The Home Service Expert Podcast - Streamlining Your Booking Process to Close More Customers

Episode Date: April 23, 2021

Austin Haller is the founder of Schedule Engine, a customer service support solution for home service contractors. Prior to founding Schedule Engine, he owned and led a $30M energy company, which he and a partner acquired and sold for 3x the invested capital in less than 3 years. Armed with 15 years of experience in the industry, he has been focused on bringing pioneering technology and services to contractors. In this episode, we talked about team building, strategic planning, operations management...

There's no question that there's a lot of people focused on trying to invest and innovate within this industry. I think a couple of things. One, quality of customer experience will prevail. So I don't necessarily think small contractors who think they can win on low price have a sustainable business plan. I think those that can deliver the right experience, that can deliver a streamlined scheduling experience, that can ensure the right technician is showing up on time with the right material and solving that issue quickly and actually treating the customer appropriately will build a better reputation and will ultimately win on all platforms. Because in all cases, reputation matters, whether somebody's booking through Google or

HomeAdvisor or wherever. So I think that's important. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. My name is Tommy Mello. And today, this is going to be really cool, guys, because these guys reached out to me

probably a year ago. And I'm really excited because I work with them quite often now at A1 Garage Door Service. Austin Haller, did I say that right? Haller. Haller. Austin Haller is going to be joining us today. He is the founder of Schedule Engine. So he's the CEO and founder. He's based out of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He's an expert in team building, strategic planning, operations management. He's got a little bit of history here. He worked at Horizon, Empower the Orphan, advisor from 2005 to present still. Heller Enterprise Incorporated, an executive team member from 2015 to present, business

process development manager from 2014 to 2015. The list goes on and on. He also worked at the CEO of Sonder Fuel from 2015 to 2018. He's the founder of Schedule Engine, a customer service support solution for home service contractors. Before founding Schedule Engine, he owned and led a $30 million energy company, which he and a financial partner acquired and sold for, was it twice the investment capital in less than three years? It was three times. Three times. Thrice is what it says. So I knew it was either twice or three, three times the investment in less than three years. With about 15 years of hands-on experience in the home service industry, Austin has focused on bringing technology and services to contractors and pioneering the new ways of doing business.

I got to tell you, I'm really excited about this because this is going to be the future of A1. This is a great product because, well, first, why don't you introduce yourself? Why don't you talk a little bit about where you've been, what your involvement has been in the home service spot, and then maybe you could dive into Schedule Engine and what you're working with nowadays and where you're going with it. Yeah, absolutely. So I had the privilege of growing up in the industry. Second generation to a large HVAC plumbing electrical contractor based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, about $70 million of revenue, 400 plus employees. And I had the opportunity to grow

up in that. I had the chance to watch my father build that business and learn the ins and outs of running a contracting business. The challenges, the tools, the strategies that existed to overcome those obstacles. And I got a chance to live. I got a chance to... I mean, I was cutting duckboard in the warehouse at 11 years old. I was out in the field over the summers, learning what life is like in the truck and in the home.

New construction, service and replacement across the board. And gained a real appreciation for what it takes to run these businesses. They're a lot more complicated and complex than the average person thinks from the outside looking in. It's not easy to do. But unlike most second gens, I was more inspired by my father's entrepreneurialism than I was by the actual business itself. So my desire and my drive was always to follow in those entrepreneurial footsteps. So that's what eventually led to the acquisition of an energy company, which we kept completely outside of Haller Enterprises.

And that's where I really got the first opportunity to test and learn my leadership skills. And it's really where I learned how to lead people that had a lot more experience and domain expertise in a particular arena than I did. And it's where I learned the importance of casting a clear vision for the future, ruthlessly prioritizing, creating an environment that allows people to thrive with them, that is empowering, that really ultimately attracts great and retains great talent. And it was in that experience that I got to learn a little bit. I mean, still home services, but from a different perspective, a different vantage point. From that point, I went to graduate school, studied for my MBA. Similar to you, Tommy, it was nights, it was drive,

it was working at nights, putting the papers together, doing that work, taking as much as I could absorb, thinking about my business through the perspective of these more academic lenses. And it was through that that really I took the opportunity to step back from the home services industry, or from the weeds of it, and study study the industry at large and focused and zeroed in on this gap, this growing gap between what consumers were expecting as trained by leading industries, leading technology companies, Amazon, Uber, etc. And what contractors across the board were delivering in terms of customer experience. And that's ultimately what inspired the founding of Schedule Engine was to bridge that gap to equip contractors with better tools, technology, services, to make it easier to do business with them and to enhance that customer experience. And that's know what has led to where i am today a lot of what we do at schedule engine is grounded in what life is like on the ground for and in the field for

contractors and we design our systems and and our technology and our services with that in mind So let's go into a brief overview of how Schedule Engine works on service for contractors. Yeah. So what Schedule Engine does is essentially convert the business that you are generating through your partners, through the local marketing that you're doing, converts it to a booked appointment. So one of the problems today is contractors, whether you're small and you've got not much more than your truck wrapped in your logo to larger contractors that are much more sophisticated, that have sophisticated marketing campaigns and digital campaigns, all work and money and investment being spent to drive demand. The breaking point in most cases is the actual conversion point. Most contractors are only set up to receive and convert that demand to a booked appointment during the day, during business hours, when their CSRs are on the phone standing by to answer. And consumers have evolved. Consumers

want to book online. They want to book through social media. They want to call after hours. They want to do things on their terms at their time. So that's what Schedule Engine seeks to solve. We started with online booking. So we have an online booking system that can integrate into your website and it can be customized to your branding and to your business rules and allow folks that are coming to your website to convert immediately. And we've added live services as well. So those that want to chat directly on your website or those that want to call in can reach somebody who's representing you and book that appointment quickly and easily. So it's interesting because it's taking off, obviously. Do you want to tell us about what the last couple of years,

kind of how you got into it? And you had a good year last year, kind of where you're at with it. There's a lot of questions I have, but I just kind of want to really... Customer wants to book. You've built some APIs in a different... I don't know everything, but probably different CRMs. Do you want to just kind of take us through the history of that as well? Yeah, absolutely. So we understood that most, especially medium, large size contractors run their business on a field service management system. And that's the,

you know, the source of truth where they operate, where they maintain and manage most of their schedule. And, you know, in order to automate the scheduling function, we needed to build that integration. And so we've invested a lot of time and energy in our early years, building multiple integrations with the leading field service management companies that are out there. And that was key. That was key for setting the foundation for what would ultimately power this enhanced customer experience, whether it's self-serve online scheduling or the live services. The first couple of years was really establishing that foundation, as well as building the flexibility in our system to accommodate the various business rules.

Lots of contractors have different scheduling methodologies and different preferences. And what was key for us was to accommodate those. So implementing scheduling was simple and easy, and we could follow through on our promise that you don't have to change the way you do business to implement Schedule Engine. We'll configure it to your rules. So, you know, first couple of years was about that.

We focused on online scheduling, added live services beginning of 2020. And that's when things really started to take off. Our user base grew 600% in 2020, revenue over 400%. And we are really excited about the future of where things are headed. And we've got different products and services coming online for different types of customers within the market. But that's an overview of where we've come, where we're at right now. So, well, people got to understand about this system

and this is an elevator pitch for you. But basically, if you put Schedule Engines widget anywhere, whether that's any type of media, you could do a QR code, you can basically get to it anywhere. People have the ability to schedule within your capacity board. Some people don't understand capacity.

I want to spend a quick minute on it in your capacity board. Some people don't understand capacity. I want to spend a quick minute on it because I think when I talk about dispatching, the first thing I talk about, they say, what is important? And I just did this last week. They say, what's most important is that we communicate with the customer. I said, that's fair enough.

That's super important. But I said, your goal is to maximize the right technician with the right customer at the right time and increase capacity while increasing profits and increasing really customer satisfaction. But there's a balancing act there because I'll tell you what, capacity is very, very easy for Uber because anybody that drives could come pick you up. Although I've seen me recently, I've had to wait 20 minutes in certain areas that you just wouldn't have assumed it would take that long, but still that's a capacity issue. People don't understand when you wait 25 minutes for an Uber or maybe a New Year's Eve, capacity is the problem.

So how do you expand capacity? Well, you need to develop multiple shifts. In my opinion, you should have a night shift and you should have that night shift pulling your best jobs from tomorrow and the following day in today's capacity, because a lot of reasons I like night shifts, no traffic, customers are home. Both decision makers are home. It's nicer to work typically in the garage. If you're a garage door company the garage if you're a garage door company obviously if you're a painting company that if you're indoors maybe that helps but talk to me about what capacity means to you oh i think you hit the nail on the head and i think this is a good analogy but the challenge like fundamentally is that demand outweighs supply and home services and you know

finding and keeping good technicians is a challenge. So you have to make the most of the technicians that you have. You have to be efficient with them and send them on the highest value jobs that you possibly can. And that starts with understanding what those types of jobs are and then setting your systems up to prioritize them. So understanding, asking the right questions when your CSRs are on the phone or when you're collecting information about any kind of a booking, whether it's age of equipment or the type of the customer that it is, the nature of the work. And then ensuring that you've got the right technicians who are optimized for those types

of opportunities going to those jobs so that you're making the most of those chances. The contractors that we've observed that are the most profitable, that are the most successful, are very, very intentional about sending the right tech to the right job. And it's not always about the tech who can fix it the fastest. Sometimes it's about the technician who understands the situation and can guide the customer to the best replacement opportunity. Understanding that and solving for that is key in making the most of each opportunity that you get and maximizing the revenue at each call that you run. I'm fascinated with technology because I know it's the end-all be-all.

I mean, with Biden passing a couple trillion dollars, we're going to have to get much more efficient. And the key to have to get much more efficient. And the key to success is the speed of innovation. It's the speed of implementation. I personally grade every single one of my technicians on several factors. I grade them for callback ratios. I mean, there's a chart of a lot of things we grade them on. But sales is important, too.

Let's not forget that. I think what you were trying to say there was you're grading them on the ability to persuade a customer to go a certain way because they're better at it. They're better at eye contact. They're better at body language. And here's the facts. Tom Brady's pretty good at playing in the Super Bowl. And that's why he plays. And there's certain salesmen at certain shops that sell better. And I'll tell you what, if me and you were inviting somebody such as the president to dinner, you probably want the best chef on hand. You want your best developer developing the code. I mean, we always want the best. And what's in the best fiduciary responsibility for us as a CEO is to get the best, the best, to get the best outcome for

the people that own shares in the company, which is depending on if you're a C-corp or whatnot. So scoring is very important. I'm working on a scoring system for not only my techs, but my customers. And this is going to play a lot into capacity planning. And it's so awesome because with AI now, artificial intelligence, as you keep feeding the beast, it gets smarter and smarter. And I'm pretty excited because I came up with a few things when you booked the appointment and this might be something up your alley to develop, but I'm definitely going to build my own as well. I mean, me and you should talk about it. I don't mind

sharing this stuff because it's really complex. I'm not, maybe there's a developer sitting on the other side of this call going, I'll develop that, which is great. But every single company is different. So you got to let it learn your company. But there are certain things. How old the equipment was the last time the HVAC units were looked at? How many HVAC units do you have? Are any of them on a two-story house? Bringing the right tools to the job. So read something like this. In order to better serve you, Mr. Smith, we'd love to know if you could take a few pictures of this, that, and this, if it's available. We'd also like to know a few questions really quick to make sure we get the best possible technician to serve your

needs. And from that picture, I'm not going to build the AI to be able to look at the picture, but if it looks like an old cracked wood door, I think that you want to send somebody out that's equipped to sell a new door. I mean, this stuff kind of just makes sense. It's just getting the technology piece to make it super easy and convenient for the customer. Like you've already done by booking the appointment, right? Right. Yeah, you're exactly right. And the balance is always collecting. A lot of dispatchers would say, give me all the information you possibly can collect, because that's what helps me make the right decision about sending the right technician to the job. But the counterpoint you have to balance is frictionless booking for the consumer. So speed matters. And ultimately, you want to create a booking experience that a homeowner, a consumer, can flow through quickly and easily. It's one of the reasons that Amazon is so successful is their buying experience is so streamlined.

That's the balance point is collecting all of the right information. Photos and videos are a great example of something that Schedule Engine can do today. Then using that information quickly to ensure you're getting the right technician to the job based on what you've collected. So I just was on a call with about a dozen dispatchers. And I said, I want to go, let's just go through. And I want to hear from the top left on the Zoom call, all the way through the call, what's important in a dispatch call. And they said, it's job type. And I said, yes, job type is important. I said, what else? They said, well, maybe it's the part of town.

And I said, absolutely. Because you want to market to the affluence. Affluency matters. And I think qualify for financing or whatnot. I said, but what else? What else is there? And they said, well, the urgency. If someone's price shopping, they're calling and saying, I called 28 shots. I said, okay, that's great. Yeah, you're right. Okay. What else? And I said, how about the number of garage

doors? Because wouldn't I rather go to where there's eight wood overlay garage doors and it might be the smallest issue in the world, but we find out that there's a lot more issues there and it's a bigger opportunity. And I said, but scoring those and making a significant score based on this data is not easy because you might think it's one way, but the data has to tell us one thing. But really the ultimate deciding point, I don't think you'll agree with this Austin, is it's training. It's really the technician. So many people put so much emphasis into building artificial intelligence. And I i'm like artificially intelligent make a an lms to teach my guys to get better eye contact better body language to

to really build rapport with the customer i love the scoring systems and i think they're all super super important but ultimately i know one thing will beat all of it is how well do we train our technicians how well do we take the time to train our dispatchers and our csrs yeah and i love what you're doing because you're taking the csr kind of out of the equation and we're able to capture more and more data within schedule engine and put that right on whatever your crm is there's so many crms there's a million of them out there i can go on and on yeah how does that work if they want to work? Did you build a Zappy or anything? Or how does this? Yeah, so we have, I would use the term like native integrations built with top seven or

eight field service management systems that are leading in the HVAC plumbing garage door verticals, you know, from Service Titan to Housecall Pro to Successware to some of the FieldEdge products. We have integrations built that are performing well today. One of the things that we're working on, the ability for anyone to integrate directly with us. So if you have your own engineering resources or development team, and you're not running on one of the field service management systems that we already integrate with, that you'll be able to integrate to build your own connection point and receive the data that we are collecting when we're booking appointments and automatically feed it into your system.

It's one of our current priorities that we expect to ship within the next quarter or two. You know, what's funny is this guy Strickland called me up and you know because he works with you he used to be at enterprise right he's like i don't know what he said to you but you guys called me up and i said if it does this this and this and then you guys called me up like it works and i said fine but i needed to do this but here's the cool thing is as we started to get it out there a lot of people called me i mean dozens and they said are you really using this and i said yeah you know we're giving it a shot it's not all perfect yet but no software is i can give you a laundry list with anything we do whether it's a

process crm anything but they said okay so they jumped on and i think that some of the people i talked to in the last couple of weeks are just like away by how well it's working. But it's just a small world that the guy that used to help sell and be involved in my enterprise sales is now working at a... It's just crazy. A technology company for home services. Yeah. It is a small world. But you're right, Tommy. It has taken some time to perfect the system. But what we're seeing consistently across the board with all of our clients is that in many cases of businesses that are fully invested, minimum 30% of their business is flowing through this scheduling system without a CSR touching a job, no callback required. And the business that's coming in is coming from 30% to 40% is net new customers, never before served customers.

And actually, I don't even know if you know this, set a record for us in the past few weeks with an actual average of 70% of your business is coming from net new customers through the Schedule Engine integration with A1 Garage Door. So the point is, is that not only does this enhance customer experience and automate the booking process, reduce burden on your internal CSR team, but it's truly helping acquire new customers as well who are ready to book as soon as they land on that website. Those are some of the keys. The last stat I would mention is we're seeing consistently 40% plus of those bookings coming in after hours during times

of the day where most contractors don't have a CSR team staff to book. At the end of the day, it comes back to customer experience and setting yourself up to invite customers to book when they want, how they want, make it easy. And those that ultimately understand that and win the convenience game, I think have a huge advantage moving forward. Well, if no one's listening, this is the time to turn up the radio. This is why I'm going to crush every other company unless they work with us or somehow figure this piece out because it's not as easy. We're set up to do this, but every single one of my employees is getting trained in marketing. They're getting trained on how to dominate Facebook, how to share. They're getting trained on how to build referrals. They're getting trained

on how to go to a restaurant and talk about garage doors. They're getting trained on how to talk on stage over the next year. They're going to be talking about how we take care of our customers better. So what that means is when we're out there networking and we're on next door and we're saying, book this appointment for a special discount, we're able to track that all the way back to who that was that shared that. And so what you guys did and what I've asked for, and you guys built it, which I think is amazing as an affiliate tracking tool. And this allows me to not tell every single company that gives me a lead,

every single technician for another company, such as a pest control company, a painting company, I can go on and on, but also employees. So there's well over 300 employees now. And if I spend the time to put them in through an LMS, train them on exactly what to do, how to do it, how to share it, how to share it on social media, how to have... It's so much fun because I got to tell you, I'm going to have so much freaking fun with this thing because I think this is what's going to sound crazy is I think I'll be able to turn off Google. I want to be able to turn off everything if I want. I still have more jobs

than I know what to do with because partnership marketing is the best marketing you could have. It's basically people giving you referrals. And I met with a buddy of mine a couple of years ago. He runs a huge high-end rugs. It's called Olly Sean Rugs. And he said, Tommy, I get most of my business through the people that they're setting up the houses. They put all the designers, so the interior designers and stuff. And he goes, but I pay them out. And he goes, here's the secret sauce. I pay them out right away.

If I sell a rug that day, there's a little finder fee. He calls it a marketing fee that's going right out of that person. And I said, that's genius. And so what I asked you to do was do that. And then I'm going to have it hooked up into a CRM that actually goes through and pays out that fee in real time. And it comes directly in and just pumps out money. But who cares? It's either I give the money to Google or I give it somewhere. Why not give it to someone that's not shopping? Right. And that you can build loyalty with that will continue the more that you feed, the more that they'll grow and know who ultimately has the trust of the customers

that you're targeting. I completely agree with you on the potential for growth. And when you compare it to the alternative methods out there from both a cost and overall sustainability standpoint, I think it's big and I'm looking forward to seeing it come to life. Well, it's exponential because the fact is if I get 300 employees and they each have three friends that want to get on it, and what I would do is make it a tiered level. And that's just a little bit of development to say, Hey, I want to give this much money. You take this much. I could build this thing into not a pyramid, but look, why not? We're a better company out there. Why not go out there? Every single paint company, pest control company, epoxy company, solar company, roofing

company. The hard part is for most of these companies is they go like this. And they all say, you know what? That sounds good and dandy, but I can barely get my own technicians to do what I want. Why would I have them do another step for you? And so I called my buddy up that does energy audits. And I said, just fill out this quick survey when you're at a job. Okay. We will make this happen. I'm going to make it so freaking simple for you. And here's what I'm going to do to protect you. If we go out there and we service this customer of yours, and for some reason they don't like us, we do not want to be that bad, you know, that bad impact on your business. So I'm willing to give a hundred percent of it back. So we built a nice document that I was showing you beforehand. This document doesn't

protect me. It actually protects everybody that's referring us business because that's the last guy I want to be is when someone calls me up and says, Hey, I lost five clients because of you. So we want to make sure to protect them. And there's certain things that I'm really trying to be able to do is be able to put certain things on automatic tags that go into the system to be able to know this is a referral from them because there's a lot of deals we can do this thing is just to be part of the beginning of it i think we're going to innovate

this is big big big business because you get a guy like me that loves partnership marketing people call me because they need a painter people call me all the time and if i got away say hey here's my top 10 guys oh you need this need this? Here's a QR code, which I never, I didn't realize we thought QR codes were dead. And I felt like they might come back, but then they just built it into the damn phone. Just scan here and it works. So QR codes are great. You know, I talked to a guy the other day, he's a plumber. He's one of your clients in Ohio. He's a big plumber in Ohio. He was in town visiting for the weekend. And he said, my goal is to have the ability to have scheduling of everything that I have. My website, my Google, my business page, my Val packs, you name it.

And I said, yes, absolutely. And your goal should be to have business cards with every one of your employees, but why would they give it out? What's in it for them? What's in it for the painter and all these other people? So you got to build, it's funny because I'm building into HubSpot right now. My CRM is talking to HubSpot. We're going to have the most aggressive integration

you've ever seen. And the whole thing's built to go find affiliates. And it's a track at all. So we're going to be sending to thousands and thousands of thousands a week of possible affiliates through the little training course on exactly how to do it. And then I'm going to say, here's your reward to get the first one sold. And it's going to be way more than I would normally pay because I want them to see the money and how easy the process is.

And the more people get on it, it's like, it's the unfair advantage. I mean, it really is. And you could tell people about it, but you could also tell people rank good on Google. It's a lot. Hey, rank well on Google, you'll do fine. So I think this thing is the most innovative,

awesome tool. And you guys have done an amazing job. My question for you is, you know, do you think technology is ever going to replace humans? I mean, there's relationship building. I don't think it's going to replace that. But do you think there's ever going to be a time that CSRs go very, very just down to nothing? I don't think so. I think the job of the CSI will definitely evolve and

change. And I think there are times when the human interaction is irreplaceable. And listen, you can't make everyone happy. As contractors, you do everything you can to build the systems and hire the people and train and to create amazing experiences the majority of the time, but you can't do it all the time. And you need good people that can handle tough situations. And machines can't do that. And so I think having a strong CSR team that can represent your brand effectively, answer more complicated questions, show empathy is important. And I think consumers will appreciate that. I think it's a way to differentiate. But the lower value tasks that are more transactional, like booking, like payment collection and other things, I think will most certainly move to automated processes and driven by technology because it's much more efficient. And so, you know, I think that's one thought.

Another is, you referenced it earlier, for the homeowner, the biggest part of their experience, what they remember the most about their service is the technician in the home, how they treated them, how quickly they resolved the issue, but even more so than that, how they actually treated them, how they made them feel. And I don't think that will ever be replaced by technology. Home service is a unique animal. As a homeowner, you're inviting somebody into your home. You're more vulnerable than you are as a homeowner when you're doing business with a home

services provider than almost any other transaction. And for home service providers to understand and appreciate that and to have technicians that can navigate that and create ultimately a better experience, home service experience, I think we'll win. But there's a lot that technology can continue to automate and improve. In some cases, it's augment live services or augment the humans, make them more efficient themselves. And I think we'll continue to see more of it moving forward. The more I think about it, the more I think technology will commoditize the home service industry which no one loves to hear if you're successful who loves to hear it is the chuck in a truck that says i could do it

the cheapest who hates to hear these companies that really train their employees well they spend the time to have empathy in these things because eventually they're just going to share some videos and this that and the other i'm not saying it's going to completely commoditize the industry but i think the people right now that are afraid of talking about prices completely, they're afraid of talking about, show me some pictures, give me this, this, this, and this. It's going to happen, and I'd rather be on the front end of it and help innovate it. There's one thing, too, that I know is when people really realize what it costs to get a workforce out there, I'm talking a real workforce, hundreds and hundreds of technicians

with the top tools, the top parts that have the right stuff on their truck, that have trucks that will not break down, that have a common theme brand that's united on every aspect from the phone center to the dispatch center to the way they're trained or the way they're recruited. I think that's worth something more than what people know. The hard part is it's expensive. It's not cheap to build it. I mean, you said your dad built up to 70 million with, I don't know, 400 employees. And that's not cheap.

It costs a lot of money to do it. So what are your thoughts on commoditizing technology? I mean, look, Amazon's getting into i mean look amazon's getting into the game facebook's getting in the game google's getting into the game apple's getting into the game and they all want home service because they realize it's a monster industry private equity is heavy you know what are your thoughts well i think there's no question that there's a lot of people focused on trying to invest and innovate within this industry. I think a couple of things. One, quality of customer experience will prevail. So I don't necessarily think small contractors who think they can win on low price

have a sustainable business plan. I think those that can deliver the right experience, that can deliver a streamlined scheduling experience, that can ensure the right technician is showing up on time with the right material and solving that issue quickly and actually treating the customer appropriately will build a better reputation and will ultimately win on all platforms because in all cases, reputation matters,

whether somebody's booking through Google or HomeAdvisor or wherever. So I think that's important. But I think that commoditization is a concern. And as large contractors and medium contractors, I think ensuring that you are telling your story effectively about the things that you do differently that are differentiated from the small contractors and that you're the first place to start for as many people as possible,

you know, so that those that are in your local markets aren't even considering Googling HVAC near me. Instead, they're Googling you or garage doors near me. Instead, they're Googling A1. And collapsing that customer journey, I think, is important. And, you know, I think for smaller contractors, the marketplaces will continue to grow. And I think the marketplaces that understand the contractors and actually build and design their marketplace in a way that rewards the best contractors are the ones that are going to grow the fastest. But I think that's it. There's no question there's a lot of consolidation in the industry. I think we'll continue to. There's no question there's a lot of consolidation in the industry.

I think we'll continue to see more of that. You know, it's difficult for large contractors to grow because of limited supply. The fastest way to grow is to acquire. So if you're a small contractor, then I think, you know,

it's doing everything you can to build your brand and pay attention to the fundamentals that make your business stronger and more valuable. And you'll be a more attractive, you know, acquisition target, or you'll continue to improve at competing with the big boys in your local market. Hey, I hope you're enjoying this conversation. I just wanted to

let you know that we have a special offer from Schedule Engine today. So stick with us to the end and I'll reveal how you can take advantage of it. But let me tell you something. If you're in a rush, just go to homeserviceexpert.com forward slash podcast forward slash Austin dash hauler. That's Austin dash hauler H a L L E R and check out our exclusive offer that we put together for our listeners. Okay. Now let's get back and continue our chat with Austin. You know, the one thing I have to say about the small contractors that I think people are starting to realize as we get bigger is the fundamentals of recruiting, orienting, training, and retaining. Because without those, you can't handle capacity. And this is why a lot

of the guys I know that are busy as hell because they're cheaper and they're smaller, they don't have any time. And they can't take the time off to train their people. They don't know how to get a recruiter. And then it turns into this vicious cycle of just, yeah, we're making money, but we can't keep up. Now we've got to raise our prices because now there's all this inflation. And then it's a death spiral because they get so happy with the money coming in, but they never built the infrastructure to handle the growth. I got lucky. I didn't know that I was doing it.

It just kind of happened. There's a book called The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes where he says, can your company handle 50 people this month if you had to train them? And I got to tell you, we could get through 50. It wouldn't be the most beautiful site, but we could get through 40, no problem. But there's that piece there of as you gain capacity, if you gain the customer base, can you put more workers on the road? And most people I know, I hear one problem. How do you get the good guys? How do you get the good people? How do you get the good gals? It's always the same thing. They go, the jobs are coming now because there's a bigger demand.

There's more houses being built. It's going up. There's more people coming into this country. There's more people being born. There's more people buying houses. It's going up. There's more people coming into this country. There's more people being born. There's more people buying houses. I mean, these people are moving out of their basements at their parents' house. So that's the one thing that's missing is how are you going to be able to deal with capacity? And it costs a lot of money. So those of you out there that aren't thinking about, how am I going to get a recruiter? How am I going to build standard operating procedures?

How am I going to build checklists? How am I going to get a manual? You're missing the big piece. You're short-sighting yourself. I just started reading a book with a couple of my managers called The Next Five Moves. And the reason why is in chess and poker, they're really thinking the next five moves. Some of them could go even further than that, but the next five plays, how am I going to, I got the bigger chip stack. How am I going to take this person and bait them into bluff, bluff, bluff, hit them hard. And they're thinking about the next five moves. And that's what I'm hoping the small guys out there and you're not small. I mean, it just means that right now it's David and Goliath. You've got a lot of big things that you could beat the bigger companies on, but the systems

will dictate the output. I just got all these signs, like 10 of them put out in my shop and said, there's only three reasons a process does not work out. You don't have a system, you don't have the right system, or the system's not being followed. And I think that that's important. Let me ask you this. What are some of the areas of focus that a lot of the contractors are missing right now? So I'll touch on a couple of things. The one thing I wanted to add to the last point that you were making is that I also think, you know, evolving the environment managers out there, command and control managers.

And the fact of the matter is the workplace today is different. And evolving the way that you treat, pay, accommodate service technicians and installation technicians who are ultimately your greatest asset is important. And I think those that can think outside the box that can create a great environment are ultimately going to be the ones that attract and keep the best technicians and win in that game. And it's also, it comes back to compensating appropriately as well. In terms of actual obstacles, I think doing what we're talking about in terms of enhancing customer experience and making it easier for customers to do business with you requires some courage. It requires letting go of control a little bit as a dispatcher and embracing the fact that consumers have different preferences and it's our job to accommodate those. It's not the consumer's job to do business with us on our terms. It's vice versa. And so I think understanding that the risk is a little bit of an efficiency, potentially,

but those are the problems that you need to solve in order to evolve and make yourself more convenient. And then to cover those costs with increased prices. I think you touched on this earlier as well, Tommy. I think a lot of contractors out there are underpriced for the service that they deliver. And in order to innovate, to take risks, and to ultimately improve your customer experience, in order to cover the cost required to do that, it's going to require charging the right number. And so I would challenge every contractor to continually be evaluating how they compare to competition and ultimately, are they charging for and

effectively covering all of their costs? I think what a lot of these technology companies are trying to do is they're going straight to the manufacturers, the distribution centers that build the stuff from raw materials. And there's always a high markup for a capacitor or an HVAC unit, whatever it is. I guess the problem for me too is how do you evaluate the life of product? Because at some point it becomes more efficient to replace it. And I think Amazon and some of these technology companies are making a huge mistake by assuming that's the best fix because there's a customer that called us this past weekend and said, we've had this company out three different times.

We're done with them. We never want to use them again. We're continuing to have problems. It's been every other month and they're just, they're nickel and diming us. And we just, we want to do what's right. And we know you're more expensive,

but we don't want to have to deal with this anymore because our time is valuable. Right. And I just think that people that fix the MVP, the minimum viable product, the smallest thing possible, and they don't do everything. They don't go through everything with a fine

or offer the replacement. They're making a mistake. What is your take on that since you came from the HVAC world? Yeah, I completely agree with you. I think that's why oftentimes it's the larger companies that are dominating in their local markets and are successful charging significantly higher and continuing to grow their businesses. They ultimately stand behind their promise to the customers on high quality and customer satisfaction. And I believe that that will continue to win. And I think Amazon, Google, home services, local services, HomeAdvisor, these marketplaces have been around for a while.

There's not a lot of rockstar contractors that have a significant amount of the business flowing through them or even participating with them. It's mostly the lower quality contractors. And I think it has a role to play during certain times of the year, which is really important for everyone. But I think continuing to build your local reputation as the go-to reliable best source and making it easy again for customers

to do business with you will continue to win long-term. And you got to think about the customer experience from start to finish. The lead generation sources are create and improve the shopping experience for homeowners, but they don't improve the service experience. I think, you know, the contractors that continue to deliver the best service experiences end to end will continue to stay in front of competition. So there's one thing that when I was talking to my buddy from Ohio, it scared me a little bit about Schedule Engine.

It scares me about automation, not Schedule Engine. I take that back. It's just, I know how quick our capacity could fill up. And if the machine says we don't have any room and they want to book it in this time,

I'm just curious. This is more of a personal question because if I put this thing everywhere, you know, my dispatchers have the opportunity to say, I'll jam this in. I'll call a few favors. What's the solution? Because I know people are going to say,

man, this thing's awesome. But how do I expand capacity? And also what I'd love to know, and this is a two-pronged question, is I would love for it to help me build a night shift to say, if this time doesn't work out, would you be willing to have a time after five or six? Because that way I know I can start filling. And I'm in 15 states, so I can't have that position in every single market,

but I started to build it. So that question is, I understand it's not one that you probably want to answer, but there's going to be these questions that come up. So sure. Putting them out there. Yeah, no, I think it's a great question. And I would say, quite honestly, it's one of the things I'm proud about, about the schedule

system with the schedule system is because of how flexible it is to accommodate varying preferences. But really, the question is, how do you make sure that you're prioritizing the right calls? How are you getting the highest value calls booked? Because if you're busy, you may want to ratchet down your capacity for lower value calls. And you may always, no matter how busy you are, want to reserve capacity for your higher value calls because they're few and far between. And that's how you get the most out of the technicians that you have.

So with Schedule Engine, you're able to configure the questions that you're asking. You know, age of equipment is a large driver of value of that opportunity. You know, and that's just one example of questions that you can answer and collect that ultimately determine the job type. Again, kind of similar processes to CSR. But what Schedule Engine is doing is asking questions to determine a job type. And then the capacity that we present is based on that job type. And so if you configure your job types to consider the fact that, hey, this is a high-value job, therefore I want to open up capacity for that type of job. Then Schedule Engine will reflect that accordingly and ensure that

we are considering the value of those jobs as you're booking. As it relates to after hours, again, you've got complete flexibility to define the time and the availability of the time windows that exist within Schedule Engine. I think we'd have to go deeper and offline to go specifically into what you're trying to accomplish with that, Tommy. But I expect that our system can accommodate the type of after-hour scheduling that you're looking to push.

And I think that's big. It comes back to convenience and doing business on customer's terms. Most people aren't home during the day in post-COVID world. Being able to deliver the service at that time when they're home, when they actually want it, is super important

and probably allows you to charge more. I think so too. And you nailed it because I'll be completely frank, is Adam, my COO, has been instrumental for our side of this to make it work properly. And I know Andrew, who also is the head of our marketing has been instrumental. So I don't know my way in and out of it like them, but I understand what you're

doing by hierarching the questions to open up demand, which probably pisses the dispatchers off. Oh, well. But there's so many things I think long-term that I can work with you on too, is ultimately automated messages to say, if I could give you this for free tomorrow, something that costs me very little, like a text message to that customer to open up capacity, because we know we're running into this and get you in one of these other days or time slots. That could be something that's super valuable. Also, the notifications that we receive when we, boom, holy crap, a text message saying demand's filling up.

Let's go out and get our on-call or possibly see if we can call in our favors for tonight, which everything we're talking about is making my brain go, it's smiling. It's tapping. It's like we're talking about the right things because this is one thing that very few people have figured out. We're only limited in a certain capacity. Go ahead. No, I agree.

And you're touching on lots of different use cases for Schedule Engine. And I think it's, I just want to emphasize that, that yes, the primary use case is a book now button sitting on your website, but there's so many other use cases. Anywhere, anytime you're marketing to somebody and you've got a CTA that used to be call me or used to be your phone number, embedding a link or a QR code for folks to book now. And depending on the context of that marketing ad, having a deep link that ultimately drives a very, even more streamlined booking experience is all within the realm of

capabilities for Schedule Engine today. And the last use case I'll mention is more applicable to the HVAC companies out there, but preventative maintenance and membership scheduling is a major pain in the ass for a lot of contractors. Oftentimes, thousands of contract customers that need to get scheduled, and that's multiple phone calls, letters, emails to get it done. Where with Schedule Engine, you can target your customers by zip code or whatever CRM you use, embed the CTAs and literally automate that scheduling process. And again, take the burden off of your CSR team. Oh, man. I should probably be jumping on a call with you once a month because i just think

the data that we're getting is probably going to be more than most even bigger asian companies because our ticket is not as high you know does that make sense yeah um and then my brain now is just going freaking nuts because memberships are great i love memberships because basically you're building a fence around the house and you're saying, well, if you need a replacement, we're here for you. And I love that concept. I will say, though, that this partnership marketing done correctly with the right partner, like I think I am to a lot of these people. And I'll tell you what, I've got best friends.

I've got a really big client. He's one of my best buddies. And he said, dude, you guys are getting behind to what I'm used to. And I said, well, yeah, there's COVID-19 happening, brother, but we're going to work it out. We're hiring all the right people. But there's supply chain issues too that I can't overcome, but I'm working on it and we're working on it as a team, but what's the best way to put this out there? Is it a QR code? Is it a mini? Is it a short? So there's short ways to get to your website. Is it texting in somehow to get to a link?

What's the best thing you guys have seen to get this working? Cause QR codes, if I'm 78 years old, I'm going, what in the hell is this pixelated thing? Or do you have and or book your appointment now? It's and across the board. So those that are our clients that are performing the best, getting the most utilization out of Schedule Engine are doing it all. So obviously, it starts with effective CTAs that are properly placed all across your website, multiple places on pages that are driving your customers to action. But that's just the starting point. All of the marketing content, even in email signatures of your CSRs

and of your technicians who are communicating with your homeowners, everywhere that you would have thought about putting a marketing message where a customer is interacting with it, most likely from their cell phone or from their computer, and even physically with a QR code, is an opportunity to invite that customer to do more business with you. And that's what Schedule Engine can automate. Another idea that we see work well is customers call in during the day, during busy times of the

year, your call queue may be overloaded and you may have a call wait adding into your answering machine. Hey, we'll be with you in a second. But if you'd like to book now, visit a1garagedoor.com and book Simply and Easily immediately. So continue to train and make customers aware, every touchpoint with you that they can book online Simply and Easily is key. And those that are doing it across the board, across all those various channels are seeing the best utilization. See, I would do that differently. I just thought of this, but my brain's going a million miles an hour. I would say, give us your phone number to call you right back. And then I would send them a link to book now, or we'll call you back in five minutes.

That way I grab their information and that way they're in the queue still, but they might've hit that button, which pulled them out of the queue because last thing I want is a customer hanging up going, some people hate machines. They just hate it. They're like, ah, it's a big company, you know, and you want that mom and pop feel. So yeah, I'm with you. We'll add that to the roadmap and we'll specifically label it be the Tommy Mello call waiting. I just thought because if you tell them to call back at this link, I'm like, to the roadmap and we'll specifically label it the Tommy Mello call waiting.

I just thought, because if you tell them to call back at this link, I'm like, give me the link. I'm telling you to send it to me via text. Most stuff happens through the cell phone. Hit the button and boom, you automatically pulled me out of the queue to call back. That's something in Dialpad or whatever, the voiceover internet protocol you're using. So what about negative feedback? Can you give any advice to the listeners, what they can do to manage negative customer feedback? I think it starts with listening and understanding specifically what the root cause or concern is. And in many cases, when you get down to that, you're able to resolve it without giving much up. But most frustrated customers, I think, simply need to be heard. And CSRs need to give them the space to voice the frustration and then work through it.

But being prepared to do what's right and make it right, depending on what the circumstances are, I think is really important because your reputation as a contractor is more important than $100, $200, $300 that might be at risk for that particular call. And I think keeping that in mind is important. If you've got problem customers that are constantly frustrated, constantly complaining, it's a different case. But oftentimes, it's not that. Somebody's got a legitimate reason for being upset and you're better off. You're saving yourself more time, your CSRs more time, if you just empower them to make it right and move on and deal with the next customer. I'm wondering one more selfish question. engine, theoretically, it's smarter dispatching because it's computing what you put in there

as variables, whether that's amount of air conditioning units, zip codes. I don't know how much it goes into that kind of AI to know certain things, but eventually it probably is better to go through schedule engines. Number one. Number two, is there any AI you see in the foreseeable future to where it starts to build parallels based on the ticket size or something of that nature? Give me an example.

I want to make sure I'm understanding. So it starts collecting data. Let's say you have five data points. When was the last time it was serviced? Were we out here last? What's the age of the equipment? I don't know. And what happens is it's taking that data

and it's comparing it if you say we want access to for you to feed us the ticket size and the conversion rate of this ticket where all of a sudden these questions it's going we found the two questions that matter you know here's the deal groupon found itself you know what they used to ask? They used to ask all these questions. Then over the years, Groupon switched to, what's your email address? Boom, you get access. Because they said one or two questions is better. So what they found is what's the most important MVP? So my question for you is if we started to grab this data and we were to report conversion rate and average ticket, you would start to say, well, what we found was

this question always led to this being more successful, right? Sure. Yeah, absolutely. So no, that's a great question. And the answer is that we are continuing to improve in our evaluation of what is optimal in terms of scheduling flow. We've come to market and are still in market, leading with flexibility to find your own call path. And that's mostly so contractors can implement without changing their process. It's the least amount of friction for us to make a sale. But as we continue to build our database

and are able to observe what the consumer behavior is across hundreds and thousands of customers and different configurations of booking widgets are definitely able to determine what is optimal. And then the next step is making it dynamic. So based on certain questions that are asked, presenting other questions that can ultimately guide the overall booking experience. Yes. But I do think that at the end of the day, the profitability and revenue generation on a call is about getting the right technician to the job. And it's about matching up the technicians to the calls. And you have to effectively profile those calls. And you have to ensure the right technicians are available. And that's part of

the scheduling work that we'll continue to do and continue to improve with time. But I think 100%, there's opportunity for improvement in that particular area. Well, this will be an offline conversation because I got a lot more things, but I should just fly out there. Someone wants to get a hold of you. Maybe they got a CRM. It's not as big.

What's the best way to reach out? And then two questions here. To get Austin, how do we get Austin? Number two is how do we get Schedule Engine? Sure. So we've got an amazing team of people standing by, ready to jump on a call, provide a demo, answer questions around the clock. Visit scheduleengine.com. We're actually in the process of completely enhancing that website to even explain some of the things that we're working on and doing that are currently even a little bit out of date based on the speed of which we're moving. But please go to the site, book a demo. You'll immediately book directly onto one of our representatives' calendars, and we'll be in touch with you right away. Anyone that wants to

reach out to me can reach me directly at austin.scheduleengine.com. We invite questions, requests for demos or to learn more. Myself and our team will be standing by ready to accommodate. All right. Three favorite questions of mine, and I'm sure you're probably going to have several answers, but give me three books that maybe moved you in the past. It could be probably not Dr. Seuss because that got out for some crazy reason, but give me three books. It could be a business book. It could be a fictional book. It could be Stephen Hawking, Einstein, whatever you want, but three books that really motivate and got you thinking. So I'd have to start with Covey, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. I think it's

just filled with timeless principles that are applicable across all areas of life. And I find myself referencing back to those on a regular basis and love it. And that's the type of book you can continue to reread and apply the principles differently, depending on where you're at, what you're going through in life. So that's up near the top of the list. Another good book that comes to mind is Compound Effect. Compound Effect is about making small incremental improvements. And over time, if you stay disciplined, the results are exponential. You don't reach Tommy Mello on A1 Garage Door success overnight.

You do it by slowly, daily making the right decisions to get there. And it requires discipline to do that. And I think- Darren Hardy. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's important. And I had a third that just slipped my mind that I wanted to reference, but perhaps it'll come back to me. What were the other questions? Well, there's one last one here to let me close out. But Darren Hardy in that book, what I like about it is it's consistency. Let's say I can work out 10 hours today,

but if I work out half an hour, 20 days in a row, I'll see a bigger difference. And the compound effect is just, it's every aspect of your life. If you want to see improvement, it started making the smallest little differences and it's the long game that I'm playing. I didn't realize that 14 years ago when I got in the business, but people go, I want this, the Gary Vanderchucks. People go to Gary. I love you. I'm 22 years old.

I want to be a millionaire. I want my own plane by the time I'm 28. He goes, good luck. He goes, you're going to have to work hard for 15 years. So you start seeing the benefits of what this is going to be. And so many people, they just think if I went back, you know, what I've been through, I can't go back because I've had money. I've had the right people. I've had the right ideas. I just don't think people understand that it takes time. It's continuous growth and it's consistency.

But the last question I ask, I remembered the other two and actually i remember two of these so it's that ray dalio principles it's another great book that um i just finished that i i really appreciate i mean i still appreciate the classic good to great jim collins there's a particular principle in there that i love which is confront brutal facts and you know this gets back to like creating environment where people are feel free to share concerns and to problem solve like safely in an environment and there's again another book which is some some great principles that are largely universally applicable but have most successful companies in one way or another are following a lot of those principles you're right you're right

good did great yeah and built to last was another one around the same time that he came out with following a lot of those principles. You're right. You're right. Good to grade. Yeah. And built to last with another one around the same time that he came out with, I think by Jim Collins. The last thing I do, you know, some people,

we talked a lot about just software in general and your software in particular, but there's a million things I could have talked about, but this is earth shattering stuff. Okay. Certain people might say, it sounds good and dandy, but you got earth shattering stuff. Okay. Certain people might say it sounds good and dandy, but you got to understand it's the ease of use. I remember Blockbuster vividly. I had a Blockbuster card. We'd go in there. It was VHS tapes. And then

this crazy company, Netflix said, I'll just mail you the DVDs. And then Netflix came out and they started to innovate, innovate, innovate. And they got on their own sources to be able to stream streaming sources and be able to grow their bandwidth and invest in bandwidth operations. And we got to understand the buyers decisions are changing rapidly. And those that don't embrace it, more millennials bought house the last two years, the baby boomers for the first time in history. And millennials do not want to freaking be on the phone with somebody i'd rather text message i mean done i mean i'm right on the border of i am a millennial but

i just give me a place to book the call and then give me a way i think you could wave the service call on book calls online because i believe that you're saving the money and making things more efficient and make it a better user experience. But anyway, there's so many cool things. I can do this with you literally all the time because my brain, I just love it because it makes me think outside of the box. I'm hoping someone listened to this. And a lot of people are saying, geez, this is innovative. This is different. This is going to grow. This is going to scale. And I should be part of it today. So I'll leave you with one last,

whatever you want to talk about, Austin, where you could go down any path you want, maybe some go to do today, maybe just some input that you have on. Final thoughts for listeners out there. I think that it's important to be very clear about what it is that you want and why and stay grounded in that. I think, you know, ultimately those that, you know, achieve their objectives and their goals have clarity on that, have clarity on who they are and what they want and prioritize appropriately to accomplish that. And I think it requires discipline, it requires focus, it requires sacrifice in many cases, but I encourage people to do that and understand what is valuable to you. If family and time with family is high up on that list,

prioritize accordingly. There's lots of less successful people that have reached goals and do that. And I think everyone's got to kind of figure out their own style based on what is most important to them and be comfortable with that. I think there'll be more happier entrepreneurs out there who give that enough thought and actually prioritize accordingly. You know, Steve Jobs, during when he was close to his deathbed,

he said it's, we would have never been able to be the company we are today. As if the number one thing he attributed was the ability to say no to so many things. It's his ability to say, that's great. Not today. That's great. He said, everything would have been different if they weren't so good at saying no. And I think that in business too often, it's so easy to say yes, because if we focus on one thing, we know we can hit that goal, but you can't focus on 20 because it all falls in the air. I think that's a great final thing is focus and keep channeling your energy towards the few things you need to be focused on family, work, life balance, whatever that might be. But there's a guy named Jim Thurman, I believe his name is. And he says, we're all off balance on purpose. He wrote the book Off Balance on Purpose. What that means is when you're at the height of your business and you're

working 12 hours, 15 hours a day, you might not be going to church and praying for the first three hours, calling everybody in your family to wish them a great day, have the time to meditate and working out for hours a day. It's just not possible. We're off balance on purpose, but we got to realize how much of this time we need to put into each. But this has been amazing stuff, Austin. I got so many takeaways. I just love it when they get on these podcasts of people that are just smart people that have a vision and they're going to change an industry. So I appreciate you doing this for me. My pleasure, Tommy. Really appreciate it. Thank you for doing this. Love everything that you're doing and the message that you're sharing.

So I appreciate you having me. All right, buddy. Hey, I hope you enjoyed today's podcast with Austin Holler. The reason we use Schedule Engine at A1 Garage Rooms and why I love it is because it makes it easy for customers to book the job. Literally, our goal is for 40% of our clients to book the job without making a phone call. And it automatically puts it directly into the demand board on ServiceTitan. You guys, you can't beat this. It lowers your bills dramatically, and it's an easy game changer for your business. Now, the great news is that we put together a

special offer for you. If you want to try Schedule Engine out, we've taken care of waiving the implementation fee for you. That's $2,000 in credit. And your first month's subscription is totally free. And if you want to try out their service, either the web chat or the voice, you get two weeks free. Just go to scheduleengine.com forward slash HSE and request a demo today.