A brand is successful if it can authentically, effectively, efficiently, and consistently help customers address the needs (outcomes, identity, and feelings) that matter most to them, and by doing so, simultaneously deliver on the business needs of the brand.

Goal

We want to:

1. Identify what needs (outcomes, identity, and feelings) matter most to contractors
2. Identify what we can authentically do to help customers address their needs, while also addressing ours
3. Benchmark how we’re doing vs. how we should be doing
4. Identify what we can do differently to better address their needs

What do customers want?

Contractors want the following outcomes:

• Success: I want to make money.
• Freedom: I don’t want to be captive to my business 24/7.
• Respect: The work I do is hard and provides immense value, and contracting businesses are as worthy as other types of businesses.
• Growth: I want to become a better businessperson and leader.

To achieve these outcomes, contractors want to authentically be the following in the eyes of their customers:


• Experts in their craft: Their work is high quality, safe, and durable.
• Trustworthy and reliable: Customers can trust their diagnosis, recommendation, and price. They are responsive, on-time, follow-through on their commitments, and stand by their work.
• Easy and efficient to do business with: They can get the job done without customers investing a lot of their own time and effort (e.g. they can book online, text them, pay easily, etc.)

And they want the following internal capabilities:


• Best practices: I will achieve greater success faster if every part of my business has the most effective and efficient process. E.g. The best way to market (ROI tracking, ads optimization, online booking, two-way texting), sell (estimate option templates, dynamic pricing), dispatch (automated), etc.
• Automation: These best practices won’t be consistently executed correctly unless they’re automated and intuitive, because my team has so much else to do. Also, my time has a high opportunity cost. I can’t be as successful as I want to be or have time for family and hobbies if it’s wasted. E.g. Automated scheduling & dispatching, automated payroll, automatically offer financing, etc.
• Awareness and control: I want to know that my business is performing well and continually optimize every part of it for greater success. E.g. How is my business doing? How is each area performing?
• Protection against external threats: I don’t want an unforeseen event to impact my success in the future. E.g. Google or Amazon disintermediating contractors and disrupting the industry.

Given their prior experience with vendors that have tried to rip them off, as well as the mission-critical nature of software in their business, contractors also need the following from their software partner:


• Trustworthy and reliable: They need confidence that their software partner won’t negatively impact their success. E.g. steal their data, suddenly hike prices significantly, become indifferent to their needs like a big tech company, be unavailable when they need help, etc.

The following table summarizes contractors’ needs:

How can we address their needs?

What can we authentically do to help customers address their needs, while also satisfying ours, through all the interactions we have with our customers?

Through our software

• Prescriptive, high ROI: We must figure out the best practices for running a contracting business and build our workflows according to these best practices. Being prescriptive vs. configurable/customizable will help our customers operate in the manner that is most conducive to their success, make our software more intuitive, and allow us to focus our finite resources on the capabilities that drive the highest ROI while supporting the minimum level of “table stakes requirements” necessary to unlock each best practice.
• End-to-end, integrated, tailored: Contractors have functional needs (sales, marketing, customer service, payroll, etc.) that are similar to businesses in other industries, but their workflows across these functions are quite unique. They do not have the time, technical expertise, or budgets to integrate and heavily customize a bunch of horizontal solutions to fit their unique workflows. Our software must be a turnkey, business-in-a-box solution that covers the vast majority of their critical workflows in order to give them both efficiency and control. We should minimize workflow gaps, workarounds, and configs, and implement guardrails that prevent mistakes.
• Automatic, intuitive: For our features to see the highest utilization and deliver the value we intend, wherever possible, our software should not require users to operate it, implement it, or even enable it. Where operation, implementation, or enablement is required, customers should be able to easily figure out what to do without training, help, resources, experimentation, or thought. The more automated and intuitive our software becomes, the fewer resources we will tie up in providing support, the more we can invest in innovation, and the more responsive we can be when customers really need our help.
• Insightful: The more visibility our software provides our customers about their business performance, the more awareness and control they will have. The more we proactively suggest improvements and facilitate their implementation, the greater results our customers will see. The better we communicate the utilization of and ROI of our software, the more they will use our software to drive more success.
• Performant: Our software is mission critical to our customers’ operations. It must be available, fast, scalable, recoverable, and secure, so it doesn’t negatively impact their success.
• Professional look-and-feel: Our software should not appear complex or intimidating, it should visually reflect its premium quality, and customers should enjoy using it. Our UX and aesthetic should be comparable to that of other modern software our customers have become accustomed to that are associated with quality.

Evolving quickly: As our customers grow, as the industry changes, as innovation occurs in other industries, as we expand the realm of possibilities, or as our customers identify bugs or shortcomings, we must be able to innovate and iterate quickly to continue to make our customers successful.

Through our services

• Ownership mindset: We should take responsibility for the success of our customers and do everything in our power (ethically, morally) to make them successful.
• Responsive and efficient: Our software is mission critical for our customers’ businesses. When they need help, we must respond immediately and follow through to resolve quickly, without creating additional work for the customer.
• Proactive: We should anticipate problems and opportunities and help customers overcome them or capitalize upon them so they can attain success quickly and efficiently.
• Informed and insightful: We must be experts in their industry and their unique business, and be experts of our software, so we can provide the correct answers and advice quickly and on the first attempt.


Caring: While being responsive, efficient, proactive, informed, and insightful will go a long way, we should be willing to go the extra mile with our words and actions to demonstrate our immense care and appreciation for our customers.

Through our copy

• Bold and inspiring: Our copy should inspire customers to want to pursue greater levels of success.
• Informed and insightful: The copy we produce should demonstrate that we have a deep understanding of our customers’ businesses.
• Articulate and concise: Our copy should respect our customers’ need for efficiency.
• Authentic and connected: Our copy should reflect our deep connection and commitment to the trades.

Premium quality: The aesthetic of our copy should reflect the premium quality of our software and the level of success contractors can attain through its use.

Through other means

• Community and events (e.g. Pantheon, trade shows, etc.): Events give contractors a source of insights to achieve greater success, gives them a feeling of safety in numbers, gives them a forum for appreciation, and helps improve our connection with them.

What we do internally needs to help with these needs?

• Customer-first: We should make decisions that are aligned with our customers’ best interests.
• Domain expertise: As explained above, we must be experts in our customers’ businesses in order to provide the software and services that will make them successful.
• Connection and empathy

What feelings should our brand evoke?

Our brand should evoke feelings that are strongly associated with our customers’ needs and the manner in which we address them:

• Successful: I can achieve greater financial success with ServiceTitan.
• Free: Success enables greater freedom. I’m also able to manage my business remotely, or disconnect completely for vacation because I know that ServiceTitan is enforcing the best practices I want in my business and enabling accountability for my team.
• Respected (appreciated, worthy, important): I am able to see financial success that is comparable or greater than those of other types of businesses. ServiceTitan helps me look like a professional business with the extraordinary customer experience it provides my customers. I feel appreciated and important because of the dedicated treatment I get from ServiceTitan.
• Powerful, capable, confident, equipped
• Efficient
• In control, aware
• Secure, peace of mind
• Trustworthy, reliable, dependable, transparent, aligned with our customers’ success
• Authentic, connected
• Tailored for contractors
• Not an “indifferent, big-tech” company
• Approachable for all contractors (not just the largest 1%)