niOverview
Dispatch Pro is a tool that optimizes your dispatch board for profitability. Use this playbook to understand how to maximize Dispatch Pro to get the most value for your business.
Who uses this feature
Administrators, managers, and dispatchers
Primarily for Residential Service and Replacement business types
Feature configuration
To get started with Dispatch Pro, review pricing and select your package here. You can also request a demo on our Pro Products page, or reach out to your Customer Success Manager (CSM) or Pro Account Manager (PAM).
Certain permissions are required to set up and manage Dispatch Pro. To have these enabled, please contact the account administrator on your team. For more, see the Required permissions section of Dispatch Pro.
Business impact
With Dispatch Pro, you can streamline business operations, increase technician productivity, and enhance customer satisfaction. Dispatch Pro can also help overcome common industry challenges such as inefficient scheduling, long drive times, and missed revenue opportunities.
Grow revenue for your business
To get the most return on investment (ROI) from Dispatch Pro, let it automate assignments as much as possible. We recommend aiming for at least 50% utilization by allowing Dispatch Pro to assign 50% of your jobs automatically.
Note: For Dispatch Pro to automatically optimize assignments, Auto Mode must be enabled in Dispatch Pro Settings. If Auto Mode is not selected, dispatchers can still optimize assignments by manually generating and reviewing suggestions using Dispatch Assist. For more, see Dispatch Pro Settings overview.
The following best practices improve Dispatch Pro utilization and accuracy, which in turn increase revenue potential for your business.
Optimize technician deployment to zones
Assigning technicians to zones helps Dispatch Pro keep technicians in the areas they're working. We recommend that you:
Configure zones by quadrant and how far away they are from your office.
Assign every zone a technician is allowed to run in. You can add as many zones as you like.
Make sure the configuration Set Technician Zone using GPS is disabled in your account so zone assignments are static and don't change.
Note: Only administrator roles can change feature configurations. For more, see Manage feature configurations. If you have multiple ServiceTitan accounts, contact Technical Support for details.
If your account isn't configured to use zones, Dispatch Pro uses business unit addresses instead. If technicians aren't assigned to zones or business units, Dispatch Pro assumes they can work across all zones and all business units.
Improve how skills are associated with technicians to maximize assignment
Skills tell Dispatch Pro which technicians should be considered for which jobs. Set up skills broadly to maximize technician availability for job assignments.
The fewer limitations on who can do a job, the more options Dispatch Pro has to pick from. With narrow skill sets, Dispatch Pro might only have a few technicians to choose from, which might lead to more unassigned jobs.
When considering technicians for job assignment, Dispatch Pro assumes:
Job types without assigned skills can be performed by any technician
Technicians without assigned skills can perform any job type that doesn't have assigned skills
Technicians need to have all the skills listed for the job type
For more, see the Tips section below. Also see the Generate skills for technicians section of Adjust Dispatch Pro Technician Settings and the Generate skills for job types section of Adjust Dispatch Pro Prioritization Settings.
Leverage shifts to clarify technician availability
Technician shifts tell Dispatch Pro to only assign technicians during peak hours.
Dispatch Pro ignores On-Call shifts and only assigns jobs to technicians available during Regular shifts between the job's start and end time. Instead of using On-Call shifts, extend your technicians' Regular shifts when they work on-call. Shifts must cover enough of the arrival window for a technician to arrive and complete the job.
If you don't set up shifts, Dispatch Pro assumes your technicians are working and available within your business hours. If you don't use arrival windows, Dispatch Pro assumes a job can be done any time within your business hours.
Leverage arrival windows to specify assignment times
Set up arrival windows to communicate accurate arrival times to customers.
Job durations on job types can extend past arrival windows, however, Dispatch Pro never reschedules jobs outside the arrival window. The scheduled start time will always be within the arrival window.
If there are no arrival windows, Dispatch Pro assumes any time within your business hours can be used for each job.
For more, see the Tips section below.
Validate technician addresses for optimal routing
Adding and validating technician home addresses allows Dispatch Pro to determine the maximum driving distance when assigning technicians to jobs. It also allows Dispatch Pro to efficiently route technicians home at the end of the day.
If your technicians don't provide home addresses, Dispatch Pro uses their business unit addresses instead. If no addresses are listed at all, Dispatch Pro can't route technicians home at the end of the day.
Tip: You can add and validate custom addresses in the Starting Location and Ending Location columns in question 4.1 of Dispatch Pro technician settings.
Validate location addresses for optimal routing
Validate addresses in service location records so Dispatch Pro can accurately predict drive time and properly assign jobs.
Automate urgency levels for job types
Set up tags and tell Dispatch Pro which tags make certain job types a higher or lower priority for your business based on urgency. For how to prioritize tags, see the Choose which tags show individual job priority section of Adjust Dispatch Pro Prioritization Settings.
To maximize your revenue potential, we suggest prioritizing high-urgency jobs that could be vulnerable to competitive loss.
Identify areas for improvement
Regularly review job assignments and technician performance to identify revenue growth opportunities and areas for improvement.
The value of Dispatch Pro is felt over a few weeks. The more jobs are assigned by automation every day, the quicker the value is felt.
Implementation and training
The following best practices will help you implement Dispatch Pro effectively.
Enable Dispatch Pro for relevant job types and technicians
Ensure Dispatch Pro is enabled for maintenance, service, and sales job types and technicians to take full advantage of its capabilities.
For more, see the Tips section below.
Train CSRs and dispatchers on how to work with Dispatch Pro
How you work with Dispatch Pro depends on the selected mode:
Assist Mode: Dispatchers can generate, review, and approve the suggested optimizations for each Dispatch Pro-enabled job. This provides greater transparency and control over the changes Dispatch Pro is making. For more, see Use Dispatch Assist in Dispatch Pro.
Auto Mode: Dispatch Pro automatically assigns the most optimal technician to Dispatch Pro-enabled jobs, eliminating the need for manual review. While Dispatch Pro does the heavy lifting in Auto Mode, it still needs dispatchers to oversee it.
For Assist Mode, training for CSRs and dispatchers should include how to:
For Auto Mode, training for CSRs and dispatchers should include how to:
Tip: The troubleshooter tool helps dispatchers understand why Dispatch Pro is making certain decisions. With the troubleshooter, you can also bypass general support and reach out directly to a support specialist.
Knowledge Base
Find documentation related to understanding and setting up Dispatch Pro by going to Knowledge Base > Categories > Dispatch Pro.
TitanAdvisor
TitanAdvisor recommends features in ServiceTitan that can help you achieve your business goals. To view recommended features for Dispatch Pro:
Go to the navigation bar and click the TitanAdvisor
icon to open the TitanAdvisor Overview screen.In the side menu, click Job Booking & Dispatching.
On the Job Booking & Dispatching screen that opens, click the Optimization tab and then click Double your dispatching capacity with Dispatch Pro.
For more, see TitanAdvisor administrator overview.
Adoption and performance
To track Dispatch Pro performance and observe improvement, we recommend the following strategies.
Use reporting to track performance metrics
Monitor key performance indicators through your regular reporting. For example, track how your dispatchers are utilizing Dispatch Pro and how Dispatch Pro is ranking technicians based on conversion rate and average ticket.
Review settings for continuous improvement
Regularly review and adjust Dispatch Pro Settings based on performance data and feedback to continuously optimize operations and drive business growth.
We recommend that you review and adjust as needed your settings during shoulder slow seasons to prepare for busy seasons.
Tip: If you notice jobs are being left unassigned due to max drive time alerts, you can adjust your maximum drive time settings to fine-tune Dispatch Pro. You can adjust them globally in question 1.2, on individual zones in question 1.3, or for individual technicians in question 1.4.
Tips
It's important to find the right balance between Dispatch Pro's hard constraints and flexibility. If there are too many constraints, Dispatch Pro will be very limited in its choice of best technicians. If there are no constraints, Dispatch Pro can assign anyone to anything.
For skills:
This is one of the most important constraints to balance. We recommend keeping skills broad and job types narrow outside of things that require special training or knowledge. This helps maximize technician availability for job assignments.
For example, an Oil Furnace skill can be quite rare since it requires special training and knowledge. If a job requires that skill, include it on the job type for the individual job and on the technician profile to avoid wrongful assignments.
On the other hand, something that can be done by any technician should only include a general skill, like Service, to make the pool of technicians as wide as possible for Dispatch Pro to choose from. A narrow skill, like No Cool on a Two-Year-Old System, makes it difficult for Dispatch Pro to find enough technicians who can actually do the job.
For one-off skills, we recommend that you associate them with job, location, or equipment tags in Dispatch Pro Technician Settings. This gives CSRs added control over Dispatch Pro when booking one-off or special skilled jobs.
For example, a job requires a ladder and you have a limited number of technicians who have a ladder in their truck. Creating a Ladder tag and mapping a Ladder skill allows CSRs or dispatchers to add a Ladder tag to the job which will ensure a technician with a Ladder skill will be assigned.
For job types:
Tell Dispatch Pro which tags make certain job types a higher or lower priority for your business based on urgency to help improve assignments. For steps on how to do this, see the Choose which tags show individual job priority section of Adjust Dispatch Pro Prioritization Settings.
Split your job types to follow the value levels of your jobs so the predictions are more precise.
For example, a No Cool job can have a dramatically different value based on the age of the equipment. We recommend splitting the job type into something like No Cool <10 and No Cool 10+ to capture the value. The skills required, on the other hand, could still be kept generic like Service so Dispatch Pro can choose from as many technicians as possible who can actually do the job.
Only consider narrowing skills for jobs that require special training and skill sets, like Boiler or Oil Furnace.
For arrival windows:
Create actual arrival windows. Dispatch Pro can't read from notes; it can only follow your time frames if you set up and use arrival windows.
Set up arrival windows that last all day. Alternatively, you can set up one window in the AM and one window in the PM to cover the whole day. The larger the window, the more flexibility Dispatch Pro has to optimize booked jobs.
If you provide specific arrival times for some of the jobs, like guaranteeing the first job, you can create a short arrival window to make sure a technician arrives on time. For example, 7:30–8:00 AM to guarantee 8:00 AM arrival.
Dispatch Pro always abides by your arrival window. If it looks like Dispatch Pro is jumping arrival windows, check that your arrival windows are set up properly. Also, check question 2.1 in Dispatch Pro Locking Jobs Settings. If it's set to 0 min, Dispatch Pro will assign all the way up to the last minute of the window. For example, if the arrival window is set from 8:00 AM–10:00 AM, and setting 2.1 is set to 0 min, Dispatch Pro can assign the job at 10:00 AM but not at 10:01 AM.
Additional considerations
Set up business hours
Set up business hours so Dispatch Pro knows when to run. During business hours, Dispatch Pro runs every 10 minutes. Outside of business hours, Dispatch Pro runs every hour.
We recommend that your business hours cover the entire timeframe your technicians are expected to work each day.
For more on setting up business hours, see Set up business hours.
Tip: Business hours can also be used for scheduling if you choose not to set up arrival windows and technician shifts.
Set up and verify job duration on job types
Verifying job duration helps prevent overlapping and overbooking. Dispatch Pro assumes that job types without specified durations take two hours.
We recommend that you set up durations based on your slowest technician.
For more, see Set up and use job types.
Add addresses to applicable timesheet codes
For any events that you want Dispatch Pro to route into a technician's day, create a timesheet code and add an address to it. To do this, select Route around these non-job events when creating or editing a timesheet code and then enter an address. For example, you can create timesheet codes for P/U Helper, Shop, or Oil Change.
For more, see Set up timesheet codes.
Want to learn more?
Visit ServiceTitan Academy and enroll in Dispatch Pro: Detailed Setup and Dispatch Pro: Turnkey Setup
Visit ServiceTitan Academy and enroll in Dispatch Pro: Dispatcher Experience Walk-Through