A Way to Listen to Every Interaction Your Tech has with a Customer

Have you ever wanted to know exactly how one of your company’s sales or repair calls went? Perhaps there was a customer complaint and you needed to figure out what happened.

Sure, you could ride along on every call, but that’s just not practical. This is where technology comes into the picture. There are a few companies that are offering the technology of recording every interaction your employees have with your customers.

But are there costs to your business? And I am not talking financial.

ServiceTitan recently introduced the new SalesPro. It is a field sales intelligence tool built to give contractors full visibility into what is happening in the field, and for techs to improve and learn.

“At its core, Sales Pro is an AI-powered solution that automatically records during the jobs — with appropriate consent — when a technician arrives on-site, and from there, analyzes the interaction and surfaces actionable learnings for the technician, along with coaching and best-in-class examples from other techs in their business or industry leaders,” said Vincent Payen, vice president and general manager, pro products at ServiceTitan.

So this is what they mean when they say AI is coming to the HVAC industry.

“The key here is to capture 100% of field interactions with customers, while empowering technicians to learn through peer-to-peer collaboration through sharing call recordings, highlighting wins, reviewing AI analysis, and developing actionable insights that contractors can leverage in the field,” Payen said.

The company Rilla has something similar. They bill it as the “end of ride-alongs.” Both products sound like great tools but ones that might cause me a bit of pause if I were an HVAC contractor. Let’s unpack some of this.

Two main issues came to mind when I heard about this new technology. The first is the question of legality.

According to Rilla, it is perfectly legal to record conversations with homeowners. If contractors are in one of the following 11 states, they must obtain consent before they record. Those states are California, Massachusetts, Florida, Maryland, Illinois, Connecticut, Washington, Montana, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Oregon.

Personally, I think it might be a good idea to ask for consent even if you are in the other 39 states. Trust can certainly be broken if a homeowner finds out you have been recording them without their knowledge.

This can be done in numerous ways. There can be a box they check when they are scheduling an appointment, it can be handled by a contractor’s call center, or the technician can bring it up upon arrival at the home.

Second, how do you introduce this to your staff? How do you say we love your work but we are going to need to record every interaction you have with a customer?

“The ultimate goal of Sales Pro is to help technicians with personalized coaching while providing an engaging learning experience. It’s not for monitoring every word that is being said. Sales Pro is designed for techs to self-improve, not for policing,” Payen said. “We’ve seen that after just a few weeks, the fact that recordings happen becomes standard operating procedure for techs. Technicians very rapidly see that this tool is there to protect them from homeowner disputes, help them become more efficient, and connect with their peers in a new and very positive way, since successes are shared and learning happens as a team.”

That is an interesting point. It protects the employee from a homeowner dispute. How many calls have HVAC contractors received saying the tech did something wrong in the home? It immediately becomes he-said, she-said. With this recording, a contractor will know exactly what is said.

When introducing this technology, that is what HVAC contractors should lean into: As an employee, this can be used to protect you.

Now, it will not be all candy and nuts. According to Rilla, at first, your top performers will hate this. Your middle pack will be concerned, while the newer reps will embrace it. They say it takes everyone a few recordings to lose the fear. But after one month, the reps become 40-50% better at selling. At that point, the fear is gone and the top performers become addicted.

Will there be some pushback? Sure. But this is now the world we live in. We are monitored, filmed, and viewed more than we care to know and certainly more than we realize.

Do what is best for your business and lean on the relationships you have built with your staff.

“It has to start with a culture of learning and self-improvement that originates from the top. The most successful users create this spirit in their businesses, and then the tool becomes a natural element of a broader approach to performance improvement,” Payen said. “Many contractors roll the tool out to a limited number of their technicians, in order to prove the value and create excitement from others as they see their peers transform their performance and do it in an enjoyable way.”