Customer Story

Sometimes customers didn’t understand what they were paying for. Now, they have a record of everything in one place.

James Mugavero, K&R Mechanical

In 2022 K&R Mechanical Services became one of the first mechanical contractors to implement ServiceTrade’s project management capabilities, enabling them to bring a new level of visibility and customer service to their project work.

James Mugavero, K&R’s VP of Service, joined the ServiceTrade team to share how the platform as a whole, especially the ability to manage projects, has leveled up their operations and customer experience.

5 Questions with K&R Mechanical’s VP of Service, James Mugavero

What benefits have you and your team experienced since implementing ServiceTrade?

It’s confidence, I think. On all sides. As the service manager, I’m confident that my technicians have enough information to go out and perform the tasks they’re given without having to make phone calls back to home base, saying, “Hey, what am I doing out here, again?” Everything they need is right there in ServiceTrade. And techs are confident that they have all the information needed. They know what they’re doing. Customers have full transparency, as well. They can see the full timeline of work completed all in one shot. So there’s not a lot of back-and-forth. It’s awesome.

What type of back-and-forth was there with customers before ServiceTrade? Were there disputes?

Sometimes. Because we hadn’t yet achieved the transparency we were striving for. Sometimes customers were confused. It wasn’t necessarily that they didn’t want to pay, they just didn’t understand what they were paying for. Now, they have a record of everything in one place.

We just sent a new customer his Service Link, and he’d never seen anything like it. He was used to getting a piece of paper with some handwritten notes and an invoice in the mail. Here, he could see exactly what we did with notes and pictures and videos included. He said that it made his life so much easier because he had a clear record to show ownership. Then, when he received the quote, it was familiar. It had the same pictures, the unit, the information. Everything was there, and it was an easy yes. He could just click “approved” and move on.

It would be difficult for our customers to go anywhere else and receive the same level of service.

Let’s talk about Project Management. How have ServiceTrade’s project management capabilities helped keep your projects on track?

As we’re progressing through that project, we can track how far along we are. At the end of each day, we get a report back from the technician, and we’re able to update our percentage of completion. We have projects that go on for weeks, some for months, so being able to have that kind of view is a KPI for me to understand that we got one week left, but we’re only 50% into this project. And it’s a three-month project. And we only have 50% of it completed, it’s probably something that needs a little bit more attention to figure out what happened, what went wrong, and how we can catch up.

How about from a cost standpoint?

Knowing how the project’s doing from a cost perspective is very critical. When you’re trying to stay on budget, being able to track your spending alongside the project’s progress and see how everything is lining up is very beneficial. I can see where we’re over and where we’re going to come in under budget.

And these are fixed-fee jobs, right? If the budget is 8 hours of labor and you can deliver it in 6, you just saved 2 hours of labor that you can deploy somewhere else.
Yes. And we always try to over-serve our customers. When we can manage our time appropriately, we’re going to get in and out, make the margin we were asked to make, and use any extra labor time cleaning things up and taking care of anything the customer needs. There are always little things. Like, “Hey? When you guys are out here can you take a look at this?” I can cover a lot of that without having to send the customer an invoice for just that. Everybody’s taken care of, and everybody is happy.

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