Memberships offer a powerful way to build lasting relationships with your customers while creating a steady stream of recurring revenue for your business. But with multiple ways to design a membership program, it can be difficult to maximize value and determine return on investment.
In the next installation of the Back 2 Basics Webinar Series, Memberships 101, we break down everything you need to know about memberships and recurring services with expert advice from Joel Pachefsky, Senior Program Facilitator at ServiceTitan.
You’ll learn how to:
Master the basic setup of memberships and recurring services, including sales, renewal, and billing processes.
Utilize the memberships dashboard and reporting to track customer data.
Memberships - Common Terms
“Memberships are extremely customizable, which makes them confusing,” Pachefsky acknowledges. Because of the confusing nature, he launches the webinar by explaining common terms and where to find them in ServiceTitan.
Term | What is it? | Where can I find it in ServiceTitan? |
Membership | A loyalty program you sell to your customers. | Settings, customer, location, follow-up screen. |
Recurring service | The “visits” included with a membership (i.e., 2 visits/year). | Settings, membership types, follow-up screen. |
Sales task | Pricebook item used when you sell a new membership. The item that actually kicks off the membership. | Pricebook, within a membership type. |
Renewal task | The pricebook item you use to renew an expiring membership for a customer who has a fixed duration membership. | Pricebook, within a membership type. |
Billing template | The template you create in the membership setup, where you create a new pricebook item that you use to bill a membership that has any kind of billing frequency that is not upfront (AKA any kind of recurring billing). | Pricebook, within a membership type. |
Invoice template | The template you create in the recurring service of the work your tech actually performs when at the “visit.” | Recurring service (alone or within a membership type). |
Memberships can be set up in multiple ways, including:
Upfront: Customer pays for the entire membership once at the time of sale. Membership expires, and you need a renewal task.
Monthly: Billed initially, then customer pays monthly. Pachefsky describes this as a Netflix model.
Annually: Billed initially, then on an annual basis. (Think Amazon Prime.)
All setups require a sales task for when you sell the initial membership, but only the upfront option requires a renewal task.
Building Memberships in ServiceTitan
Before building memberships, you need to build out a category in your pricebook. This allows technicians to sell memberships out in the field. To build a category:
Go into Pricebook, select Categories on the left side, and click “Add Category.”
Add a Subcategory for Billing + Renewals, but hide it in mobile. (This is how you get a Renewal Task in your pricebook. You should hide the category, because you don’t want techs using it in the field.)
Next, create a job type by clicking settings, then job type. Add a job type for membership tuneups.
“Priority is generally going to be low for membership tuneups,” Pachefsky says. “If someone calls and says, ‘Hey, I need a new piece of equipment,’ and that could be a $15,000 ticket, you’re probably going to want to bump that recurring service. Setting the priority level lets your dispatcher know it’s a low priority.”
You’ll also want to check the box for, “Make a Recurring Service Event required when booking jobs if Recurring Service Events exist for this location.” This helps track how many services on the plan have been used.
Then, build your recurring service.
Go to Settings, Recurring Service Type, Create Recurring Service Type.
Choose Business Unit, Job Type, and Priority Level.
Set scheduling settings. For example, spring maintenance for HVAC would be set seasonally, likely in March or April.
Create an invoice template that includes the services the customer gets with their maintenance and the materials required.
Repeat this process for each recurring service type. For example, an HVAC maintenance plan would include an A/C tuneup and a furnace tuneup.
“I like to call all these things membership pre-work,” Pachefsky says. “Doing these things in advance makes it easier to create the membership.”
Finally, it’s time to build a membership:
Go to Settings, Membership Types, Create Membership Type.
Once you go to Create Membership Type, you’ll be prompted step-by-step to do the following:
Name the membership.
Add a tag.
Select duration (fixed, ongoing) and billing options (upfront, monthly, annually).
Set discount settings (all services, business units, categories).
Select “single location” for individual memberships.
Next, input prices for each billing duration combination you created.
Add sales tasks, renewal tasks, and billing templates based on your membership structure.
Add recurring services.
Review membership summary to ensure the setup is exactly how you want it.
Note: For a more in-depth screen-share walk-through of these steps, watch the full on-demand webinar.
To actively manage memberships, you need to book recurring services, bill them out (set automatic or create a billing sequence), and renew expiring memberships in the follow-up screen.
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Reporting
The memberships dashboard offers insight into all aspects of your membership program, including:
Growth and retention
Recurring service event competition rate
Membership sales and conversions
Sales by technician
Sales by office staff
Value of membership customers
If you don’t have this dashboard, go to Settings, TitanExchange, Library, then Dashboards. Type “Membership” in the search bar. Click the Membership dashboard, then select “Pull” in the top-right corner. The dashboard should then be available in your account.
For more, check out this Membership Audit video tutorial, which addresses common pain points on why memberships might not be working well.
