Seeking Best Practices and SOPs for Handling Recalls, Including Technician Compensation Adjustments

[nik_lawh]

I am Nik Lawhorn, a Service Operations Manager seeking insights into the most effective practices and Standard Operating Procedures for managing recalls within ServiceTitan. My objective is to enhance our current recall management process, focusing on the financial adjustments related to technicians involved in recalls. Specifically, I am looking for guidance on the following aspects:

1. Technician Credit and Debit Procedures: What are the recommended best practices for crediting the technician performing the corrective action on a recall and debiting the technician responsible for the initial service that led to the recall?

2. Use of Recall Job Types: Is it advisable to utilize a specific job type within ServiceTitan for recalls? If so, how is this job type defined and used within your operational workflows to track and manage recall activities effectively?

3. Recall Form Contents: For those utilizing a recall form within ServiceTitan, what information do you include?

4. Impact on Technician Morale: How do you balance the need for financial accountability with maintaining positive morale among technicians, especially those whose work has led to a recall?

5. Success Metrics: What metrics or indicators do you use to evaluate the success of your recall management process? How do you measure improvement in reducing recall rates and enhancing customer satisfaction?

I am eager to learn from the experiences of others in the ServiceTitan community. Sharing your strategies, challenges, and successes will be invaluable as we strive to refine our approach to recall management.

Thank you in advance for your time and insights.

[Sheena_Palacios]

I do love @RandiThompson's response and have heard of this used as coaching and engagement. To answer your questions directly, @nik_lawh, I would say:

1. In a perfect world (not ours) we would send the original tech back to do their recall, this is not always the case. I've seen the tech doing the recall get an agreed flat hourly rate and that cost is debited from the original tech. If using a form to capture, there is a manual process of adding a (-) payroll adjustment to debit the original tech.

2. Creating a 'recall' job is not required, especially if you enable the Recall/Warranty/Leads feature on the job booking screen. You'll be able to track and report these job (sub) types. However; if you are wanting to create a specific job type, just be sure to fill out the appropriate fields: priority, sold threshold ($1 above dispatch fee), and check the 'No Charge/Unconvertible by default," you can even go as far as creating a "callback from" custom field within that job type.

3. Be sure to add who the original tech was and reason/issue for recall.

4. Encourage teamwork between the tech responsible and the tech going out to make the corrective repair. Have the tech going out reach out to the original tech and give them a heads up that they're going there and if there's anything he should know about the original call. This will create teamwork and coaching between peers to troubleshoot. Two brains are better than one.

5. Less recalls would be your biggest indicator, it could stem from tech knowledge-sharing, training, and coaching. Less recalls=more happy customers!

Thanks for reading; thanks for the tag @e_dunn 🙂

[RandiThompson]

WOW I’m impressed by how thorough your question is!!

We use the “recall” process in ST not job types, we have instructed our CSR’s to mark any call within 30 days of the last visit as a recall. We then have a report scheduled to send weekly to our service manager (Daily Huddle Report with the recall jobs filtered to greater than 0), he reviews the recalls and if it was a true recall, he leaves it checked and coaches the technician at fault, if he finds it was just a normal failure he clicks in the edit pencil on the job and unchecks the recall box.

We also have a team player leaderboard that we pull stats out of ST and recalls in one of them they lose points for. We don’t hit the techs pocketbook but more use it for coaching and training. If it’s from negligence and we continue to see it they would be written up.

[e_dunn]

Hi @nik_lawh - great questions!! I'm going to tap on @RandiThompson and @Sheena_Palacios who have recently answered similar questions on this. Would either of you be willing to share your thoughts?