Membership Best Practices

[mquigley]

Hey Community Members, 

         I am wondering how other companies structure their memberships in Service Titan? Do your memberships differ from tune ups? How are you tracking your deferred revenue? How are you balancing getting to aged equipment and young tunes ups owed to customers? Do you have a maintenance team on the dispatch board that only does maintenance? Any insight on over booking tune ups? 

Can't wait to hear what you are all doing this coming tune up season! 

[JaneanS]

We differentiate between tune-ups and memberships. Tune-ups - for us - are like an oil change in your car, versus a membership which is like a complete engine tune-up and front-end alignment. Also, we don't track tune-up customers (officially), whereas membership customers are contacted seasonally (every 6 months). Add in the 10% discount members receive and they're pretty easy to sell and up-sell. 

I set up our memberships to match the number of HVAC systems the customer has, because this is how everyone here has thought of them for 20 years (in many cases). So, techs select the 1 system membership if the customer only has 1 system - 2 system membership if they have 2 systems, etc. 

Our Accountant set up QBO to track deferred revenue, so I just had to make my GL accounts in ST match exactly. I set up our memberships to automatically split the total evenly between our 2 recurring tasks. When it all exports to QBO, it ends up in the right GL liability account and Kim is happy, and we just continue to do our thing, here in the office. 

We have techs who are dedicated installers, but our others do double duty with maintenance and problem calls for service. However, I have a junior tech who ends up doing the majority of the maintenance visits during the slow season. I would love to have dedicated teams but we're experiencing a labor shortage.

We unofficially prioritize maintenance visits over tune-ups in the event we have to juggle or reschedule. Our memberships far outnumber our tune-ups so scheduling one vs. the other isn't much of a conflict for us. We're only (officially) proactive about membership recurring services. 

Our "Tune-up Seasons" are spring and fall. It's easy to get tune-ups & maintenances scheduled during the warm months because keeping the AC running is everyone's priority during a Louisiana summer. Around the holidays, though? Customers don't return phone calls or texts, let alone spend valuable time worrying about HVAC equipment that's running just fine!

We never overbook any type of call. In fact, we have guidelines for scheduling during the warm months that prevents it (for the most part), and they're taken very seriously. Arrival windows are something we've studiously avoided so I'm waiting to see if they help or hinder this summer (I would actually LOVE for that to be a feature I could TURN OFF). This model allows us to be one of the few locally who can see a customer the same day they call for service. 

[ToniF]

We have memberships set up in Service Titan so when they are sold the money will go into a reserve account in QuickBooks and then when we do a service the funds are taken from the reserve account and put into the appropriates Sales account. Our memberships includes furnace, ac, plumbing inspection and electrical inspection. 

When a customer is entered into Service Titan and one of our people are on site they enter all the equipment into Service Titan, in the office we make sure that the age of the equipment is in correctly.  When entering calls on the board I am a TAG person!  I have tags to show age of equipment so we know which technicians are better on what calls! 

We have a team dedicated to maintenance as well we have a membership coordinator.  She is in charge of making sure memberships are entered into ST correctly, the recurring services are in the right months and she sends out a Welcome email to all new members, she calls or emails customers to schedule the services, if memberships are not renewed she is the one that will reach out to them and try to renew or find out why they are not renewing. 

When we are slower we can call our Members and to fill spots for the Service Techs, we can use the memberships inspections for the plumbing dept and electrical depart when we are slower as well.  Great tool to get you in the door and show the customers that we are a full service company. 

Overbooking is ALWAYS an issue!  We try and book the Membership customers early in the season or later in the season and explain to them that as long as they are getting their yearly service completed they a can use their equipment, they do not have to wait to have their service completed before turning the furnace on or turning the AC on.  We do have some that want a certain month so in the recurring service we make sure to put that month in and add a memo so when running the monthly report they pop up first. 

Memberships are a balancing act of keeping the customer happy, following through on your promises, booking in the calls and updating records. 

[JessicaSmith]

Wow this is a great answer! So detailed!

[JessicaSmith]

ServiceTitan tracks my deferred revenue for me. It exports to a liability account in Quickbooks when it is invoiced that is depleted when the maintenance is performed.

I utilize marketing pro to target the club members I most want to service first (read: old equipment), then when I've scheduled many of those I have emails go to the rest of my club members.

In my past life at a larger company I had separate maintenance techs (I love this). We are not there yet at my new company. When you have separate maintenance techs, you can schedule them fully regardless of the weather and keep maintenance running all year round.

I hesitate to OVERBOOK anything. I may pre-book some of my service techs on maintenances that would need to be moved if extreme weather came through, but I never want to book more slots than I have.