158 | How to Increase Your Booking Rate: CSR Secrets for HVAC, Plumbing & Home Service Businesses with Michelle Myers of Pink Callers

Welcome back to another episode of Freedom Blueprint podcast. We're hanging out today with Michelle Myers from Pink Callers, and we're going to learn, we're going learn so much today from Michelle and I'm pretty excited. Michelle, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here, Justin.

Yeah, we're excited to have you here. ⁓ As we jump in, again, the name of your business is Pink Collars, and I feel like there's gotta be a story behind the name. So, tell us the story, there's gotta be one.

Of course there is. So in the work world, there's white collar, right? The folks that are in the office. There's blue collar, the folks that are out in the field. And back in the thirties and forties, when women started entering the workforce, they called those ladies in the typing pool, pink collars, denoting that they were primarily women that worked in those roles. And so we just made a play on words, ⁓ pink collars, meaning call on the phone. So we changed the way it was spelled and that's how pink collars was born.

Okay, that is awesome. I gotta be honest with you, I didn't realize that they were called pink collars. Very cool. So give us a little bit of a high level overview of what pink collars does and how you guys help home service businesses.

They were. Yep.

Absolutely. So we place fractional team members in your business remotely to answer phones and close calls, close bookings and book jobs. And what we found is that unlike a lot of our competitors where you just get a call center, it's a group of nameless and faceless individuals that answer your phones. We really wanted to bring a more personal approach to the solution. And so really we take people from all over the country that have service-tightened experience primarily.

and have trades experience exclusively, and then we place them in your business remotely. We manage them, we train them, we support them, we hire them, we fire them, we guide them, which is often a big part of the friction with the contractor. So we take a lot of that out of the position and take all that onto our work. And it's just been a really cool solution for people that need either seasonal support,

or fractional support or they're growing and they need to place an additional person in the call center. So it's been a really neat ride.

So I'll say what would be what sounds really good about that having kind of a dedicated person is we had it before where we've had call centers, we've had some good ones and we've had some, I'm gonna call it maybe not great, not great ones, but we've had several where they've answered the phone with the wrong name. So I feel like that would be a really good win by having someone dedicated to your business, because they're probably not gonna answer with the wrong name.

They're not. so depending on the volume of your company, right, the size of calls that are the amount of calls that come in, we'll decide how fractional that person's going to be. ⁓ 99 % of the time, it's the full 40 hours of the week, and then we take care of that company. And sometimes maybe one small one next to you, but it just sort of depends on your volume. And you and I decide that together based on the call.

So when you think about call center, because it is, you know, it's obviously getting more more expensive and harder to find employees. And I think that any kind of fractional things allows businesses to grow in scale ⁓ up and down. You mentioned seasonality, you know, from the HVAC standpoint, you probably need four more call center people to get you through the summer.

Well, you probably don't want to hire them, train them, go through all the things to then turn around and let them go. So I'm guessing that's a lot of where you guys can help those HVAC businesses and those other seasonal businesses too, ⁓ by being that support level.

Yeah.

Yeah, and that's the truth. And that's what we found was the pain point in the market, and that's what we're meeting.

Very cool. So let me answer this. When I think about CSRs and I think about just call center in general, there's a difference between answering the phone and booking a call. And so obviously you're an expert in this space. ⁓ What's your opinion of the difference?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah, the difference is psychology. And so a really good CSR almost has to have a little bit of psychology and they have to meet the customer where they are. A script is fantastic, but it's only a starting point. You can't be robotic, right? So you have to be able to pivot when the customer moves in a specific direction or the homeowner and you have to be able to meet their need. What I tell my team is your number one goal is to get that technician to the door.

whatever it takes to get that technician to the door. You don't have to answer or diagnose anything. You don't have to solve all of the problems on the call. You have to be empathetic, a great listener, take incredible notes so that that technician is locked and loaded when they arrive. But your whole goal is to get that technician to the door. And so once we embed that in our team, that that's really the measure of success is that close rate. That's what's really the differentiator.

And what I love about a lot of the software tools that we work on, Service Titan specifically, is that they record all the calls, they're classifying all the calls now with AI and helping you be able to determine if it's a true lead or somebody just calling to pay their bill. And that really keeps everybody above board because it's really identifying what type of call is coming in. And that really helps everybody.

because there's nothing worse than having a bunch of bill pay calls or cancellation calls or changing of the schedule calls hit that close rate number. so understanding what is a true lead from the very get-go is very important to be able to measure the success of your team.

Yeah, and it sounds like that's part of what you guys are going to help is kind of that coaching, training, monitoring, managing that process as well, right?

Absolutely, absolutely. And transparency is one of our core values. And so we really love the fact that all the calls are recorded, we're classifying them all, and that the customer, the client of ours is seeing that progress all along the way without having to be in the weeds of the day to day.

And I know you mentioned Service Titan. Are there other softwares you guys work in as well?

There is. We work on Housecall Pro. Actually, my husband and I are contractors. We have a floor coatings company, and so we use Housecall Pro in our own business. And it's a little bit different of a process than the majority of the other trades, HVAC and plumbing. He has to go and do an actual quote. So a salesperson goes. So it's a little bit different. But again, the process is the same. Get that person to the door. And that's really the marching orders of all of our team.

So when I think about booking rate, you know, you get in the forums on the, on all the socials and you hear some crazy numbers and people are like, we booked like 187 % of the calls that come in. You're like, well, that math doesn't math. ⁓ But what, what do you think, what do you think most home service businesses booking rate is compared to what it actually like? What do they think it is versus typically what you see when you first start working with somebody?

yes.

Yes, of course.

Well, what most business owners think is that they're booking 80 % of their calls. That's the number that everybody seems to say is their number. They're like, yeah, we're over 80. We're 80 to 90%. My team is great. Once we get in and are in the diagnostics of the account, we really find that overall we're seeing between 25 and 45 % booking rate. ⁓ And that feels terrifying to a business owner because they're paying for all of those leads.

It's a combination of things. What we find is the biggest friction point is that you've got your CSR doing CSR and dispatch. So you and I go to restaurants all the time, right? Go to a restaurant, you sit down and your waiter comes up and gives you your menu, gives you your water, talks to you about the specials, runs you through the what's going to happen for your meal. And then you'll see these other folks that kind of run around and they clean things up busboys, right? They're just kind of the silent.

They just kind of walk around and they're just cleaning and picking up things. Not a lot more of interaction with you, but their job is equally as important. What you don't see is that the poor bus boys are the ones that go back in the kitchen and they get plates thrown at them. They have dirty dishes. The dishwasher's backed up. They need things from the back of house. And so what I liken that to is the CSR is a lot like a waiter. They're empathetic. They're going to guide that experience.

and they're going to get that book call. A dispatcher is really the one that's dealing with the heartache of the business, the guys, the trucks, the breakdowns, the complaints, the customers, the schedule, all of that. And so what I find is when a business owner tries to put one person in both of those seats, they often fail. And so you really have to have an empathetic, kind, front of house.

closing, let's get you to the door, let's solve your problem person on your phones. And you really need a little bit more rough and tumble individual in dispatch. And that's just true. They need to be a little more sales oriented, a little bit thicker skin, be able to take the feedback from the field that may not be great and hear the complaints from the guys and push the guys to be taking that one more call for the day. And so we often tell people if you've got one person trying to do both of those things,

Mm-hmm.

you're often going to fail.

I think that's a amazing analogy and so accurate and so dead on because yeah, I mean, you're right. mean, the personality types are just so different and yeah, your dispatcher has to be kind, but assertive and willing to tell a technician like too bad, go run the call with love.

Yeah?

they are.

Yeah, They gotta be firm.

Yeah. Yeah. With love.

Exactly. And you know, that back a house, nobody wants to see how the sausage is made, right? Well, the technicians and the dispatcher know how the sausage is made in your business. And so you really need to protect your CSR from that so that they think it's all sunshine and ponies and roses and everything's going to be great because they need to deliver that experience to your customer.

Mm-hmm, ⁓ Mm-hmm.

If they know that things are falling apart or they know that somebody's truck is broken down on the side of the road or they feel that drag, they will give that to your customers. will, they will send that, you know, they will telegraph that to the calls that they take. And so having them in both of those experiences is just, it's unfair to everyone. And so the faster you can recognize that, the faster you'll succeed. And what I tell business owners that come to hire us, I say,

Let us be the rainbows and ponies. Let us not know anything about how the sausage is made. Take that individual that has proven themselves in your business, that lives in your community, that you know and trust, and the guys know and trust, move that person to dispatch, give them their new process, which is basically book the you know what out of this calendar, and let us just take all of that inbound and let them just have calls arrive on the board, and they just run the board all day.

It just is so much easier for us to be at the front. And that's the scary thing for a business owner. They're like, but you're a stranger. Yeah, but honestly, we can deliver that good experience because we're not exposed to the other parts of the business. It actually does make sense when I talk. When I talk them through it, they're like, okay, that does make sense because Susan in the office knows everything. And if I take her out, I'm sunk. But you could take some of this other stuff at the beginning.

and keep Susan protected and move her into more operations. So that's usually how we work.

Yeah, again, I think that's such a good analogy ⁓ on all of that. So let me ask you this. Obviously, AI is all over the place. It's all the things that all of us talk about right now. And I don't think that's going away anytime soon. ⁓ Tell us a little bit about, ⁓ are you guys leveraging AI? you not leverage AI? Like, what does that look like ⁓ in your business?

you

Yes.

It is. It's not.

Well, right now we leverage it in two different ways. We do a lot of internal AI quality assurance. So I've got, ⁓ I built a Claude sort of a bot that scrubs all of the channels for just high level communication points. It shouts out CSRs that are communicating well with their clients directly. It tells us room for improvement and then it gives us a list for coaching every day. So I'm using that just to gauge the temperament of my team as they interact with those businesses.

And I think that's been super helpful. It's funny because we haven't really found ⁓ anything glaring, but those little tiny coaching points have been really helpful. Like, you've asked that question twice already of your contact at that business. You need to document that because we shouldn't be asking it twice. Right. So it's catching those little tiny things that become can become bothersome when you're working with a vendor. ⁓ That's the first place. And then secondarily, we're using AI.

Mmm.

In a really nuanced way, ⁓ we do have AI agents that can answer the phone and depending on your level of service and service titan, we can actually book and dispatch those calls. So it's really very good. It's very similar to a lot of the products out there. What I like about how we've approached AI is we've approached it as an assistant to our team members. So I've got a gal that works at our office. Her name's Stephanie.

And so when she's on the line, it'll roll to AI and the AI says, Hey, thank you so much for calling Joe's plumbing. Stephanie's currently on the line with another valued customer. Do you mind if we wait together? Customer always says, sure. About two seconds go by and the AI says, while we're waiting for Stephanie, I feel like we could get a little bit of your details and make your call a little shorter when she arrives. Would that be okay? And again, we're,

asking the customer to come into the AI experience. We're not just flat out going straight to what's your name, what's your address, what's your email, right? And so we're inviting that customer to be in that experience with us. They generally give all of the information. We do have drop-offs right there and it says, person, agent, person, customer service. You we have people yelling every once in a while, but it's not often. If they do wait, the last thing that we say is, hey,

It looks like Stephanie's gonna be on this call a little bit longer, but here's what we can do. Now that we have all your information, would it be okay if we texted you back or called you back? What would you prefer? They give an answer. 90 % of the time it's text me because they're at their office, they're at their school, they're busy, and a text is so much easier. Then what happens is Stephanie gets that notification. We use a platform called Go High Level.

we drop that message into Go High Level and it automatically texts them and gets all of the things and then they can generally book their own experience from there. It's really slick. And so I think that that's the way we're using AI ⁓ is just to support our team and to give the customer an understanding that they're not talking to a bot, but they're actually helping out the human that's on the other line.

So one of the things that frustrates me about AI and people that use it in lieu of a human is they try to pretend as if it's a human. that's what, that drives me crazy. I'm like, don't do that. Like, what are you doing? People aren't stupid. I say that, I say that now I did have an experience a couple of weeks ago where I was on the phone and this call was going so well. I was like, this is great. And finally,

Yeah, don't pretend. Yeah, don't pretend. Yeah. Yeah, tell the truth.

I was like, is this an AI bot? And the guy was like, yeah. I was like, holy cow. That was the best one I'd ever experienced. But it does frustrate me when people try to pretend as if that is a human. Like don't insult somebody's intelligence. Just say what it is. And that's good to hear you say that is you're like, Hey, listen, I'm here to help you. The human is on hold, but I can make the experience faster. Let's get some information or you can just hang out if you don't want to talk to a robot. I think that's pretty cool.

It dawned on you.

True.

Yeah.

Yeah. So that's how we're approaching it. And we're finding that people are happy with that approach. ⁓ After hours, we're doing rollover with AI as well. you know, staffing after hours from 10 to 8 a.m., from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m. is really hard to find a U.S. team that will do that effectively and not be cost prohibitive. And the majority of our clients are really saying, I'm going to protect my techs. I'm not going to run calls at midnight.

I mean, we've got to just say enough is enough. And I really love working with those business owners and we've turned away work where people say, we're going to run calls at 3 a.m. And I'm like, yeah, I just don't think that's my business model. So we've actually said no. ⁓ And and that to me is also an OK boundary, you know.

Yeah.

Yes. What percentage of businesses do you think are still running in the middle of the night calls? I've got my own opinion of it, but I'd be curious. You're obviously way more plugged into that than I am. But what is your thought on how many, percentage or even percentage of companies that you work with?

I would say it's less than 10%. It's very rare. It's not a lot of people doing it anymore because they've realized they are a necessary qualified contractor and they can make a little bit more of the rules. The customer's not driving the transaction as much anymore. They can say, yeah, we really want to take care of our guys and we don't mind running an after hours call until 10, but after 10 p.m. people need to be in bed with their...

They just need to be home with their families. It's just not worth the money because the calls are so sporadic.

So

I was in a best practice meeting, I'll call it. And this has probably been 15, maybe 18 years ago. And in the entire time we've owned plumbing and AC businesses, never have we ever run 24 hours. Because for me, I can't see how you can have someone run middle of the night calls, have a full board the next day, and expect them to perform. And I've always been one like, if I'm not gonna go do it, I'm not gonna ask somebody else to do it,

Yeah. We can't. We can't.

I'm the

same way. I'm the same way.

But so there was this topic that came up in this, in this meeting. And I kind of pointed out and said, cause it was about culture and I was, I was talking about our culture and we had a good culture and people tend to stick around and we really leverage the fact that we didn't run 24 hours, man. I thought that room was going to take me outside and beat me. They're like, you cannot run a plumbing company. That's not 24 seven. I'm like, yeah, we're doing it. And our team is happy. And.

Yeah. Yeah. Sure.

Yeah, I can.

we don't have a problem with recruiting because I'm taking people from the 24 hours. But, but now it's shifted right in such a short period of time. It shifted so much to where now the majority of businesses don't, it seems to be a lot of the really big companies that do it, that maybe culture is not the most important thing to them or really small, just getting started companies where the owner's doing it. But then they end up, you know, they're kind of burning in at both ends, which is ⁓ kind of stinks for them.

Yeah, it's no way to live.

No,

no, no, it's really not. So ⁓ as we kind of wrap here, what are some, some, I guess, wisdom, some nuggets that you could give anybody listening that is really struggling with call center and struggling with that booking rate? What, what, what advice would you give them?

Well, I would give them the advice that CSRs are dealing with the general public. And in the 10 years that I've been in this business, the general public has really changed. level of the lack of patience, the lack of humanity, the lack of understanding, it's a real thing out there. And it really does come over the phone to these people.

And so understanding that they are really taking a lot of bullets for your business is really important. Now I'm not painting them as victims for sure, but I think that if you listen to some calls, you'll really learn a lot. So as a business owner, I would challenge you to listen to three phone calls this week. Just pull them out of your service Titan, just random times and days, just yank them out and listen to them and get a little bit better of an understanding of what your team is up against.

Every single client that calls says, I can get a better price here. I can shop there. I'm doing this. There's a lot of over-educated consumers that really don't know a lot, but they've gotten on chat GPT or they've gotten on Google. And so there's a little bit of belligerence. Yeah. A little bit of belligerence on those phone calls. And so have some empathy with your team that's dealing with that. ⁓ And then for your CSRs,

Each and every one of them, it's something that we're working on in our business. We've just done it with the leadership team. We're going to start doing it all the way down to every person on our company. Schedule a clarity break for that person. Give them a paid day off once a month. Have them do a book report, have them listen to a couple of podcasts, nurture them so that they can see what you see when you're out at these wonderful conferences, at best practice groups, when you're watching.

Mm-hmm.

a podcast like this or engaging in webinars, they don't get access to that. So they may not see the big picture. So give them a window into your big picture, what you're seeing and how you're learning, because these people are so wicked smart and they are really a trusted individual and likely one of the more important people on your team. And so invest in them with time and with a little bit of tools. And I think you'd be really surprised at how much more they can tolerate if they understand that you've got their back.

That is great advice. And to your point, nothing happens till that calls booked. I mean, it's all a flywheel. It's all a circle. It's all a hub, but until that calls booked, the tech's got nothing to do. The dispatcher had nothing to do. Accounting's got nothing to do. Warehouse has got nothing to do. So it definitely is the center point of all that. So Michelle, for anybody listening, who's like, I need pink collars in my life. I just, have to have them. What's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

Yeah. 100%. Yep. Yep.

That's right.

Well, for your listeners and because, you know, I'm working on more accountability myself, I'm going to give out my personal email and cell phone number because I need more friends. I need more contractors in my life. I love it when I hear from one of you that says, hey, I'm actually going through a hellscape in my call center. Can you please help me? ⁓ So you can reach me on Michelle. It's M-I-C-H-E-L-L-E at Pink Callers. That's pink like the color.

I'm a true dyed in the wool visionary. And so sometimes I can get super hyper-focused on the vision of my company. And I am trying to live a lot more in real life. So when I get to go to conferences and speak and all of that, I love the people. I want to grab the people and hold the people. So reach out to me and I will absolutely contact you back and we will chat it out and figure out how to solve your issues.

All right, that's great. And ⁓ I will say that you got her email and her cell number. So if you were struggling and you don't reach out, it is your fault. So make sure you reach out, get some information, find out how they can help you. Even if you're not sure if you're a good fit for them or not.

Yeah.

That's true.

Reach out and find out. Just ask the question, hey, here's what my business looks like and am I a good fit or not? But listen, Michelle, I appreciate you coming and hanging out with us today and giving us some really good information. And I am sure we will see you around the conference circuit here pretty soon.

Sure will. I'll be out on the road soon, I'm sure.

All right, thank you.

Thank you so much.