How a $50M HVAC Company Actually Uses AI on the Phones

0:02 Hey, what's up everybody? This is Bill, your Service Titan hacker. It's Tuesday at 2:00 Eastern. Thanks for joining me and Britney and Quinn on this fireside chat. So, we're going to talk about something today that is obviously goes on in every HVAC business this time of year, and that's the phones ringing off the hook. You know, lots of missed calls, your CSR team getting overwhelmed, upset, maybe quitting. customers expecting immediate responses. You have leads coming from everywhere, and office teams are kind of, you know, can get really burned out, especially the contrast between the shoulder season and jumping on the fast-moving train that is the summer.

0:49 So, I think you guys have heard the word AI a million times, and we're going to talk about it again today. It's one of the biggest topics in the industry, probably in any industry, and I think a lot of contractors are still trying to find out what's real, what's hype, and how it actually will fit inside your business. So, we're not going to do any software demos today or anything. I'm going to have a conversation with Britney about her experience at Action Furnace up in Canada.

1:23 Action Furnace is a HVAC company that's been around since the '70s, and they have 230 technicians now? >> 230 employees, yeah. >> Yeah, 230 employees, okay. And so, Britney's been there for a good amount of time working everywhere in the in the business, and also have Quinn here with Raven, who has been helping Britney's company out. So, I'd like to thank you guys for joining me on the call today. >> Of course. Thanks for having us.

1:53 >> Fantastic. So, let me start with you, Britney. can you tell me a little bit about Action Furnace and your role there? >> Yeah, so, like you mentioned, Action Furnace was started in 1975. It had one duct truck, one salesperson. Those were our owners today. So, really just two guys building a business from the ground up. Action Furnace is Alberta's largest residential HVAC company. So, we expand across three markets. We're 50 million a year 50 million a year in revenue. We have 35,000 memberships. And like you mentioned, 230 employees.

2:31 So, I started at Action Furnace in 2010, so 15 years ago. And yeah, we're in really every hat in the HVAC business you can wear. I started as a sales and install coordinator. I was the office manager. I was the director of field operations for service and maintenance. And now I am the director of office operations. So, throughout my entire career at Action Furnace, I have always managed the call center as well as all the lead inbound opportunities.

3:01 >> I see. You've probably seen a lot of growth in 15 years and a lot of changes >> Yeah. >> as far as how people reach out to your company, all the different lead channels that have came up over the last 15 years. I mean, gosh, there's an infinite amount. Was it like if you guys do Angie's or when it was HomeAdvisor, maybe it was even ServiceMagic back then. I don't know, but it's wild keeping up with all those changes has got to be kind of overwhelming for you and the team.

3:31 >> Yeah. >> So, what kind of operational challenges did you experience before implementing some AI solutions in the company? >> Yeah, so I think the thing is back in the day, HVAC world was sort of phone calls and that was just the game. But I think the way that customers are contacting a service business today is changing. We kind of say here it's not just a call center anymore, it's a contact center. So, customers are expecting instant responses, our CSRs were busy on the phones. We had major delays responding to all of our other lead opportunities. And you know, we were spending all of this money generating all of this business and then just sort of letting it leak out the bottom.

4:14 >> Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, I'm sure that most companies experience that even still today, even applying new solutions. You know, what lead channels would you say are the toughest ones to keep up on? >> The toughest ones to keep up on? I mean, most companies I think are good on the phones. You run your business around regular business hours on the phones, so you're good there, but you don't realize all of the other things are falling through. So, I would say, you know, web form submissions, >> Mhm.

4:47 >> chat, if you have a schedule pro or a scheduler on your schedule on your website, all of those, if you're not responding to those automatically, you're probably losing out on that business. And so, that's sort of the problem that we had was instant responses and letting those jobs go to our competitors. >> Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, I've I remember like testing out a HomeAdvisor ad, like filling it out and you know, sorry other contractors, I'm sure you lost 25 bucks me doing it, but I was wondering who would call back and how fast they would call back and this was pre-AI auto response and everything.

5:24 And I had one out of the five call back right away and the other ones, nobody ever called, never called back at all. And I was like, "Wow, they're just burning money doing that." But it's you know, you get a little notification on your phone or on the app or maybe just an email and trying to manage all that is just is just a mess, right? >> And you is there any channels that you feel like you've really made some some big traction on since you've started to do these speed delete type of type of initiatives?

5:58 >> Honestly, all of our channels have been improved. we have everything flowing right through Raven now. So, there's just one platform. so, it's just automatic responses. We have the AI SMS turned on and it's responding to all of those. And even just our missed phone calls as well during the day with our AI voice, we're just answering those phone calls that we never would have before and getting revenue off of those jobs. >> Yeah, and Brittany, on that note, I know there was an exciting change recently we're able to move your Google keyword office hours to now 24/7. So, now you're really able to incentivize folks reach out anytime 24/7 365. And so, a lot more inbound is coming from that as well.

6:40 >> Yeah, exactly. >> That's that's awesome. So, you can see it all in one place and see that the activity of the AI reaching out and fielding these calls and questions. Do you Do you find that your customers respond better to text with the AI to text back and forth or voice or you haven't really noticed a difference yet? >> I haven't really noticed a difference. I think both are equally as good. >> Okay. So, how many how many CSRs do you guys have in the in your on staff?

7:15 >> We have 12. >> Okay. So, that's a good amount. do they do they work remotely or they all in in the office? >> They're mostly all in the office now. some We used to be all remote, but we kind of moved every back everybody back to the office now. >> Okay. And then, how did they how do they feel when you told them we're going to do this AI? I mean, you know how it is. It's like we're bringing in a robot to do a piece of your job.

7:41 Was there any pushback from that on that? >> Well, we started using AI I think about 2 years ago with our chat. So, we rolled it out really slowly. We made sure that our CSRs didn't think that AI was going to essentially replace them. It was really just a tool to help their help them do their jobs better. So, we thought about how we were going to roll it out. We rolled it out slowly and then I think now they just see that it's a tool and a benefit to help them do their jobs better. So, yeah, there's really been no issues with our with our staff and AI.

8:15 >> That's good. So, I mean, you think it must it's probably a cultural thing that if you have happy people, they're not going to be as worried about AI coming in and taking their jobs. But, if you have a bad culture, then it could be it could be worse. I mean, Quinn, if you've not to skip over you, Britney, but you guys obviously have a good culture. Quinn, when you're talking to these companies, yeah. what what do you see when when there's pushback on AI? Is it usually because it's just kind of like a not a great place to work?

8:50 >> Yeah, there's a couple things to keep in mind here. First off, everyone I'm I'm Quinn from Raven. I'm the CEO here and thanks to Bill for having us. We're big fans of this community and really excited to be here. Thanks for letting us share our story and share Britney's story at Action. and so, in terms of the teams that we we work with, it really does come down to that culture, but also the narrative when you're bringing in a new solution, right? If you just on day one just out of nowhere tell your entire team, "Hey, here's this new software that we're now using. Get used to it." Folks are usually going to be a little jarred and a little scared. But, if you bring the team in through the process as you're just even vetting that software, get them comfortable, set up some coaching and training sessions, the team really quickly starts to see, "Wow, this is an accelerant to my job. I can now do more every single day. Everything from your inbound call center team to your your inside sales team. You're now able to close more estimates. And so, it's really it's gives your team superpowers if you narrate it properly. And I'm happy like dig more into some of the ways to do that later on in the session.

9:52 But then the last piece here is just the the the systems and processes you have in place. And Bill, you and I have talked about this, but the the teams that already have a good foundation, a good call center, good leadership, and a good process, good scripting, those are the ones that get the most out of AI because at the end of the day these agents are employees. And if you have a bad culture, a bad system, if you bring on a new employee, regardless if it's automated or a live human, they're probably not going to perform very well because there's no foundation there. And so, and I'm happy to dig more into that as well, but that's a really fun piece for teams to think through.

10:25 >> Yeah, you can't automate a bad process. It just speeds up bad outputs over and over, right? So, like Bridget, you were telling me that you guys have a really in-depth CSR training program. So, everybody knows what it is they have to do. what when did you guys start doing that? Like really bumping that up? >> we've had it for quite a while. We actually just shortened it. but yeah, we've been really investing in our people for a really long time.

10:56 Couple of years, I would say we've been really focused on our call center because we know that that's the number one place that your leads are coming from. And if you're not solid on your call center or responding to your leads, then that's just lost revenue. >> Mhm. I feel like the call center has always got the short end of the stick on in in home service companies, right? Like you have to have you have to have technicians. they're difficult to find. They have to be good communicators in the residential space.

11:29 They have to be So, they have to be good at sales, they to be good at their technical skills. We put a lot of of time and money into training them. And then the same thing with sales people, the same thing with installers, just on the HVAC side. And then with the call center, man, I I did this myself. So, I'm not sure if anyone else has had this problem, but you bring in a CSR who's answered phones somewhere else and you go, "Well, how hard could it be to answer phones? Just just answer it, right? You just when it rings, you pick it up and whatever." And it's not that easy. It's a it's there's definitely a skill to it. So, I made it pretty difficult to be successful in that department in my company. So, I don't know if any of the other listeners have experienced that before, but that's what happened happened with me.

12:22 So, do you do you see that in other companies as well? Quinn, I know Brittany you've got yours, but do you do you see that where the call center is not you know, cared for as much as the other departments? >> I mean, I think there's definitely occasionally somewhat of a stigma around the call center. I think >> >> for many reasons, there's just high attrition, right? It's a tough job. CSRs have a very tough job and I think occasionally they might not get the same level of attention and and maybe respect as the technician staff does. And I think because there's that air of, "Okay, well, my team's going to be in and out pretty quickly." There's not as much of this focus on training. And that's why I think that Brittany and the Action Team just do such a fantastic job here. I've Brittany, I think it's a 6-week long program, which is like amazing in terms of the the amount of care. And again, if you meet the rest of the team, Ryan, and and the other leadership, I mean, just the the level of the level of of empathy and focus and just a they've they've a very very amazing ownership team at Action. And so, I I think an interesting insight that we found over the last year of Raven especially in the HVAC plumbing and electrical side is the teams that produce the best and get the most out of automation and get the most out of tools like Raven are the ones where you go and talk to their call center, you walk through the room, you start meeting folks that have been there for 5 years, 6 years, 10 years. Team team members have been there from the very beginning of the business started. And there's a very different different nuance when you meet teams who are struggling a little bit more and you meet the call center everyone's brand new in the last 6 months. And so my de facto advice here is yeah, focusing on that that retention of your human staff will and it's somewhat ironic actually help you get more out of AI tools over the next couple of years as you partner with companies like Raven.

14:17 >> Yeah. That makes sense. You know, we were yeah, we were talking about that on the prep call that a good team AI will be more successful with a good team and well-trained well-trained team. So So what do you see Quinn that contractors are struggling with the most operationally right now? What do you see? >> I mean especially as we're going into summer season, it's just prep and getting ready for another extremely competitive season as the inbound volume and the phones really start ringing. And you know, we're talking about this right before this call. I mean the average let's say the average ticket price for most folks on this call is $4,000 per job. That means every single time your phone rings that's $4,000 that's waiting to get picked up. And I I think operationally the number one question teams are asking is okay, where do we focus? Are we going on a big hiring sprint right now to beef up our call center? But now you have this thrash. Okay, we're going to bring on all these employees, we're going to train them, but then are we going to have to let them go once our volume decreases coming out of the summer into shoulder season? And that's that's tough, right? Even just for culture and morale.

15:25 And so it's it's really that question of, okay, how do we match that demand without that thrash internally? And of course that's where tools like Revenant, this is why we built companies, this is why we built our product was to give operators and contractors and teams the ability to grow grow revenue and scale their business without having to have that thrash. And so operationally it's definitely the hiring piece, getting ready for summer season. >> Yeah. >> Figuring out what their stack is and we'll talk more about this, but I think a lot of folks right now have a bit of paralysis. There's a lot of AI tools in the market, not even just in the call center space, but >> Oh, yeah.

15:58 >> dispatching to accounting to you name it. And so I think a lot of folks are just scratching their heads going, who do we trust? What is the AI we want to back? And there's just a lot of noise and I know that that can be a little daunting and >> I mean, there's also a lot of overpromising and underdelivering, right? And that I mean, I think that comes from the top. I mean, look at look at the companies who create the LLMs, right? I mean, weren't we all supposed to be out of a job by now, right? Wasn't this supposed to be AGI by now? So, who knows? Maybe it's >> we're a little we're a little ways away from AGI coming in and fixing your HVAC unit, hopefully, but yeah.

16:34 >> Oh, yeah. That would be one of the last things, right? That would be one of the last things. So, you know, going back to the speed to lead, >> Yeah. >> what kind of kind of metrics have you seen? Do you get any like baseline metrics of how long it takes for a contractor to respond to specific lead channels and then what kind of increase they see when they turn on your AI as far as how fast how much faster they reach the customer and you know, how many more jobs they book, right? I you know, going back I remember maybe something in the low 20% range as as as jobs that I booked with with HomeAdvisor. I mean, it varied over the year and by job type, but I don't think we ever got it above like the low 20% range.

17:28 >> Yeah. >> And we didn't respond instantly. So, what what kind of metrics do you have with that? You see anything anything out there? >> Yeah, so the sweet spot from the sweet spot for inbound lead aggregators right now, it's around 45 to 55%. Like that is the sweet spot. That's when you know, okay, we have the right systems in place. These leads aren't going to some scary inbox that we hope our team is checking on a daily basis. We know we're responding right away. And so, yeah, if you're seeing your your your booking rate around 45 to 55%, like you're in a good spot. I think the really important thing here is this mindset shift of speed to lead to what we like to call speed the truck on site. We're in such a competitive market here that you're seeing folks that are booking multiple appointments and they're saying, "Whoever is showing up first wins."

18:19 >> Oh, I hate that. >> and so that's just you have to be ready to move quickly. And so, that's not just that first time Right? You see a lot of teams that will go and say, "Hey, we have a great response rate, but that response rate doesn't mean anything if it's not that full throughput of actually understanding the job types, booking appropriately, assigning the right technician, dispatching, giving the customer the appropriate estimates in terms of time of arrival, decreasing the amount of new nuisance calls that are coming in of customers calling in saying, "Hey, where's my technician?" And so, that whole flow is there's just so many critical pieces that you need to have perfect to hit those booking rates that you want.

18:58 And so, yeah, the speed the truck on site is so critical. And in terms of products like Raven, I mean, the beauty of using a tool like ours is your response rates are immediate, right? You're you're responding essentially within a a milliseconds of that lead coming in. And that's where you're really seeing that big bump. And so traditionally we're seeing customers get around a 20% bump in their booking rates once they move on to Raven just because of the speed, the accuracy, the quality of the agents, and a lot of this last mile delivery that we do which I'm happy to talk more about in terms of how we pair each customer with an AI agent versus expecting them to do everything themselves. And so that's where a lot of the overpromising happens in the space that we really try to avoid.

19:40 >> So to make sure that the onboarding between you and the contractor is on point so everything can be customized correctly, right? >> Exactly. >> That makes sense. Where where do you see contractors having the biggest wins as far as what they're implementing AI in first? Is it the SMS? Is it the voice? Is it overflow? What do you What do you see with that? >> Yeah, the the best places to start from our recommendation is inbound speed to lead on your lead aggregators, overflow on voice, and then giving that after hours coverage as well, right?

20:15 Especially the after hours piece, I mean it's just there's just money's being left on the table if you're not picking up the phone. And I think especially in the demand service, folks aren't going to be waiting around for you to answer their voicemail. They are going to go to a competitor down the street. And so the after hours and overflows huge, the speed to lead is huge. But then the real exciting areas in my perspective are helping the inside sales team going after unsold estimates. This is where we see teams like millions and millions and millions of dollars left on the table.

20:44 And then also your memberships. I mean look at Action. You have an amazing membership program, 35,000 plus members. That's a lot of work for your call center team to be reaching out on every single owed owed service. And so being able to pull fully put that on autopilot and have an AI tool reach out to those customers, schedule those customers, answer questions, and even start to upsell membership programs during your scheduling flow. It's pretty exciting to optimize that recurring revenue part of your business.

21:14 >> Yeah. Brittany, how did you guys schedule 35,000 That's crazy. That's That's just so many. How did you do it pre-AI? That many phone calls, emails, texts? >> Yeah, hate to say it, but you know, Google spreadsheets, VLOOKUPs. >> >> Oh my gosh. >> You know, manual messages through a platform. yeah, all manual work. And yeah, keeping track of 35,000 memberships is a lot of work and you know, not wanting to reach out multiple times to the same customers and we try to visit a house only once a year, but we've got all these different memberships per locations. So of course, we want to only reach out to our air conditioning customers during the AC season. So trying to manage all of those different memberships within certain months was a lot of work.

22:08 but now yeah, we've automated everything through Revan. We're doing our SMS, so it reads off of our reoccurring service event date. So we'll message them when it's necessary. and then even we're working on and then with that, we send out We have a schedule pro, our scheduler. So we have a scheduler built for those members. So we're texting with Revan and then we send out our scheduler and our members are booking in themselves now. >> Oh, that's great. Yeah. So it's completely hands-off. It's just automated and and I think a lot of a lot of customers prefer that. I mean, at least that's how I would like to schedule. Yeah. Because I just don't answer the phone.

22:49 I just don't I'll look and I'll be like I don't know what they want. Nope, decline. But if I get a text, okay, yeah, I can go through and do that. I don't know. Maybe it's Maybe it's the millennial in me that that wants to help out. >> We we've found a huge increase in the number of bookings because right before we had that, we were calling all of these customers and nobody would answer and you know, when our maintenance department was slow, we needed these customers to answer and we were just calling them over and over again and that's with our CSRs, we were trying to do that between responding to all of our inbound leads from our website while answering phone calls and that just wasn't realistic to be able to do that anymore.

23:27 >> Yeah, so that's probably the way that you start with all of them is to send out those texts and and that booking link and then I'm sure some people will call in and things like that. >> Yeah, some people yeah, some people do and >> Yeah. But man, that's How long have you guys been doing that with Raven as far as that process goes? >> About a year or so. >> Yeah, yeah. So you've got some got a lot of booked appointments under your belt there.

23:51 >> Yeah. >> Yeah, and the really interesting thing Bill that we've seen is and this is really all happened over the last 12 to 18 months is this big change of I mean before the vast majority of of inbound and outbound communication with customers was all over the phone as Britney was saying. We're seeing this really interesting shift now of customers demanding the ability to speak with businesses in the way that they want to communicate and so that means whether it's SMS, email or voice or a subset of all three. And so we're seeing this really interesting change of before a voice may have been 80 to 90% of all your communication with your customers, now it's starting to almost be a 50/50 split between SMS and voice.

24:35 And so having that AI voice tool and the AI SMS tool is really really important and I think Britney this might be a good call it as well. I know before Raven you had three different tools that you using to support those SMS, your inbound on your website and your voice and I think this is another operational issue that I see Bill with folks just having this hodgepodge of tools that they're running their businesses on. Yeah, really difficult when you're thinking through how do we have that unified I think a lot of operators today are thinking about this an elegant customer experience where we know who somebody is it can be personalized and every time they come back we're not saying hey what's your name what's your address we know where it's hey Bill great to see you again.

25:17 >> Yeah. >> Really hard to do that if you have three four five different tools and so having one that you can centralize everything in it it's just so critical. >> Yeah, that makes sense. I mean definitely when I think when everybody when companies first moved to ServiceTitan that was the goal was to have all of those tools kind of in one in one place. Bring all those leads in one place. Bring all the phone calls everything into one place but it never quite 100% worked out that way but the AI companies such as yourself are starting to really make it a lot easier to do business and I think that I mean that's a very recent thing just in the last few years, right?

25:58 >> Yeah. >> one of the things that you mentioned is lead follow-up. Can you kind of tell me a little bit about how that works? That was something that we struggled with a lot especially with service technicians cuz service tech technicians did a lot higher volume of calls than sales did and I getting service technicians to follow up I just I mean that that was a very difficult to do. Getting sales people to follow up not as difficult to do. So how do you guys how do you guys do that?

26:32 >> Yeah, I mean I think it's the the best example I can use is everyone listening and Brittany and Bill think about how many text messages phone calls and emails that you haven't responded to today alone. Right? It is just a lot. People get distracted your customers are getting distracted and so staying top of mind is so critical and it usually takes five times more touch points than you might think it does to stay top of mind, regardless of what type of product you're actually trying to sell. And so, having that ability to give your team superpowers and just more leverage to follow up in a personalized way, it is really the the the best way to actually move these opportunities through your funnel, close invoices, or even even for those basic leads that are coming in from your aggregators. I mean, you're spending money on Let's say it's $35 to $50 on average. Well, you should be running some form of a win-back process on those opportunities that you didn't convert. And yes, if somebody had a serious HVAC or plumbing issue, we have the There's a chance that within 2 weeks, they most likely went with a competitor if they didn't go with you.

27:37 But, there's still some interesting opportunities for a replacement or upsell to a membership if you can really get them interested and excited. And so, yeah, that that follow-up piece, I I can't recommend it enough. of course, I'm biased in terms of how we do it, but yeah, the follow-up on both those inbound leads, on your unsold estimates, following up with your members, following up on customers who showed interest in being upsold into a membership program, all of those are just ways to increase your revenue on an annual basis. So, yeah, I can't speak highly enough in terms of the the lifts that we see with customers who just yeah, follow up five, six, seven times with customers because you're just staying top of mind.

28:16 >> On the unsold estimate side, can you give me like an example of what that would look like? So, let's say, you know, a technician goes out, something simple, they replace a capacitor on a on an air conditioner, but there's another quote given that the customer decides not to do right now. They don't say no, they say, "We'll think about it." You know, you'll get that. And the technician just goes on his way. What happens with that unsold estimate from there? What What do you guys do with that?

28:45 >> Yeah, so we read that directly from ServiceTitan through our partnership integration. And then we're following up with that customer. So it's fully personalized. We're putting their name in that message, whether it's over the phone or over SMS or email, and we're explaining what that job was, or explaining what this invoice is about, and then asking if they have any questions. And this is where we This is where really Revvie shines a little bit, and I don't want to get too salesy, but what's special about us is we have our AI engineering team who will work hand in hand with each customer. So the question that we always ask is, "Hey, what is your team currently do today?

29:20 What's working? >> Right. >> Do you find success? Exactly. What do you find success when you're offering a discount in that first follow-up, or do you want to pull back and just say, "Hey, do you have any questions? I know this is a big decision. This might be a I mean, it depends on the job, might be a two, three, four, ten thousand dollar opportunity for the business. So hey, any questions? Would a discount be interesting for you? Are you looking at competitive offers? If so, what are you optimizing for?" And so just asking those I mean, it's just it's very Be very human, right? You just ask these questions for homeowners who are thinking through this decision. And then when a customer does respond or a certain point of the conversation hits, then you pull in your inside sales rep.

29:58 So the analogy I like to use for any football fans here, it's instead of your team members, especially your inside sales team, having to run the ball all the way down the field of texting customers and trying to get them on the phone, and trying to get them to respond, you're instead teeing them up and they're on the one yard line just scoring touchdowns every day, because now they have these customers who are like, "Yes, I would like to move forward. Thank you for following up."

30:20 But that's usually the response we get. "Thank you for following up. I was interested." Right. >> "Yeah, I forgot about this." Or I think the I think I it went to my spam inbox my email. Could you send the Could you send the estimate again? >> Mhm. >> And then you can can jump on those opportunities and close them. But if you're not following up, you never know. >> So Brittany, your team's kind of waiting for that those responses from the customers for those unsold estimates and then kind of take it from there or does the AI handle the whole thing? To me that seems like it could get pretty complicated at the and very specific at that point, but at least reaching out with some level of customization. How's that How's that work once the customer's interested?

30:59 >> Once the customer's interested, yeah. So, like when he had said, I say there's an unsold estimate and then they automatically follow up automated through their SMS. And then the AI can actually just take it over and book the system book the job right in there for you as well. >> Man, that's awesome. >> Yeah, and and we're doing that for not just our unsold estimates, but even just like our scheduler on our website, any abandoned or dropped off >> Yeah.

31:26 >> where is that, you know, put their information in and then they decide not to book, we're also using that as well. So, automatically they'll get an SMS text saying, you know, we noticed that you were looking to book X job, you fell off on our scheduler, are you interested in it? And then say they don't respond, we message back again. And yeah, like when said, it takes a couple times for a customer to even get back to you, but most of the time they do, so.

31:50 >> Depends on how urgent it is, you know? And some of the I bet those those unsold estimates are not or usually not super urgent or they would have sold them while they were there, but man, I couldn't imagine how difficult it would have been or would be in your company to follow up with all of those because each membership visit generates a couple of unsold estimates, right? So, jeez, that would be that'd be wild. In my small company it was hard to keep up with that, but that's got to be What kind of What kind of close rate do you see on those now? Do you guys have those metrics?

32:28 >> not those specifically yet. that's something kind of newer that we just started doing. But like when he had said, we see the metrics on just all of our other lead inbound opportunities, which weren't metrics we were able to even track before. >> Yeah. >> So, we're starting to track that. >> Yeah, and Bill, I'm happy to answer that. So, right now, for unsold estimates, we're seeing teams convert anywhere from 10% to upwards of 25% of those estimates that were just sitting idle. And so, I mean, every every day we're taking customers live who, depending on the size of the business, have anywhere from a million dollars to 10, 20, 30 million dollars for some of the larger businesses that we work with, of unsold estimates that are just sitting there. And yeah, we're seeing customers convert 10% plus pretty much right away. And some of the biggest success stories are yet in the 25% plus category. And so, I mean, that's that's a that's a game-changer for certain businesses.

33:21 And >> big time anyway. You wouldn't have got those. Sorry to cut you off, but you wouldn't have got those those in the first place. I can't tell you, gosh, it's a very small amount of customers who would actually call back after you just sent them an estimate and left with no follow-up, just an email auto auto sent from ServiceTitan, nothing customized, just here's your estimate. Very, very low amount of people who would reach back out if you didn't if you weren't proactive. So, that 10 to 25%, that's that's those are leads you've already paid for. And man, the labor you've already put into it, I mean, those are the that sounds like some some really low-hanging fruit there to grab that money.

34:08 >> Yeah, we had a customer last week who asked us to turn off the unsold estimate workflow because their schedule had now been too booked out. and the inside sales team was like, "We we need we need to we need to pause just to catch up on the amount of business that we've now now drummed up through Raven." And so, yeah, I mean, for anyone listening, again, of course, take a look at Raven, but there's other tools out there as well. Again, I want to be as unbiased as I can be here, but just following up on those unsold estimates is one of the most sure fire ways you can increase revenue this month and this quarter.

34:38 >> Maybe you just put a filter on which follow-ups go out based upon who what jobs you can do with that time or which ones you would want to do. The most profitable ones, right? >> Yeah, well, I mean, you can you can determine and you can set the like which specific estimates you want to go out and if there's multiple estimates on a on a certain account or on a specific location or phone number, yeah, you're able to then prioritize or if you want to mention two or three, you can do that as well. So, there's a lot of flexibility in terms of how you reach out, but my general advice is just reach out. Like don't overthink.

35:10 >> Mhm. >> Reach out to those those opportunities because if you're not, your customer might your your competitor might be and they're going to win. So, if you're not, somebody else is. >> Yep, for sure, 100%. So, are there any things that Revan offers that Brittany and her company hasn't turned on yet? Any any new features or some things maybe in beta? What's what's coming down the pipe, man? You're the you're the AI nerd. We got to know this kind of >> Yeah, so a big thing that we're thinking through right now is how do we make our agents even more human? And as you think about what a human rep can do, a human rep is able to simultaneously be on the phone with a customer, send an email, send a text message. And right now a lot of the tools in the space are very one-dimensional. It's hey, we pick up the phone.

35:56 We send a text message. We send an email. And context isn't carried between those three sources. And that's a that's a big issue. And so, for us, it's improving our our product and our agents to be able to, yeah, carry out context across those three different planes of communication and offer that true unified customer experience. Where today, I mean, we are able to and we have an amazing agent across SMS, email, and voice. And so, it's just improving the ability for our agents, just like a human, to remember past conversations, be able to personalize conversations when that customer comes back, and remember small things of hey, if a customer was somewhat interested in a membership program 2 months ago, well, next touch point we have with them, let's bring that back up. Now, let's try to upsell them again. And so, there's just all these opportunities of revenue throughout that customer experience where if you don't have that unified product, if you don't have that unified experience, you're just missing those opportunities and those data points. So, that's a huge piece for us.

36:52 and then, I mean, this these are all little small things, but things that I'm really excited about is one, expanding our agents in the finance department. I know, Brittany, we're spending more time with you and your team on accounts receivable, reaching out to customers to actually pull in that revenue that you are owed. That's another huge, huge, critical thing for teams today. And then, on earlier in the stack around lead aggregators, this is just generally a piece of advice that I I want to give everyone on the call and something we've been thinking about a lot more. So, right now, again, speed to lead, you talk to a lot of other AI companies, speed to lead is oh, lead aggregator send you an opportunity, let's say it's from Angie's List. Okay, well, we're going to text them and maybe your call center is going to call them as well.

37:32 Well, for us, like, we want to hit them with that automated phone call immediately at that point. Having this multi-pronged approach versus just sending them a bunch of text messages. And we've seen we're seeing a lot of success for customers to yeah, call that customer right away. And if anything, even if they don't respond, at least they're looking at their phone and then they have a text message from you. Okay, okay, I'm going to respond to this.

37:52 And so, really optimizing that speed to truck on site workflow is a big focus of ours. and improving our membership product, which is just one of the biggest opportunity areas for HVAC, plumbing, electrical businesses today. and then, some other fun stuff that I'll share on the next webinar, Bill, but I'll I'll pause there for now. >> For the for the memberships, or is it is it outbound? When you say memberships, are we talking about the scheduling of the actual appointments?

38:22 Are we're talking about the selling of the memberships? >> It can be both. >> Okay. >> both. So, a big opportunity for teams is, let's say, you have an inbound opportunity from a lead aggregator, you book that appointment, well, there's a really great opportunity and touch point if you've built that trust to say, "Hey, by the way, we do have this membership program, and here are some of the benefits." Or, if you're sending a an ETA text message because the technician is now going to that specific job site, you can then also send the text message saying, "Hey, by the way, we noticed you're not a member, here are some of the benefits, and either you're getting a discount from that service, or hey, if there is anything that might be a larger job from this on site, you're now going to be able to take advantage of a membership program." So, just putting in those little touch points is really, really important. And then, yes, the big piece that we're talking about with Britney is the actual scheduling aspect, right? When you have 35,000 members, all of which, let's say, have two to four old recurring services, that's a lot of touch points. That's a lot of scheduling and rescheduling and cancellations, and so, being able to put all of that on autopilot just gives Britney and the 12 CSRs that they have more breathing room on a day-to-day basis.

39:34 >> Okay. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's got to be big time for you, Britney. >> Yeah. >> Big time for those memberships. with with your process for CSRs, did you guys You guys would bring up the membership when they when the customer first contacted the business, and then the technicians would bring up the membership, and then you'd follow up on the membership, so >> Yep. >> the customer heard it many times, like pretty much on every communication, right? I mean, that's probably how you got to 35,000.

40:05 >> Yeah, we had our CSRs always mention it on the phone, so planting the seed. we also give our CSRs the same spiff as our technicians in the home selling it, so if they sell it over the phone, they're offer it able to offer like a few discounts, maybe a wave diagnostic fee. But again, like you said, the CSR would mention it, then the technician would mention it, so. >> And then now you have the AI mentioning it, so very consistent among all the communications. So you're really giving it the the best chance to close that membership, right? And get it to 40,000, right? But now you can handle 40,000 memberships >> that's crazy.

40:46 That's wild. >> That's wild. >> So. >> So you were Quinn, you're talking about accounting, so having an automation for for reaching out for just accounts receivable for unpaid invoices. Sending them a link that says, could you please pay us? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I mean it's just there's there's I think for any all the businesses we talk to, there's so much low-hanging fruit that operators and contractors and teams aren't going after and it's to no fault of their own.

41:17 It's just not easy to run these businesses. And you're already so busy. And because of that, you just have a lot of leakage throughout your whether it's your lead funnel or your your your your revenue model of whether it's yeah, you're not closing enough unsold or unsold estimates, you're not closing enough of actual revenue that is now owed. And so yeah, just all we care about at Raven, I mean we we literally call ourselves Raven cuz it's the closest we could get to calling ourselves revenue to while actually getting the domain and an email address >> that was it was it was too expensive.

41:51 no, it was owned by somebody else. I I did try though. >> Yeah. >> And so all we care about is helping teams close more revenue. >> Mhm. >> And the biggest part of that is just following up and just communicating with your customers and getting in front of them. Because if you're not doing it, I promise you your competitors are. And so that's how teams are going to win over the next year. >> Yeah, going back to the lead aggregators, I think we all know about Angie's and Thumbtack.

42:20 What what other lead ad aggregators out there that you guys work with that that you that your AI can work with? >> Yeah, we're seeing folks I mean outside of those, you're definitely seeing folks that see pretty decent success with Yelp, but the other bigger ones right now are definitely Facebook and Google LSA. Those those two I would say generally and Brittany, let me let me know how you think about this, but we're we're definitely seeing most teams really push hard into those two channels. Seeing a lot of really great success, especially if you're able to leverage keywords properly on the Google LSA side, but yeah, Brittany, curious if there's any any top top secret new aggregator >> Yeah, I mean just speaking on the Google LSA, we've had ours turned off for a long time because we had to have a CSR or somebody on our office staff log in manually to the browser and respond to those manually. So, that was a lot of work. We also had it going to our email inquiries inbox and we found an issue with customers responding and us not actually getting the responses. So, we turned that off for a long time. We recently turned it on again and the number of messages that we are getting like it was a lot of missed revenue and that's all automated now. It actually will revenue will go into our LSA, it'll read the message and it'll respond to those customers right away.

43:47 >> That's perfect. >> Yeah. >> So, LSA handling that, yeah, that's important. No no new aggregators out there that are the magic bullet for getting all infinite leads at a low cost, right? that would be nice. So, Brittany, what do you see next with with with Action? You guys going to hire like a business automation specialist or what what like What What do you guys have next coming on the horizon? >> Funny that you say that because we actually just hired our business automation specialist and they started on last Monday.

44:22 >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> That's going to be an interesting opportunity for them. So, they just what department are they starting in? Like >> >> All of them. >> Yeah, all of them? >> Yeah, Action is extremely excited for this person to start because we just see the benefit of automating every department in the business. So, they're sort of sitting with the call center. I think, you know, we've kind of nailed a lot of our processes in the automation.

44:51 There's still a few that are that can probably be done, but it's just all of the departments in the entire business. Like even we discussed moving on to the AR and just collecting, you know, for us it's 10 million a year in recurring revenue and that's a lot of times we need to reach out to a customer. So, being able to automate some things like that and I think this person will will work heavily with Ruben to be able to implement all the automations across all the business. So, >> And we're really excited for that. Like you guys will work with that person a lot, right?

45:21 >> Yeah. >> Yeah, we're really excited about that because again, at the end of the day we find that our best customers are the ones that hold us accountable and I think as teams and we're definitely seeing this this this role starting to be a new addition to most teams that we work with. Other teams are hiring for it, thinking about hiring, or have somebody who started in the last It's like very new in the last really 60 days. And we're really excited about it because it means that there's an amazing internal thought partner that we can work with, we can get direct immediate feedback on, we can spend time with and go, "Hey, okay, we have these 10 core workflows we're working on right now that are contributing millions and millions of dollars to your business.

46:01 What's next? What's the 11th? What's the 12th workflow going to be? And it also just holds us accountable, which means that we're now going to be building better products. We're going to be getting direct feedback. And so, it's another thing that teams can start thinking through is, yeah, who is our our AI partner internally and externally just to get most out of these these tools. So, I think it's so smart that the Action Team has has done this.

46:24 >> Yeah, we have all the ideas. We can come up with all the ideas and know how we want to automate these workflows, but to get it from an idea to actually working isn't really our strong suit, so. >> Right. Yeah, that that'll be great to see how how that how that plays out for you guys. I'm sure it'll I'm sure it'll it's just a matter about or matter of prioritizing which thing gets automated first. There's probably so many. You know, I had gosh, I remember I saw this email or this memory come up in Facebook the other day.

46:58 I had 130 automations, 130 zaps that automated 15,000 tasks per week back in my business and >> Wow. >> it was it was great. They were helpful. Of course, when they broke, that was a little I I was the IT guy for the company, but those kind of automations were were great to have, but they didn't have any intelligence to them, right? They were just if this, then that kind of thing. So, what you can add with with Raven and with that that person on staff would be pretty incredible. So, I'm interested to see how that plays out. I'll reach out to you and see what kind of awesome things you guys are doing. So, we're coming up to on time here. Do we have any questions for Britney or Quinn here? Are there any questions for those that are on the chat today or on the call today?

47:55 You guys might have answered all of your questions, all of the questions, right? So, cool. I don't see anything. Is there anything else that you want to go over, Quinn? Anything else? >> Well, on my end, I'm always happy to talk with teams in terms of how to get the most out of these tools today, irrespective if you're using Reved or not. I mean, Bill is awesome and we're happy to support the community however we can. And so, feel free to reach out to me anytime. It's just Quinn, my first name at reved.ai.

48:26 I'm happy to send out my email also over email to the to the ecosystem and we can put in the Facebook group, Bill. But, yeah, my last kind of parting words are just like, start now because everyone else is, but take it slow and get to know your Look at You want to look at the AI tools you use as a partner, not as a vendor. You want to choose the team and and a tool that you're ready to use for the next 10 years, not for the next 6 months. And so, yeah, take your time to vet and find the right partners that are going to be here for the long term, care a lot about the space, and are really going to roll up their sleeves and go deep into how your business is actually using these tools.

49:02 >> Is that the best way to reach out to Reved is to shoot you an email or should they go on your website? I'll drop a drop a link in the replay and in the email that I send out here, but is that the best way to get a hold of you guys? >> Yeah, feel free to shoot me an email or we can also send out the our website and yeah, there's a booking link on there as well. But, if anyone has questions directly for me, I'm happy to to chat. So, yeah, feel free to shoot me an email anytime.

49:26 >> Perfect. Awesome. Well, thanks for the conversation today. Thanks, Brittany. Thanks, Quinn. I will shoot out a replay once this is done uploading and I do a little bit of editing to it. And hey, have a great rest of the week. >> Thank you, you too. >> Thanks, everyone. >> Bye.