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Service Business Mastery for Skilled Trades: HVAC, Plumbing & Electrical Home Service
How Service Businesses Lose Millions from Missed Calls and Recover Revenue with AI - Paul C. Cebulak
00:51:50
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- [00:00]
Paul
They were going to hire three full time people to analyze, to classify, identify what's happening in calls and those three full time people could have covered based on their call volumes. I can't remember the actual call volume like off the top of my head, but it would cover 5% or so of their calls. So they were going to get at about 60k a year. So in total $180,000 worth of salary and benefits, 15% of their calls. We're not even talking a fifth, right? They were like can technology help?
- [00:27]
Podcast Narrator
Are you looking for valuable business advice to reach that seven figure revenue? Do you want actionable tips to properly navigate through every business challenge you encounter along the way? Let Tersh Blissett and Josh Crouch be your guide in getting you to the top here at Service Business Mastery. Tune in as they sit down with world renowned authors in business leadership and personal growth who share valuable insights about management, marketing, pricing, human resources and so much more. Let their nuggets of wisdom gold guide you in owning a thriving, profitable and ever growing business. Are your hosts Ter and Josh.
- [01:13]
Tersch Blissett
If you're a contractor with multiple CSRs, check out this service Business Mastery podcast partner, Lace AI. Lace uses Cutting Edge AI to analyze your phone calls, uncover lost revenue opportunities and empower your CSRs to convert more leads. You can significantly increase revenue without spending extra on marketing or hiring. By using LACE AI to boost your conversion rates for the first time, you can gain deep insights into customer needs at scale with minimal effort. Elevate your call center to achieve industry leading booking rates and revenue. Visit www.lace.AI to book a demo today. Now back to the show. I want to give a huge shout out to Marcus Storm for sponsoring today's episode.
- [01:58]
Joshua Crouch
You've heard of Google Ads, Facebook ads and SEO, but did you know that there's an entire ecosystem like 80% of the Internet that ads can be served on that you barely heard about?
- [02:07]
Tersch Blissett
That's where marketstorm operates.
- [02:08]
Joshua Crouch
They leverage data, science and AI to build customer profiles for your ideal customers and get your ads in front of prospects before they are ready to hire a pro. Planting your brand in their minds early.
- [02:19]
Tersch Blissett
And often to chat with a team about how they can help you grow your business. Visit marketstorm AI Yo Joshua really fast. I want to talk about online scheduling for the trades and how they should be affordable, effective and easy to manage. A really quick second here to share a little bit about the latest group of experts that we've teamed up with Autobot AI. Our team of industry experts has developed Best in class scheduling of app that seamlessly integrates with your CRM. Every book job goes directly into your software and becomes one of our advanced marketing analytics, which is really cool. We can automatically select the marketing campaign of your choice by based on how the customer came to your site.
- [03:00]
Joshua Crouch
Yeah, Tersh, those industry leading analytics tells you everything that you're going to want to know about your lead. Where they came from, what they did before scheduling and what page they converted on other things. On average about 75% of people who start a booking with our app completed. But we'll give you a more granular reporting that shows conversion rates based on marketing source and medium to help improve your marketing efforts.
- [03:21]
Tersch Blissett
So honestly, with no contracts, affordable monthly rates and you really don't have anything to lose. And so it's, it's a great program to try out and if you use SBM when you go to sign up for it, you'll actually save $1,500 on the setup fees. Honestly, give it a shot. Tell us what you think. Hello everyone out there in podcast world Hope having a wonderful day. You're listening to or watching Service Business Mastery Podcast. I am one of your hosts, Tersch Blissett, sitting virtually next to my co host Joshua Crouch. And we have Paul on the show today with Lace. And if you're not familiar with Lace, they do some amazing things is help you to save a lot of money by catching misleads whenever your CSR is talking to a client and they analyze the call and let you know if it was a missed opportunity or not and make sure they're following the script. Is that correct?
- [04:11]
Paul
I mean, yeah, in a nutshell, we're all about revenue. A lot of customers we work with before they enable Lace, they don't have like a great idea what's happening in the call center. And there's a lot of stuff being lost. It could be, you know, calls run, handling perfectly high value calls don't get due attention, abandoned calls, all the stuff so laced. We just apply the best technology to make sure you reduce all that loss down to zero.
- [04:31]
Joshua Crouch
I just saw you and Katya and Boris over at Pantheon. So I was checking into the Marriott Hotel on Wednesday and Brittany and I were talking about a plumbing client who their service titan account said they book at 70 to 75%. Now, we still have a human team manually going through the leads that we generate to see what their booking rate is. So we take all calls, base it to qualified leads and then to booked opportunities and give them a booking rate. And our data was 29% one month the next one's 36 and it's 42%. And their service center account said 70 to 75%. And they're. They're really struggling and they couldn't figure it out why. And I'm like, you know, if it was a couple percentage points off, I'd give it just like those polls they do. Like, you give a couple percentage points, like, it's close, but when you're 30 to 40% percent difference, there is a big problem there and somebody's manipulating and putting the data in. Right. Or doesn't know understand why the data is so important. Actually, Church met Boris at like a Home Service Freedom or Service World Expo. And then we met you guys back last year. Pretty impressive what you guys have put together. And I know when I was talking, we were talking with Boris, an event, and he was like, you know, because Tommy Mellow was going to sign up and he's like, a 1% increase. And this sticks with me to this day. A 1% increase for Tommy in booking rate, just booking 1% more jobs was $3 million. Now, it's a big example. Most of us mere mortals don't have that quite. We won't get that quite of a turnaround, but it's still. The point is the same. Like, just booking more of what you already have will net you more money and you don't have to go get any more leads. And I love the concept, the simplicity, because everyone and I know we're going to talk about some voice stuff, but everyone went to that side of the thing first. But the problem is there's so much inbound opportunity that's missed. It's sad. Like, as an industry, then they beat up the marketing company.
- [06:17]
Tersch Blissett
Yep.
- [06:18]
Joshua Crouch
And they beat up everyone else. Like, I need more. And I've been preaching this forever, and I'm like, no, you don't stop telling me you need more, because you have plenty in your pipeline. Just gotta go get it.
- [06:29]
Tersch Blissett
Do you ever have that conversation with the contractors? And is there ever like this aha moment where it's like, okay, maybe I don't need more leads. Maybe I need to get this converted better?
- [06:39]
Paul
Yeah. Listen, firstly, Ter, Josh, thank you so much for the opportunity to join here. I'm a huge fan of the pod. It's super cool that the guys on the wall, you know, the posters you got in your teenage bedrooms are super cool. I really appreciate the opportunity to answer the question that we have this conversation literally every single day to what Josh is describing. You know, like, measurement is really, really Hard. There's a lot of different numbers out there. And when we talk to players in the industry, oftentimes, you know, one number doesn't mean the same thing to different people. So what you just described there, Josh, it's so important to have, you know, essentially a starting point, you know, to know what's happening in the business. And so, you know, when we talk about a booking rate, are we talking about qualified booking rate? Are we talking about the gross number? Right. Those are all, you know, kind of different shades of gray. There's or different sides of the same coin. We have this conversation constantly, you know, first and foremost is like, what's happening in the business. Very top of funnel is so crucial. And the kind of easy thing is, you know, we're all, I just need more leads. I just need the phone to ring more, more, more, more. And we believe really deeply is that's not necessarily the answer for a lot of operators out there. There's this concept of like, double inflation. You know, leads are getting more expensive, it's also getting more competitive, and they're lower quality, you know, and so, you know, shoveling money is you're just kind of spending a fortune on leads. And so how do you do more with what you actually have already coming to the business? So first and foremost, you have to measure and understand what the opportunity is. That's like our first viewpoint. It sounds obvious. Being able to disposition, being able to actually measure what the true opportunity is in the business from the jump is crucial because how can you make bet the company, kind of bet the farm style decisions if you don't actually know what's working, what's not, what's the opportunity, what's not? And I don't even mean channels specifically. I'm just more generally, you know, what are we doing well, what are we not doing so well? And so a lot of what Lace starts out with, before anything else, there's a lot of cool functionality we can talk about. There's so many cool, you know, developments and new launches. We've just launched this AI csr, you know, in the last few months. We're really responding well to before we get to that. That's like step two, three, four, five, six down the line, what's the opportunity? And so for us, it's really first and foremost, let's understand, let's. Let's trust our numbers. And so really where Laces start has been from the jump. We need to analyze 100% of your outbound calls, 100% of your inbound calls. And tell you what is converting and what isn't and so you can trust your number. That's gotta happen in Lace. And then we now push that to Service Titan so that all your other metrics flow down.
- [09:00]
Tersch Blissett
You are able to put all these numbers into Service Titan accurately so they see on their dashboard an accurate conversion percentage.
- [09:08]
Paul
And it's crucial. Right. Like, you know, for so many businesses we work with Service Titan or, you know, other CRMs, they're the source of truth. But yeah, we, we absolutely push that information back so that you can make the right decisions. You know, whether it's spend, whether it's, you know, who's really performing on the team or who needs some support.
- [09:22]
Tersch Blissett
And you have the ability to actually coach the CSR as well. Correct.
- [09:25]
Paul
That's essentially like the, you know, the first and foremost. So, you know, for anybody that doesn't know, you know, really, Lace is all about revenue. And most customers we talk to, 90 plus percent of their revenue comes in through the CSRS 8am to 6pm Monday through Friday. That's like the bulk of business. And if that's where most of the business is, that's where most of the opportunity is. You need to make sure you have, you know, how to improve that, that whole channel. And so really where we got our start was, hey, if that's where most calls are coming through, let's make sure we use data, use great technology to make sure our people are performing that much better. And so that starts with coaching, starts with just knowing what even to focus on. These are complex businesses we work with and there's a lot of places I can give 20 pieces of feedback to a person answering the phones. How do you guess what 19 of those might be, at best not helpful, and at worst, maybe you might be breaking something that's already working. So we really pride ourselves on starting with, with data, starting with, hey, where's the opportunity? And just get really focused on what's the kind of the key piece of feedback that's going to make that unlock that next level of success for an individual answering the phone for your business.
- [10:32]
Joshua Crouch
Well, I think what's important to note is, you know, for years we've had data. You know, Service Titan really has made that into the industry as like a normal thing where we're constantly talking about data and numbers and stuff, but the, it's almost paralysis analysis of all of this stuff, but I don't know what any of it means or what to do with it. And it's the actionable intelligence because I've seen studies and Tertia and I talk about this because there's been like, I can't remember which university it was, but a lot of these companies adopting AI and stuff like that aren't really seen a return. But it's also, it's very segmented. They're not. This tool is going to do this one thing, this one's going to do this one thing. And it's just very like fragmented where some of these things could all work together to leverage what AI can do, but also automate tasks and get, get us the information at our fingertips. So as the business owner, I can.
- [11:24]
Paul
Look and be like, okay, this week.
- [11:25]
Joshua Crouch
Yep, let's go coach. David and John, they got a coach on pricing objections. They gotta. These guys got to go coach on availability concerns or whatever the, you know, the, the term is. But there's, there's really only like five to seven things that most CSRs really need coaching on. And it's just a better way to handle it and just give me the data so I can coach my team instead of me having to go get the data, then analyze the data, then decide what needs to be coached on. And I think that's where the power of a platform like Lace and others out there that can really give us those insights at a moment's notice on what is my company struggling with and where should I put my time, effort and attention to.
- [12:06]
Paul
That's absolutely spot on. And I. But I would say before we even get there, you mentioned, like, there's, there's no shortage of data out there. Like, that's absolutely true. Man, we are living in a golden age of data points. Right. But the truth of the matter is, is that a lot of data is a little bit hard to rely on right now, you know, and especially in the call center. Right. Like, I mean, I've done this. I've, I've been in, I've been in jobs where I'm responsible for engaging with, you know, dozens, if not hundreds of people on a day. Right. You get tired, right. You get distracted, man, is it lunchtime yet? My stomach's crumbling. You know, maybe I don't go ahead and, you know, it's easy to grab the first drop, the first item off the dropdown. Maybe. Frankly, I've got other things in my mind. I've got some, you know, some pressing stuff at home. Who knows? The fact of the matter is, is people aren't really great at classifying data at scale reliably because it's not our core. We're not robots. Right. We're great at connecting with customers. We're great at showing empathy. We're great at, you know, making somebody feel comfortable when I'm having a stressful moment because my, you know, say pregnant wife is really uncomfortable. Cause our AC just went out. That's what I'm good at. Right? Power for many of us. And so what's really important is, yeah, there's a lot of data out there, but you need to have data you can rely on. And if you've ever had somebody disposition a call and you're like, I don't think that's right. Like, man, turns out there are systems, you know, that people like LACE have built that can help offload that so you can actually trust the numbers. That's so important. It's that old adage, you know, it's like, I'm not fond of it, but like garbage in, garbage out. Like you can't make bet the company decisions on data. Information you can't trust.
- [13:34]
Tersch Blissett
That's absolutely true. And having someone in the office go back and manually listen to it is painful. Like it's, it's a tedious task if you have more than three or four CSRs. It's also a massive undertaking.
- [13:49]
Joshua Crouch
And then it's a big overhead expense too, to literally have someone on staff. I, at the last H vac company I worked at, we hired a full time csr and then whenever she was not answering the phone, she was going and reclassifying calls. And literally I'd turn around, I'd start to say something. She had like a headset on because she was like listening to the calls and reclassify them because especially like answering services like after hours. All of those calls showed up in our system as abandoned, even though they weren't. And we booked appointments and did all that stuff. And it's just the data. Our booking rates are like 30. I'm like, we're way better than that. I know we are. How can you do anything? You're just paralyzed. Like, do we need coaching? Do we not need coaching? How do you know? Because the data's wrong. And if it's wrong, we're stuck. There's nothing we can do.
- [14:35]
Paul
An early customer of ours came to us. They were like, look, we are spending a fortune on marketing. And they're like, okay, so I'm not afraid to spend the money if it's reaping rewards, right? But they're like, I don't actually know what's working. Like, I've got all these channels. I don't Actually know what's converting, right? And so they were about to hire three full time people. There's real numbers by the way. They were going to hire three full time people to analyze, to, you know, classify, identify what's happening in calls. And those three full time people could have covered based on their call volumes. I can't remember the actual call of them like off the top of my head, but it would cover 5% or so of their call. So they were going to get at about 60k a year. So in total $180,000 worth of salary and benefit 15% of their calls. We're not even talking a fifth, right? They were like, can technology help? And this is like part of the genesis of Lace is that we're like, man, this is like exactly what technology is best utilized for is to, is to stamp out that sort of cost so that we can get those individuals to, you know, if we bring those people on staff, let's have them focus on higher level, you know, tasks. And so what we're able to do is at a fraction of that cost, give coverage for 100% of calls and probably at a higher level of accuracy so that when you bring people on board, we can do, you know, what people are best suited to do is connecting with customers. And so that's a real kind of part of the lay story is that this is everything we've built, everything we are building and continue to develop is based on customers saying, hey, this is a significant liability for us or this is a significant revenue opportunity. We need to do better. And a lot of what we've done is based upon people saying, like, look, I'm in this like kind of, kind of unfortunate situation. I have to spend a ton of money for pretty like lackluster outcomes. So yeah, we think really deeply about this. And a lot of, a lot of what we have launched and are launching and have come in the future is based on, hey, revenue based on spend right now, based on what's most important to the business. And you know, these are high stakes conversations. You know, like every phone call could be hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. And, and you know, at least really helps with that.
- [16:33]
Joshua Crouch
I can't imagine even thinking about bringing on $180,000 worth of salary to listen and analyze. I just, it blows my mind that they were that close to like getting to the point of hiring three people. But I understand why they wanted to because the data, they just couldn't make decisions. And like, we're just not growing how we think we should be they're spending that much money.
- [16:56]
Paul
Undoubtedly you have clients that are spending small fortunes on marketing, right? Like what do marketing budgets look like? How, how different are, how different do they look today versus, you know, a few years ago, man?
- [17:06]
Joshua Crouch
Well, my favorite, Paul, is, you know, like people come to us like I don't miss any calls and I'm like, well you miss like the average. And this is just average. So there's more that are higher, some that are lower, 15 to 17%. And we analyze just with our team that we have like in the summer seasons, 40, 50, 60,000 calls a month, 15 to 17% of that is just missed. Mean, didn't even pick up the phone, let alone fumbled. Once you pick up the phone, there's all these drop off points. And that's the thing I, I try, I try to talk about so much, and I know Tertia and I talk about this a lot, is how we can move data from one place to another to like speed, lead and all these other things. There's just so much revenue potential dropped before we even get in it. Like before we even get into the batter's box. We can't even step up to the plate because the opportunity is missed before we even get there. That's on top of the fact of like understanding are our service fees hindering our booking rate? Like that same plumber that I mentioned, their service fee is $150. And I'm like, in this economy, like right now, homeowners are not spending money like they used to, to have a, to have that barrier eventually be $150 when you're not going to make a profit on that anyways. It's just like there's a reason your booking rate's so low. But for whatever reason, when it was getting marked internally in their CRM, it was, somebody was manipulating the data to 70, 75%. And it's just, it's crazy. Like this guy's like literally like if it doesn't turn around next few months he's thinking about going out of business. That's how bad it is. That's how real the problem is for people. Especially like this year. This is probably the first year where it's been some people are up, but profitability is definitely, I feel like it's doing, I don't obviously know that for a fact, but just talking to people, you can kind of tell they're more stressed out. Profitability usually is a little bit lower when people are stressed out. Otherwise they wouldn't care as much. It's Just, it's been tougher. A lot of more finance declines. People aren't paying for the replacements. They're, they're getting repairs instead of. And so tightening up the ship is so vital, people in the contracting industry, because we don't know what it's going to look like moving forward. The prices have not come back down and I don't think they're going to. So how do we become smarter, more efficient operators? By leveraging the right technology. Don't just throw a bunch of technology into a, in a basket and be like, oh, I think this, you know.
- [19:29]
Paul
We bought some technology.
- [19:30]
Joshua Crouch
It should work. It should help us.
- [19:31]
Paul
Yeah.
- [19:32]
Joshua Crouch
Like leverage it to its fullest potential before you think about getting another one to do something else. Sorry, that's my soapbox. I'm getting off it now.
- [19:42]
Tersch Blissett
Yeah, somebody else.
- [19:44]
Joshua Crouch
I see these, I, I, we have these conversations a lot.
- [19:48]
Paul
So you're, you're, you're, I've heard it once or twice.
- [19:51]
Joshua Crouch
You're barking up the right tree today. I wanted to transition a little bit and ask. So, because you guys have a, you guys have probably analyzed millions of calls at this point and probably even more than that. And you guys started, you guys went a different way, like, because a lot of the companies that, the tech companies, the software companies, they went to the AI voice immediately. You guys took a different path and now you're coming back to that. Is it, was there a reason or was that always the plan or how did that look strategically for you guys and why you saw an opportunity to be in the AI voice provider side?
- [20:22]
Paul
Yeah, it's a really great question. I think it says a lot about our vision, frankly, and our understanding of what the business is today versus what it's going to be tomorrow versus kind of where things are going. And so, you know, first and foremost, and thanks for the opportunity to talk about this. First and foremost, you know, late, we're not married to some technology in particular. Yes, we're AI powered. We have an amazing team. We've got bonafides like you wouldn't believe in terms of. People have worked on really impressive technologies. You mentioned Boris, who his team has built the foundational tools for ChatGPT for Tesla's AutoDrive feature. The team is just as performant as they come. But, you know, technology for technology's sake is cool. If you're like a nerd like me and you just like, you know, new tech is fun and exciting and interesting. When it comes to business, though, like, there's no, you don't get points for like, oh, like cramming in a technology just for using, you know, saying you use a certain type of tech. For us and for, you know, from the jump, it's always been, well, what's most important to the businesses we serve. And it's going to be, well, let's look and see where's the bulk of the revenue, first and foremost, right? And there are a lot of easier problems to solve than dealing with voice, than dealing with dsr, dealing with inbound, outbound calls. There's a lot of, like, easier problems to solve. There's maybe even like sexier problems to solve. Right? But the fact of the matter is 90% of revenue today for most customers we work with, it's 8am to 6pm Monday through Friday, and it's coming over the phone. Okay. And so, hey, if there's anything to be lost there, that's going to be really meaningful to most operators out there. So we started there not because it was the easiest thing, not because it was the tech necessarily. Somebody like, had like a, like a connection to work on, but because it's like, hey, this is what's most important for this industry. So we got our start there. And what's neat about it is when you identify what great sounds like, when you start to see, hey, the top 1 or 2% of CSRs in your business, when you start to identify what are the patterns. Right? Okay, now once we understand what great sounds like on the phone there, well, now you can think, start to think about, well, how do we then, you know, once we kind of feel like we've unlocked or solved the call center opportunity, you know, all the calls were missing, all the objections were not overcoming. Once you've done that, well, let's go down the list to the next step in revenue. And so for us, what, you know, we feel like we really created the category of call center revenue intelligence. We've created this AI, this, this, this revenue engine, right? And if 90% of revenue is there coming through the call center with people, with our best teammates answering the phone, what's the next step? Well, when marketing makes the phone ring but all my agents are engaged, they're already busy, or if there was a storm last night, say, and the call volume's through the roof and I'm not staffed up properly, well, now we're getting abandoned calls. That's a really bad experience for customers. Firstly, it's a bad experience for me because if I'm the business owner, I just spent a fortune to make the phone ring to make sure that I'm the number that people are ringing somebody else. Right. And if you don't answer that phone, that is a bad experience for all involved. And so the next step for us was like, well, how do we reduce that abandoned call that next, like, 10% of revenue. 5, 10% of the total call volume that's coming in that we're not getting to with abandoned calls. You know, some businesses is higher than that. So there it was like, well, listen, we know what a great CSR sounds like on the phone. We've been helping. We've been coaching to that. Well, we can. We can now probably model that. And I think what a lot of other companies have done, they got, you know, they got really excited about a technology, and there's some cool tech out there, but, man, build something. You know, the classic example that we think about is this Tesla versus Waymo example. I'm super fond of this. I live in San Francisco, where I can actually literally summon a Waymo. I can. And if anybody had had that, hasn't been in one, it's almost a magic experience. You, you know, on the app I have in Phoenix now. Yeah, they're rolled out to a few markets now. So the whole idea is for anybody that doesn't know, it's, you know, essentially an app enabled. You know, it's like an Uber, like a Lyft that shows up, but rather than a driver in their own car, it's owned by Waymo, which is a subsidiary that spun off of Google. And it's kind of crazy if you haven't been in one because there's literally. It's a ghost of the machine. There's like nobody in the driver's seat. You know, it's really trippy, right? I promise you, if you go to Phoenix, go to San Francisco and jump in one of these, or you see somebody riding one for the first time, you're filming it on your phone because it's like, oh, my goodness, I can't wait to show my mom.
- [24:36]
Tersch Blissett
Yeah.
- [24:36]
Paul
You're like, oh, my God, get a load of. Yeah, so. So. So that's really cool. And it's. It's available in a handful of cities right now. By contrast, there's the Tesla model. So Tesla, you know, some people on this call might even own a Tesla. You see them on the road all the time now. They're pretty ubiquitous. Ten years ago is kind of special now. That's kind of like every other car in some cities. I feel like, right. There's a. There's a totally. Yeah. There's, it's, it's amazing. I mean, I was just in Phoenix. It seems like so many EVs on the car, on the road in general, but Tesla's in particular. Well, Tesla's had this full self drive option for a while now, right? Now, what's the difference? The Tesla model is, hey, you're still going to sit in the driver's seat, right? You are the primary driver. But we've used technology, we used a lot of machine learning, we've used cameras. We're going to help augment your driving. So if you get a little bit drowsy or if you get distracted because a notification pops up, I'm going to correct you. And frankly, a lot of cars have things like lane correction, right? There's, there's technology that makes you a better driver, right? But at the end of the day, no one's questioning whether or not we still need a driver. Guess what? That's how like most cars still operate globally. On the Waymo model, again, I'm the biggest proponent. I think it's so cool. Nobody short of Eric Schmidt, you know, former Google CEO, probably has access to actually own one of those. It's been 15 years, right? Waymo, it's super cool, it's interesting tech, but I don't think, hand over, I don't think I, in the next few years, I'm gonna own a totally driverless car. You know, I'm gonna, I'll use it potentially. So we think about the model a lot like, where's the market today? Where's the technology today? And the fact of the matter is, is if my home is uncomfortable, I'm gonna make a phone call and I just want to book a darn appointment, get somebody in to help, right?
- [26:16]
Tersch Blissett
Hello, home service professionals. Do you want to maximize your marketing budget? Then you need to be using call tracking from CallRail. Let's say you've you noticed a spike in new leads this month. To find out what's driving them, you just log into your CallRail dashboard. Is my new Facebook ad outperforming my other ads or is paid search knocking it out of the park? Or maybe it's time to retire those newspaper ads. Since CallRail assigns a unique phone number to each of my marketing efforts, I know where my best leads come from and which efforts to scrap. CallRail shows you your most cost effective marketing channels so you can get back to business. Go to CallRail.com sbmpod and try it for free.
- [27:00]
Joshua Crouch
Today's episode is powered by Ciro Systems.
- [27:03]
Tersch Blissett
Sarah is all about removing the clutter and unnecessary touch points. To run your home service business profitably.
- [27:08]
Joshua Crouch
They use AI dispatching to get the right tech to the right call automatically and job time efficiency to ensure your entire team runs like a profit generating machine.
- [27:17]
Tersch Blissett
Get a tech upgrade for your business@git sarah.tech service-business-masterry Today's episode is brought to you by one of our show partners, upfrog.
- [27:28]
Joshua Crouch
Upfrog is the OG when it comes to pricing transparency online. They find system replacement leads through paid ads and have developed an entire system to drive those hard to find system replacement opportunities. Nurture the leads and book them into sold systems before your team arrives to help you grow your business.
- [27:45]
Tersch Blissett
Learn more@upprogio.
- [27:47]
Joshua Crouch
You're going to make a phone call until Google rolls out their have AI call feature on Google Maps, which I just talked about in the webinar last night, which I haven't been able to replicate. I've only seen some screenshots of it. But it's like the AI is going to call, which of course now in home services we're all talking about AI call centers. It's going to talk to the AI, it's going to get the report, bring it back to the homeowner like an assistant. Almost like I have a virtual assistant calling around to get pricing on whatever I want and then put me a report and then I can choose who I want to provide. Which that is a kind of a scary and freaky future. Like nobody talks to anybody and we just hire someone blindly without actually like physically talking to them. But that feels like the way Google wants to go. Speaking of like AI and how that.
- [28:36]
Paul
Yeah, I presume as consumers there's gonna be a lot of different ways for us to book what Lace's view. What we do is on the operator side, there's going to be a lot of ways we need to interact with customers. And so frankly we are in a people business. Whether it's the technician going to the home, whether it's somebody dealing with a billing. We're in a people business. Right. This Tesla Waymo kind of analogy for us is are we going to automate away an entire function? We don't think that's happening anytime soon. What we do think is the best teams in this industry are going to use technology to amplify and do their jobs a lot better. We're going to do away with things like dispositioning or call analysis, which is probably not a good use of my time. So that I as a really great motivated employee. I'm going to do a, have the bandwidth to actually talk to a customer, to actually work through them with a, you know, with a. With an escalation. So that, you know, my, my example of the Tesla Waymo thing is a little bit less on the consumer side. I know I took it there. But it's really more about, like, how do we support the best employees. So our whole model, our whole thesis is we think the model that's going to win the day is this super, this hybrid super team where it's the best AI and best technology, essentially helping and bolstering the best employees. And we continue to see that bear out. It's the best teams that are using technology to make our employees that much stronger.
- [29:53]
Tersch Blissett
Are you finding situations where you have. We've talked about the difference between A, B and C players, the challenge. So a friend of mine, Mike Michalowicz, wrote a book and he mentioned, he went into a lot of detail about A, A players versus A teammates versus Bs and Cs and how B players can ruin the company because they just, they, they do what needs to be done whenever someone's watching. But otherwise they're going to do the bare minimum. You know, they're smart enough to get away with it. The issue is, like, they're not A players, they're more like C players. Have you been able to spot that with the software? And like, obviously we talk about this all the time about not wanting to use AI to get rid of people, but in this situation, like, like, it's in the business owner's best interest to know this information. Not necessarily because, hey, I want to fire everybody and replace them with AI. But you could have a B player that is hurting the operations significantly because they're doing the bare minimum. They still look busy every day. They're friendly on the phone, but their actual conversion rate's not good, that type of stuff.
- [31:25]
Paul
Josh opened up our chat with, hey, you know, like, we're familiar with this business out there that's kind of running on vibes. Like, kind of. Like, it kind of feels like we're okay. Like, oh, you kind of have a sense things are working. Or I have a. I have a feeling this person's a really good contributor. And there maybe that person's, you know, at the end of the day, there are very few, in my view, successful businesses that don't have a really good handle on what excellent is and what needs attention. And how do you do that? Right. You know, running on kind of feeling or gut, like you know, obviously, intuition, there's a. There's a place in that for business, right? But, you know, again, coming back to, like, why did Lace start where we did? You need to have total insight in order to make the smartest business decisions, you know, and we all know that, you know, intuition can only get you so far. And so you think about how optimized this business, this industry has to be, whether that's, you know, what system do I offer as an option, whether it's how I work with my rebate programs, like, there's optimizations, how I, you know, my incentive structures for my salespeople, all that stuff, right? At a baseline, if you don't know what's working, like, who's a superstar and who's. Who needs support, who needs help, you know, how can you make the right kind of decisions about who's going to be on the team, who needs the right kind of coaching, and who maybe, you know, isn't a fit today, you know, and so we think so deeply about having to have accurate data in order to make the decisions that you can. And barring that, you know, look, we talked to a lot of people that, frankly, they came up in a truck themselves. Like, they're so good at talking to people in person, right? They are in people's homes, right? They've. They've done it for years for. I mean, on this call alone, I've got decades experience here, right? A lot of people I talked to, they're like, look, I never really spent a ton of time in the call center. I got to be honest, like, maybe early on, I answer that. My dad is a small business owner, started a few businesses, and he was the only guy who answered the phone himself. Right? Now, why was that? Frankly, he had trust issues, if I may say so. He had trust issues. Frankly, he didn't think anybody else could maintain that standard, right? Guess what? He only ever got. His business, has only ever got so successful and so big because he didn't. He could never grow, right? If you're going to grow and hit the multiples that I think so many people are shooting for in this industry, scaling is important, bringing people into the business. You know, we're not all one island, right? No man is an island. That's zeal adage, right? How do you do that without knowing exactly what's working in the call center? And again, I think vibes isn't enough. So we think really deep about starting there. And then you pinpoint, where's the opportunity, where's the obvious stuff. Oh, if. If 10 out of 12 people are really, really proficient handling a certain, certain type of objection, but two people need some help, great. That's a really valuable area of the business to focus on because we, we know that's a solved answer. We know people on the team are doing a great job with it. And so, hey, what are those 10 or 10 people doing that the last two aren't, aren't yet grasping? How do we give them the practice, give them a shot? So more than, you know, identifying kind of who's. Who's not, cutting it first and foremost, like, where's the opportunity? And how do you apply the support that your best employees need? You know, you give me somebody who's really willing to work hard, who's willing to take. Take coaching and just kind of in the incentive structures are there, that's a recipe for success. But you need to know what to focus on, and that's really hard if you don't have 100% of calls analyzed. If you don't know what great sounds like on the phone, right. And you're not able to in a structured way, point to it and then also measure what happens afterwards. Hey, we gave you some coaching. How are you handling this now?
- [34:44]
Tersch Blissett
You know, mark your calendars right now. October 27th through the 30th.
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Joshua Crouch
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Tersch Blissett
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Joshua Crouch
And when you get to Vegas, come find us at booth 2403.
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Tersch Blissett
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Joshua Crouch
You and I are doing a keynote on AI and automation. Contractors absolutely need to hear hear this stuff. This isn't just another trade show.
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Tersch Blissett
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Joshua Crouch
We're not just attending.
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Tersch Blissett
We're taking over the podcast stage.
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Joshua Crouch
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Tersch Blissett
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Joshua Crouch
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Tersch Blissett
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- [36:01]
Joshua Crouch
Yeah, and be able to compare time ranges and stuff like that too, to see if they're getting better or worse. Because then you could also Make a decision and be like Tertia's favorite words, release to new opportunities.
- [36:13]
Paul
You know, because.
- [36:13]
Joshua Crouch
Some people just don't get it.
- [36:14]
Tersch Blissett
So Josh and I talk a lot about optimize, automate, delegate the problem with the delegation aspect of things. And that's basically what you're doing. You're the business owner, you're no longer taking the phones, you, you've hired someone else to do it, you're delegating that task to them, but you're either going to delegate them with intention or delegation by abdication. So you're literally just saying, hey, just figure it out. And then you blame them because they're the first line of defense and they're the first person that engages with your client. And then all of a sudden you're like, why aren't we getting leads converted anymore? Why aren't, why aren't the guys busy anymore? Blah, blah, blah. And it's because you, you haven't coached them and you're not actually tracking them. And then we allow the CSR to classify the call themselves. And it's like, well, like they don't need the coaching because theirs is at 75% and in reality it's like 30%. And so, I mean, it's a lot of, you know, delegation by application. And so yeah, you're making great points and everything that you're saying there.
- [37:17]
Paul
Delegating. Some of the hardest working people in this industry, I would say, like truly some unsung heroes are frontline people, managers in the call center. Oh my goodness, talk about somebody who's got all the KPIs in the world, all the visibility in the world. You know, the if, if we're not convert, you know, these people work so hard. They've got a ton of direct reports. Oftentime, you know, often, oh so and so takes care of that. And it's like, it's like it's a catch all role, right? My heart, we talk to these individuals all the time. And if that person doesn't have a really clear idea of what's working, what's not, man, there's so many levers that that individual has that they can pull. It's really hard to know, hey, what's going to be the biggest impact opportunity. If I've got a spare 10 minutes on a Wednesday afternoon, who do I spend it with or what area of the business, you know, what conversation do I spend it on, right? And so we think really deeply about, frankly, we should be prioritizing the information we provide. And let's just make it easy. Easy, I say in scare quotes here, easy to go ahead and make sure I'm focusing on that, on the highest impact activity. You know, so if my team is taken a thousand calls this week and there's two key objections we keep getting tripped up on and you know, guess what? I could spend a lot of time talking about a lot of parts of why we're not converting, why if, if we're not nailing those two objections, the ones that the data saying like, hey, we should focus our energies on, then, you know, everything else is going to be a waste of time, you know, and so unless you have that data that you know, you know, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're going to be spinning your wheels. So that's really important as a start and frankly, just prioritize that over also empowering your CSRs. You know, the best teams we found they in fact actually incentivize CSRs that they want to get better. You know, this industry is so filled with people on the phone who are like hungry, who are not afraid to put in the work. And if you can empower a CSR to see exactly what's working and where they need to focus and then just give them examples of what great sounds like, man, we, we see that time and again of people improving their own performance and then that's great for the business, of course, and great for their own pocketbook too. So it's all about like empowerment and data that's actually usable and actually, you know, you know, giving you insights for, for what you can actually put into action straight away.
- [39:25]
Tersch Blissett
That's it right there. Put it in action. Like, what are you going to do with the data? We're not going to just have analysis paralysis. We're going to actually implement it with this massive amount of data.
- [39:35]
Joshua Crouch
Paul, what you know is I know you guys recently launched the AI CSR side of things. What do you see outside? You know, you mentioned abandoned calls is kind of like the next revenue bucket. Is there anything other people are using that for, from a perspective, to help them book appointments? Is there ability to do outbound? What, what are the capabilities of that? And where do you see, where do you guys see that going here? Down the line?
- [40:02]
Paul
It's all on a continuum, right? And it's different for different businesses. I think the key thing to know is that it's not going to be a one size fits all. And the fact of the matter is, like, we talked to a lot of different customers at different levels, kind of on their journey. Right? You know what? So it starts with we really kind of think about how do we build up starts. The disposition starts with, hey, what is the booking rate? Right? Fast forward. We've got a, you know, you know, customers that after they've kind of gotten their call center are really dialed in place, then they're really focused on, hey, you know what, we're getting hammered on cancellations. Let's, let's really, let's really tackle those right? When it gets, then, you know, once the call center is really humming, we've got booking rates dialed in. People are operating at the highest level. Well now it's like, okay, from an AICSR perspective, how do we fill in the gaps? You know, and guess what? There are, you know, our employees need to sleep. You know, we've got, we've got hard working teammates that frankly nobody wants to work the 2:00am shift, you know, 24.
- [40:57]
Joshua Crouch
7, baby, earn that money.
- [41:01]
Paul
I was at a dinner at a nexstar event down in Palm Springs and I was talking to a really great guy. He was talking about how he loves getting the calls forwarded to him, the late night calls, right? And he's a service manager, smaller business. He loved taking the calls himself. And I'm like, you are unique in that respect because that's a window of time that frankly most of our employees should be at home with their families recuperating so they can be amazing. Monday through Friday, 8:00am to 6:00pm you know, and so guess what? Like we think that there is a really good use of technology there to fill in the gaps for those calls. Middle of the night, that frankly it might not make sense to have a full time or a third party that's going to potentially offer like a lower level of service. You know, let's go ahead and replicate what great sounds like on the phone with an AI CSR that has effectively a full functionality, you know, can book directly in your service titan, say, can handle, you know, some questions, can be flexible with, you know, the capacity constraints that you might have, you know, for Monday first thing or Tuesday late at night or whatever. So that's really important. But, but again that's gotta, it's gotta work with what the next opportunity is on the kind of the list of revenue opportunities. We don't think it's a, it's a one size fits all. We're not married to any one technology. But guess what? If you really have expertise in the call center, well then you can build an AI agent that builds off of that that. Right. It doesn't really work the other way. It's really, really hard to say, hey, we built this agent, now we're going to apply this to all the majority of the revenue. And I think a lot of tech companies out there, they get really, really stuck on like, hey, we have to use this technology. This is our differentiator. And we know that the tech moves fast. Devil's in the details. And it's all execution. It's all execution. At the end of the day, the.
- [42:44]
Tersch Blissett
After hours calls, I believe that people are becoming more and more okay with it, with it being an AI agent. They're like, I get it, I respect that. You know, it's 12 o' clock at night, you know, and I'm getting the AI agent, so they're more receptive to that versus, you know.
- [43:08]
Paul
2 o' clock.
- [43:09]
Tersch Blissett
In the afternoon, it being the only, the only available person to speak with or quote unquote, person to speak with is an AI voice agent. And then they're, you know, if they have any hesitation to it, you know that. That's when I see, I can see that being.
- [43:26]
Joshua Crouch
I don't think I told you this story. Maybe I did. I told only a couple people, but we were at Addie's soccer game, soccer tournament, Oceanside, about a month ago, before we. This is before Pantheon. And I don't normally eat fast food anymore. I used to love Taco Bell back in the day. We didn't have a lot of options on the way home. And I stopped at a Taco Bell and it was like in Yuma. It's like it wasn't even a big city or town, like a important one. And I took my order at Taco Bell. I could totally tell as an AI but of course it didn't screw it up. So I was pretty happy about it now. I thought it was cool. I'm sure somebody out there is like ready to take a baseball bat to the thing and try to like take it down because AI is taking someone's job. But how many times do we go to like fast food restaurants or, or people even on the phone, like in, in our contracting companies and they get the wrong order, they wrong. They're not actually listening to what the homeowner is saying. And then we're, we're giving them the wrong information or we're not really understanding what they're, we're not clarifying what they need. And of course Taco Bell got my order right. And then we went to McDonald's for the, for Brittany and Addie. And they got the order wrong. They missed like a fry or something like that.
- [44:34]
Paul
I'm like, well, okay, I have to ask, what was the Taco Bell order? As somebody who hasn't been there for a while, just recently, it was just.
- [44:40]
Joshua Crouch
Like a chicken quesadilla in a soda.
- [44:42]
Tersch Blissett
With a Baja Blast.
- [44:44]
Joshua Crouch
No, I don't do the Baja Blast. I just regular like whatever, whatever Sierra Ms. Is called the Astari, I think, I think they rebranded Starry or whatever look like.
- [44:54]
Paul
But that example is, I think, meaningful. And Josh, you mentioned, like, I think the after hours use case is, is, you know, there's, there's more acceptance there. I would argue, like, these are, you know, even in the same household, you know, if my mom calls, if I'm at my mom's house this weekend, right? Phoenix, Arizona.
- [45:10]
Joshua Crouch
Are you going to tell us you clone yourself so when your mom calls, you don't actually talk to her?
- [45:14]
Paul
No, no, I will always. I will always talk to my mom. I will always talk to her. Hi, mom.
- [45:18]
Joshua Crouch
Good answer, Paul. She's listening right now.
- [45:22]
Paul
I'm going to send her a link to this immediately. Same household, you know, same issue, same hour. I could call an operator and look, I just want to book the appointment. I'm like, look, like, whatever's fastest, you know, like, hey, like, sure, bot, whatever, you know, AI agent, you know, it works for me. My mom wants to talk to somebody. My mom's got questions. She's a lovely woman. She is a Chatty Cathy. She's, you know, she's all business too, but like, you know, she wants to kind of, you know, feel it out. And guess what? That could be within the same hour. Same household, same zip code, of course, right? Same service even. But those are two different interactions, right? And different customers demand that. So, you know, I think the best systems out there are ones that built for that. Right? And so, you know, one thing we've done has been really deliberate that, like, knowing, hey, some people. And there's some generational considerations too, right? And even not, some people are always just going to want to, like, cut to the chase. Like, hey, whatever's fastest is better. Some people are going to say, listen, I don't want to talk to a bot. Put me on with a live person and like, at the end of the day, who's right? Everybody's right. Like that both customers are totally, you know, like, they. And you have to meet them where they are. And so we think really deeply about. You have to build a system that can be flexible enough Such that, you know, guess what? Let's have, you know, let's make sure that if it's me calling or my mom calling, we both have a similar, if not the same experience. One thing you know, I was at home Service Freedom recently and Kevin Leary was on. Kevin o' Leary was on stage from, from Shark Tank. Really exciting speaker, Just, just an awesome personality. And he talked about this idea of disclosure, which is super interesting. He was like, look like he had this kind of interesting concept of, of. Of AI, of this kind of doppelganger of himself. And he did a survey of the CEOs and his portfolio companies. I think he's got like 54 or 55. Then he did a. He said it was about half and half about whether or not you disclose that something is a, is an AI agent or not. His take was mildly that he thinks you should. And here was the idea that in short, you can set expectations such that people then don't get disappointed. I think there's a trend that, you know, right now a lot of companies out there, you know, they pride themselves on how kind of, how you can kind of dupe somebody. And like, you know, maybe there's, you know, for some people, maybe that's interesting or important. You know, frankly for Lace, like we've got some best practices. We've suggested saying, listen, front load the fact that, hey, this is an AI agent, right? And guess what? For some people, like yours truly, awesome, great, let me just book the thing. For some people it's going to be, thanks for letting me know, let me talk to a person. And again, no one's wrong in that instance, but how do you build the system flexibly enough? You're satisfying kind of everybody that interacts with you, you know, for the bulk of the calls and of the interactions that you have. We think really deeply about what is the market ready for where we at today. And guess what? If I'm calling at 2am I'm probably going to be a little bit differently understanding than if it's 2pm on a Thursday, you know, so I wouldn't expect.
- [48:01]
Joshua Crouch
A human to answer my call at that point.
- [48:04]
Paul
Honestly, if anything, I would be expecting.
- [48:05]
Joshua Crouch
Like I get a voicemail or something where I just leave a message for the morning.
- [48:08]
Paul
And we know that's also not great for everybody, right? A voicemail, you know, like, no, because.
- [48:12]
Joshua Crouch
People don't get back to you right away.
- [48:13]
Paul
How much better could we be if we just booked the appointment at that point, you know?
- [48:16]
Tersch Blissett
Yeah, that's true. 100% do you run into any markets where they're like, and I know that AI Voices is new for y', all, but they're really like, our entire customer database is 65 plus, and AI voice.
- [48:32]
Joshua Crouch
Is just not going to work.
- [48:33]
Paul
We have customers who have strong feelings that they don't think their market, that their customer base is interested. They themselves don't feel like they want to kind of get involved with that. And I think that's totally legit, you know, and we don't have a dog in the fight. Like, we're not married to a given technology. We know that this technology, broadly speaking, AI, is so powerful, and it can be applied in a lot of different ways. And there's a journey that everybody's on. And there's a reason, again, that it's not a one size fits all. It's not this, you know, kind of silver bullet for every ailment. But there is opportunity in most call centers that we work with, there's opportunity that needs to be unlocked. And, yeah, there's some markets where businesses are like, look, we don't feel comfortable with that. And that's really okay. We. You have to honor that. That's where I think one thing that's really neat about Lace is we're there to where the revenue priorities are, and that ultimately will help you dictate. Let's say you're like, you're in that market where you have a certain demographic. You just don't feel like you're necessarily. You don't feel comfortable putting out that AICSR. Okay, let's honor that. But if you are losing 20% of your calls to abandons, you know, one out of five calls, if they're not getting answered, guess what? Like, get that call answered. Let them know that you're a virtual agent, and let them know that, hey, listen, everyone's busy right now, or we'll take a message. But in the meantime, just so you know, I can probably do most of what a person can. And if you need something quickly, go ahead and book an appointment. We'll call you back. I would say that's probably a net positive. You know, if you can get that 20% down to, you know, and this is where it comes back to, like, one of the things you get with our team is we're really good at digging into, hey, where are the revenue priorities for you? Revenue, revenue, revenue. Let's have that dictate how do we roll things out with you? And practically for everybody, it's like, let's make sure we understand the nature of the opportunity first and then let's figure out where's the bulk of the revenue and how we work from there. And that might be the mean an AICSR at some point. It almost certainly means identifying what channels are working well for you. It almost certainly means, hey, why are we losing calls right now? Let's fix that straight away. Everybody knows coaching is important, but what's the thing to coach on? What's the big impact activity?
- [50:24]
Tersch Blissett
Paul, we appreciate you hanging out with us. What's the best way to connect?
- [50:27]
Paul
Yeah, I mean, so directly with me, you know, if anybody wants to get in touch. Paulace AI is my direct email if you want to know. We're all about as a company. Lace AI is the URL is the website. You know, we're at a lot of events. I think we're about to be at the nextar event next week. We were just a pantheon got a chance to to see Josh there and you guys in Savannah shortly, I believe. Very, very excited about that.
- [50:47]
Joshua Crouch
I'm sure we'll see you probably. Well, maybe not you specifically, but the team a few times in the next four to six weeks.
- [50:54]
Paul
We love being in this industry, though, and you know, our customers are seeing such great return. I really appreciate Josh ter the opportunity to chat with you guys.
- [51:01]
Tersch Blissett
Yeah, absolutely.
- [51:02]
Paul
You know, it means a lot and, you know, keep doing what you guys are doing. Again, it's cool hanging out through heroes.
- [51:07]
Tersch Blissett
Absolutely, Paul. It's always great hanging out with you. We'll talk to you soon.
- [51:11]
Paul
Pleasure, gents. Take care.
- [51:22]
Podcast Narrator
Thank you for listening to this episode of service Business mastery. Now that you are equipped with essential business advice from this impactful conversation, you are one step closer to becoming the successful owner of your dreams. If this episode has been helpful to your business journey, don't forget to subscribe to the show, leave a rating and share it with other owners as well. Visit servicebusinessmastery.com to learn more.