Sean…Sean…Sean. Come on, it’s time to get up,” my dad said, as he was shaking me from my sleep. “OK, OK, I’m getting up,” I told my father. As the words came out of my mouth, I knew full well I wasn’t getting out of my warm, cozy bed. I waited to hear the bedroom door close, and I quickly pulled the warm comforter up to my ears.

I thought to myself, "I’ve got five more minutes."

As I dozed off into my delightful dreams, I was could hear my father shouting from the bottom of the stairs.

“Sean! Let's go! Get out of bed!” he yelled.

I paid very little attention to his yelling, knowing I still had another five minutes to dream away. Two seconds later, I heard those footsteps stomping up the staircase.

“Oh no!” I said, as I jumped out of bed quickly and began to throw on my work clothes.

Thump, Thump.

“Sean, are you awake?"

“Yeah, Dad, I’m awake. I’m getting dressed,” I said, as if he was crazy for thinking otherwise.

I quickly got dressed, freshened up, scarfed down my breakfast and hopped into the passenger side of my dad’s truck. We made our usual commute up the mountain and down into the town of Nyack, where he parked the truck on his favorite side street and began making his phone calls for the day.

During these days, my father had one of those huge yellow and black, 8-inch Motorola cell phones. He reached into his briefcase, and took out his black and white marble notebook and began to dial away. As he would speak to each person, he would frantically write all of the information down about the customer. He was flipping back and forth throughout his book, trying to find some customers that he had spoken to earlier in the week to follow up and make future appointments.

“Man, this looks like a very complicated, and frustrated system he has going on here," I thought to myself. "There has to be an easier way.”

Back in those days, that was the way every plumber ran his or her business. They had a pen and pad, and wrote all the information down about the customer and their problems. Nowadays, things have changed tremendously in the time of technology. Everyone has their smartphones, tablets and computers in their offices and in their trucks.

The other day, I was surfing the internet to see what options were available for us plumbers and our companies when it comes to computer software programs. I was scrolling down the page and I saw, “ServiceTitan raises $18 million.”

"Whoa!" I thought to myself, "What is this company all about?"

So, I clicked and I began to read further.

“ServiceTitan raises $18 million Series at $100 million valuation from Bessemer Venture Partners.”

“Pretty impressive,” I thought to myself.

I got to find out more about this company and what services they provided. After some digging, I found the CEO Ara Mahdessian's contact information. The following day, I scheduled a phone conference with Ara, and one week later we began our discussion about his company.

Ara, also a co-founder of the company, and Vahe Kuzoyan, co-founder and president, both moved to the U.S. when they were very young. Ara’s father was a residential contractor, while Vahe’s father was a plumber. When both Ara graduated from the University of Southern California (USC) and Vahe from Stanford University,Vahe’s father asked them to find plumbing software to help better manage his plumbing company. Vahe looked everywhere, but couldn’t find software that would benefit his father’s company. So, he did the next best thing and created the software himself.

For the first five to six years, they began working on ServiceTitan from Vahe’s father’s garage.

Ara said, “ServiceTitan now is meant to be a one-stop shop for plumbing, HVAC, sewer and drain and even electrical companies.”

He began to explain to me what ServiceTitan does.

“ServiceTitan is a mobile, cloud-based software platform that helps home service companies streamline their operations, improve customer service and help grow their business,” he continued. “The software includes intelligent dispatching, reporting, marketing management tools, mobile connectivity for field techs and even QuickBooks.”

I asked Ara what they had planned on doing with the $18 million in funding. He said, “The $18 million in funding will allow ServiceTitan to make strategic technical hires, introduce more companies to the ServiceTitan solution, and further expand its customer support infrastructure.”

ServiceTitan is the preferred software program for hundreds of the most successful companies, such as Mr. Rooter and NexStar Network. After speaking with Ara about his company, I decided to dive in with ServiceTitan to see some of this fascinating software.

“Wow, ServiceTitan is no joke,” I thought to myself.

They have everything you can imagine, all built into one software program. They really mastered the customer database system and dispatch features. You can now store all of your customer information right on your computer, from the name of each customer to their address, previous work done, phone numbers, email address and much, much more!

I’m only scratching the surface here, guys, when explaining to you the benefits of this wonderful software program. I know many of you out there are doing the same thing that my father was doing with the pen and paper.

Do yourself a favor and drop that pen and stop writing in your notepads and check out ServiceTitan for yourselves by visiting their website, www.servicetitan.com. It’s time to upgrade your customer service database methods! 

Sean McCormack is co-owner of BMC Plumbing and Heating Inc. He can be reached by email at seanmccormack99@yahoo.com; phone 845-596-7770; Twitter @seantheplumber1; and Periscope @seantheplumber. Visit Sean’s website at www.seantheplumber.com.