Caleb Corkern, operations manager at One Hour Heating & Air Conditioning of Lee’s Summit, Missouri, a suburb of Kansas City), said he used to spend a lot of time going on ridealongs with his techs when he was a field manager.
“I was training them, making sure the customer service was top notch, and as I got into the operations manager role and we grew, we obviously had to hire more guys and I had a lot more on my plate. So it was really hard, and still is hard, to try to find time to actually go out physically with the guys in the van,” he says.
After discussing the importance of ridealongs and the challenge Caleb was facing to find time to do them, his brother, Kyle Corkern, the location’s general manager, found Rilla, the leading virtual ridealong software for the home services industry.
“You can listen in on how they’re presenting things and when you know those guys really well, you can hear how they word specific things to customers and you can almost kind of tell what their body language is, even if you're not there,” Caleb says. “With traditional ridealongs, maybe you’d go a few weeks in between ridealong sessions, but with Rilla you're able to listen to any conversation and any technician at any point in the day.”
Rilla makes things a lot more efficient, Kyle adds.
“The average service call is about two hours. With a traditional ridealong, you're there while the technician is going back and forth to his truck, while the tech is on the phone with a vendor ordering a part or tech support diagnosing the problem, and while the tech is completing the repair. That leaves a lot of “dead time” where the technician is not conversing with the homeowner,” he says. “With Rilla, you're cutting out all of that “dead time” and you get straight to the key, coachable points of the conversation with the client. In the time it takes to do an in-person ridealong, we can complete 10-15 ridealongs with Rilla.”
Rilla also summarizes the conversations techs have with customers into bullet points that are added to the invoice summary in ServiceTitan, which is an added convenience to dispatchers and managers.
Improvements in Consistency and Company Culture
The location started using Rilla about 5 months ago and they have noticed definite improvements with consistency among the staff.
“I think any manager will tell you that they have a couple of superstar techs that buy in and they believe in everything that you've trained them on,” Caleb said. “And then even if those guys train the other guys, what you find is a lot of guys kind of fall off and they drop off from following those procedures. And the superstars sometimes can as well. But, what we've noticed is a lot more consistency and if that starts to slip, we're able to catch that and train on it a lot sooner than before.”
He's seeing that come through on Google reviews, too, with more positive feedback from customers.
The location’s 10 technicians aren’t required to use Rilla on every call, though they all have access to it all the time. The techs are required to record at least two calls per week. The reaction to the technology has been favorable, the Corkerns say.
“We wanted to make sure that the guys knew we're not trying to spy on them. This is to benefit them,” Kyle says. “It's to increase their skills and improve the customer experience, which will earn them more money. We're not listening to these conversations for punitive actions. This is strictly a training tool to help our technicians improve their communication skills, and we've stuck to that promise.”
“In our team meetings, we highlight the best conversations we heard in the last week so the entire team can hear them. We also get a kick out of finding funny conversations with customers or if the recording picks up the technician singing to himself or something like that, we’ll listen to those and have a laugh,” Caleb says.
The Corkerns say the techs haven’t experienced any pushback from customers about recording, either. They encourage techs to be honest with customers if questioned about it, and to let them know the technology is there to make sure they’re being clear, consistent, and fair.
Kyle says an added benefit has been the ability to listen to recordings before making follow-up calls to customers with open estimates.
“We have a sales lead coordinator who listens to the recordings before following up on unsold estimates for IAQ or system replacements. He can listen to those recordings and hear the customer’s pain points and the objections that they brought up with the technician so that he can be prepared for his follow up call,” he says. “And that's been really valuable for him.”
The Superstar Strategies
At the Lee’s Summit location, Rilla is set up with three separate templates for calls—sales, maintenance, and repairs.
“You go through that with your onboarding person and you can track the key points that you want to hit in every call. For us, it was the Superstar Strategies,” Kyle says. “We wanted to know that the techs were covering all of those steps like asking if it's okay where they parked, putting on their shoe covers, giving the customer a business card, or doing the credibility statement. You can tailor the ridealongs to automatically track any key conversation point you’d like to monitor so you can see at a quick glance who is hitting those important steps.”
Caleb and Kyle both set aside time each day to listen to a handful of conversations and offer praise or suggestions that the techs can see via comments in the Rilla app. Consistency has been the most important factor in ensuring cooperation and engagement with the technicians.
“It’s been critical to utilize the Rilla ridealongs in 1-on-1s and in team meetings so it’s always top of mind for the techs,” Caleb says. “And they can really start to see the benefit for themselves.”
Kyle adds, “We liken Rilla to a football team watching game film. The best coaches and players in the world take time to watch film to find ways they can improve. If you took that ability away from Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes, I doubt they’d have any Super Bowls. We want to be the best, and Rilla is the tool that allows us to be intentional and find ways we can be better.”
Considering Signing Up for Rilla?
If you’re thinking about implementing Rilla at your company and are concerned about potential negative feedback from employees, Caleb suggests reaching out to your technicians who have been there the longest and get them on board first.
“Having our senior techs understand the benefits of Rilla helped the younger techs buy in,” he says. “Those senior techs can help with coaching, as well. I would suggest getting a team of people that are going to oversee it. One person can do it, but with three or four, technicians get the benefit of feedback from different perspectives. You can be more consistent that way, too.”
BuyMax members are eligible for special Rilla pricing. Save between 17% - 44% per technician license per year with our exclusive BuyMax pricing. Ready to sign up? Book a demo here.
If you want to learn more about Rilla or BuyMax, please contact your Regional Account Manager today.
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