Mr. Electric® of Huntsville eliminates ridealongs, increases closing rates, and boosts average job sales by 15%

Customer: Mr. Electric® of Huntsville

Industry: Home Services

Result: ~7% increased closing rate, ~15% increase in average job sales

When homeowners and businesses across the US and Canada need dependable, expert electrical services, Mr. Electric® is there. Since 1994, Mr. Electric’s network of locally owned and independently operated franchise owners has strived to offer an outstanding customer experience. The company needed a better solution to improve communications and reach more customers, and their search brought them to Rilla.

The challenges

Service industries often rely on ridealongs to guarantee consistent sales messaging and an optimal customer experience.

“We need to have the marketing, we need to have our numbers in order, but how your service techs are running your business and what they're representing out in the community is very important," said Mr. Electric® Sales Manager Ryan Neal.

But ridealongs were a secondhand thought at Mr. Electric. They were hard to schedule, and technicians weren’t always interested. “It’s always hard to get somebody to do a ridealong,” said Franchise Owner Keith Pinkerton.

In addition, the leadership team knew communication between service professionals and managers was necessary for the company to continue to scale. “Scalability should be top of mind for every business owner. You’ve got to talk about growth, and that comes from the success of your service professionals in the field,” Ryan said.

Seeing real-time reactions without ridelongs

Improving scalability and communications between service professionals and managers were top of mind for the Mr. Electric® of Huntsville team, and they found an answer to both with Rilla.

“Leads are like gold. We have to ensure that our processes work properly throughout the entire service call, and Rilla allows us to do that,” Ryan explained.

With backend support from Rilla, Mr. Electric used data to present the benefits to their technicians, framing the technology as a personal trainer for service calls. “As a service professional, you can listen to all of your service calls, which allows you to say, ‘I need to get better at X, Y, and Z,’ and then implement that in your next service call,” Ryan said.

Their team culture played a big role in their success. They don’t micromanage their service professionals, which allows them to roll out new technology more effectively. Now, Rilla allows Mr. Electric® to monitor every aspect of a service call without the need for physical ridealongs.

“You can ridealong with anybody,” said Operations Manager Nathan Smith. “We’re seeing in real-time what they’re saying, what they’re doing, and the customer’s reaction. We used to do role play, but now it’s like you get a live version of that customer.”

The results

Anyone can be successful in sales when communicating correctly. The ability to review and improve communication has boosted closing rates by about 7%. Job averages were previously around $2,000 per job and have increased by $200–$300.

Besides improving closing rates and average sales, adopting Rilla has increased accountability throughout the organization. Not everything goes as planned on a service call, yet Rilla enables managers to see whether their service professionals are meeting the high standard of care that they get in training.

‍“It can be hard to pinpoint why a service professional isn’t doing as well as others. Before, we would have to get in the van with that service professional and ride with them all day. Rilla eliminates some of those unknowns,” Keith said.

“I would recommend Rilla to anyone in the home service business,” he continued. “It also gives you a little bit of security on the liability aspect because you now have recordings of what’s said to this customer out in their homes. It doesn’t lie, so for that reason, it’s a good tool to utilize to coach your people.”

Mr. Electric® managers at every level use Rilla to coach better, allowing everyone to become more successful.

“It’s benefited me as far as coaching and helping those guys, and it’s increased their KPIs, which is better for all of us. So it’s just a benefit for everybody,” Nathan said.

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