husband Turner and lets him know of the repair. Turner tells Genevieve to cancel the work, he will swing by the home improvement store on his way home, pick up a new faucet, and replace it when he gets home.

Genevieve runs out to Jaxson’s truck to give him the news. He is understanding (knowing he will probably be back to finish Turner’s DIY project). Jaxson charges/collects the dispatch fee from Genevieve. 

Once Jaxon completes the job on his mobile app, he contacts his dispatcher Paulina and debriefs her on what happened. 

Paulina, being a veteran dispatcher and ServiceTitan power user, knows she needs to make a few adjustments to the job. Paulina: 

• Duplicates the sold estimate. The duplicate version will now show as unsold. 
• Paulina deletes the estimate originally marked as sold, so that there is no record of a sold estimate on the job.
• On the Job record, Paulina unchecks the “no charge/unconvertible” box.

—–

When Jaxon sold Genevieve the estimate and marked it as  “perform work later”, ServiceTitan automatically marked today’s leaky faucet demand call as “no charge/unconvertible”. The opportunity/demand call reporting would show up for the return job when the invoice amount is above the sold threshold. 

Normally, we’d want this to happen so that the two jobs (the initial call + the follow up to complete more work) are not both counted as an Opportunity. As you already know – these two jobs together are considered a single Demand Call or opportunity. 

But in our scenario, the estimate was sold, automatically marking the job as “no charge/unconvertible”. And then, since Jaxon only charged/collected for the Dispatch Fee, the original invoice amount fell below the sold threshold. This means that today’s job didn’t show as an opportunity (demand call) or a converted job. 

Paulina saved the day by taking the correct actions: duplicating and deleting the sold estimates, then unchecking the “no charge/unconvertible” box. This way, today’s leaky faucet demand call job will now display as an opportunity call that was unconverted.

*A month later Jaxson was called back out and replaced the Kitchen Faucet, Genevieve was no longer wearing her wedding ring…😬*    

Accurate Reports for Data-Informed Decisions

Accurate reporting on demand calls provides your company the opportunity to make information-backed decisions for marketing and membership management. You’ll know how many memberships are needed to fill the board or conversely, how many demand calls are needed to keep a consistent workload for the technicians. 

If you are certain the data you’re finding for demand calls isn’t accurate, here’s a tip: don’t stress too much and spend time in the past… focus on the future to ensure accuracy of the reporting going forward. Pick a milestone date, such as, the first of the next month, to implement new workflows and settings. Before your milestone date, make sure your processes are documented and the team has been trained on your new workflows. When your milestone date arrives, take care to monitor reports daily for anomalies, which will allow you to course-correct or retrain team members as necessary. 

Powerhouse Consulting Group can help you with tracking your demand calls – whether you need support in the configuration of your ServiceTitan account or help implementing the workflows with your team, or simply monitoring your data for anomalies. Our team of certified coaches can be the extra muscle you need to ensure you have the most accurate data at your fingertips. Schedule your free discovery call today!