Top 10 Things to Watch For During Your ServiceTitan Go-Live

Going live on ServiceTitan is one of the biggest operational changes a home service company will make. New software, new workflows, new habits, new expectations from your team. It's a lot. And no matter how good your implementation was, the first few weeks are where things either click or fall apart.

We've helped dozens of companies through the ServiceTitan transition, and the same issues come up almost every single time. Not because the companies are doing anything wrong, but because nobody told them what to expect. The implementation team gets you set up. They don't always tell you what's about to go sideways once real calls start coming in.

So here it is. The top 10 things we tell every client to watch for during go-live. If you're about to make the switch, bookmark this. If you already went live and things feel messy, this might explain why.

1. Always Click the Call Bubble

This one sounds so simple that people brush it off. Don't.

When an inbound call comes in through ServiceTitan, a green call bubble pops up on screen. Your CSR needs to click that bubble every single time. If they answer the phone but don't click the bubble, ServiceTitan doesn't know the call was handled. It marks it as "Abandoned," even if the CSR had a five-minute conversation and booked a job.

This is the number one issue we see during transitions. It sounds small, but the ripple effect is massive. Your booking rate will be wrong. Your abandoned call rate will be inflated. Management won't be able to trust any of the call reports. And fixing it after the fact means someone has to manually go back and reclassify every single missed call.

Build the muscle memory now. Phone rings, click the bubble, then greet the customer. It feels redundant for the first few days, but it becomes second nature fast.

2. Classify Every Call Before You Move On

After every inbound call, ServiceTitan needs to know what happened. Did you book a job? Was it a vendor? Wrong number? Spam? If the customer didn't book, why not?

These classifications are what power your reporting. If they're not being done, or they're being done incorrectly, your data is useless. We've worked with companies that ran ServiceTitan for over a year and had zero usable call data because their team skipped this step consistently. By the time anyone realized the reports were off, there were thousands of unclassified calls sitting in the system that nobody could go back and accurately fix.

No call should ever be left unfinished. Click the bubble, handle the call, classify the outcome, move on. Every time.

If your team is unsure which call reason to pick, they should ask. Picking the wrong one is better than leaving it blank, but asking is better than both.

3. The Learning Curve Is Normal (and Temporary)

ServiceTitan looks and feels very different from whatever your team was using before. If you're coming from HouseCall Pro, QuickBooks, pen and paper, or some combination of all three, the first week or two will feel slower. That's expected.

Most people start to feel comfortable within two to three weeks of consistent use. Some features will click right away. Others take a little longer. The important thing is to not let frustration in Week 1 convince anyone that it's always going to feel this way. It won't.

One specific thing to watch for: if your team is used to taking notes during a call and then entering the information into the system afterward, that workflow needs to change. ServiceTitan is designed for real-time data entry during the call. Waiting until after you hang up creates gaps in your data and slows everything down. This is one of the hardest habits to break, especially for CSRs who have been doing it the other way for years.

4. Your Pricebook Is the Foundation

The pricebook is one of the most important tools in ServiceTitan. It's what your technicians use to quote options in the field, what builds your invoices, and what drives downstream processes like replenishment and inventory tracking. If the pricebook isn't right, the problems cascade into every part of the business.

Whether you're launching with ServiceTitan's Pricebook Pro or something custom-built, the pricebook you go live with is a starting point. It is not a finished product. As your team uses it in the field, you're going to find services that need to be added, descriptions that need to be cleaned up, pricing that needs to be adjusted, and materials that need to be linked. That's not a problem. That's how it's supposed to work.

The companies that struggle with their pricebook are the ones that treat it like a one-time setup. The companies that get the most out of it are the ones that accept it for what it is: a living, breathing part of their business that evolves as they grow. The quicker you can make peace with that, the better off you'll be.

5. Calls, Appointments, Jobs, and Projects Are Not the Same

ServiceTitan organizes work in a specific hierarchy, and understanding that hierarchy early will save your team a lot of confusion. Think of it like Russian nesting dolls.

A call comes in. That call leads to a job. That job may require one appointment, or it may require several. And in some cases, multiple jobs can be grouped together under a single project.

Here's a simple example: a customer calls about a broken furnace. That's a call. You book the diagnostic, which creates a job with one appointment. Your technician goes out, diagnoses the issue, and determines the unit needs to be replaced. Now you schedule a second appointment under that same job for the install crew to come back. Same job, two appointments.

Or maybe a property manager calls and needs electrical work, plumbing repairs, and an HVAC tune-up all at the same property. Each of those is its own job, but they can all live under one project tied to that customer.

You don't need to memorize every scenario right now. Just know that these terms mean specific things in ServiceTitan and they're not interchangeable. Getting comfortable with that distinction early will make everything else click faster.

6. If There Isn't a Note, It Didn't Happen

Every meaningful customer interaction should have a pinned note on the job. Every single one.

If a customer calls in to reschedule, don't just reschedule the appointment and move on. Reschedule it, and then leave a pinned note on the job: "Sally called 2/24 to reschedule from Monday to Tuesday. Confirmed new arrival window."

This applies to the office and the field. If a technician promised a customer they'd follow up on a part order, that should be noted. If a dispatcher moved a job because of a scheduling conflict, noted. If a manager waived a fee or made an exception, noted.

ServiceTitan does have an audit trail that tracks system activity, but that's not the same thing as documentation. The audit trail can tell you that an appointment was rescheduled. It can't tell you why, who requested it, or what was communicated to the customer. That context matters, and it only exists if someone writes it down.

Pinned notes are the first thing anyone sees when they open a job. When the next person touches it, whether it's a technician, a dispatcher, or a manager, they should be able to understand exactly what's happened without having to call someone or guess.

7. Keep an Eye on the Dispatch Board

The dispatch board is the heartbeat of your daily operations in ServiceTitan, and in the first few weeks, someone should be reviewing it on an hourly basis. Not just glancing at it. Actually checking it.

What's sitting on hold, and why? Is anything accidentally paused? Did someone book a job to 2028 instead of next Tuesday? Are there jobs in unassigned status at the bottom of the board that nobody is going to get to?

These are the kinds of things that quietly pile up and create chaos if they're not caught early. Tags and color coding on the dispatch board exist for a reason. If your implementation team set up tags for arrival windows, replacement opportunities, or job priorities, use them. They give you at-a-glance visibility without having to click into every job to figure out what's going on.

8. Small Issues Now Become Big Problems Later

It's tempting during the first few weeks to brush off small things. A few unclassified calls here, a missing note there, a job booked under the wrong type. Individually, none of these feel like a big deal. But they compound.

After three months of inconsistent data entry, you'll have reports you can't trust, patterns you can't identify, and a system that feels like it's not delivering on its promise. And at that point, the fix isn't a quick training session. It's a full audit and cleanup effort that takes significantly more time and energy than getting it right from the start.

Here's the thing people forget: ServiceTitan only knows what you tell it. It can't generate accurate reports if calls aren't classified. It won't track your marketing ROI if tracking numbers aren't set up correctly. It can't tell you your real cancellation rate if the workflows aren't being followed. The quality of your data is a direct reflection of how consistently your team follows the process.

When something feels off or someone isn't sure they did something right, they should say something. We'd much rather answer a question in Week 1 than untangle a problem in Month 6.

9. Just Book the Job

When your CSR is on the phone with a customer and they're not 100% sure which job type to pick or which business unit to select, they should just book the job. Pick whatever makes the most sense in the moment, get the customer on the schedule, and move on.

A job booked under the wrong job type is infinitely better than a customer who hung up because your CSR put them on hold for five minutes trying to figure out the system. You can always go back after the call and fix the job type, update the business unit, or fill in the missing details. The customer doesn't need to be on the phone for that part.

One important caveat though: this is not a free pass to do things incorrectly and leave them that way. "Just book it" means get the customer taken care of first, then go back and clean it up. If you don't know what you did wrong, ask. If you're not sure how to fix it, flag it. The goal is to learn from it so the next call goes smoother.

Book the job. Fix it. Learn from it. Repeat.

10. The Dashboard Is Your Best Friend

You don't need to go crazy with custom reports right out of the gate. Almost everything you need for the day-to-day in those first few weeks is already sitting on the ServiceTitan Modular Dashboard, waiting for you.

Technician scorecards, revenue throughout the day, total sales, cancellations, booking rate, marketing scorecard. It's all right there. The dashboard gives leadership a real-time pulse on the business without having to dig through reports or build anything custom.

There will absolutely be a time for detailed KPI tracking and custom reporting. That time is not Week 1. Right now, the priority is making sure your team is comfortable with the basics, that jobs are being booked correctly, and that the data going in is clean. Once those foundations are solid, the reporting will be there to support whatever level of analysis you want to run.

Bookmark it. Check it every morning. It takes 30 seconds and gives you a snapshot of where things stand before the day gets busy.

The Bottom Line

Going live on ServiceTitan is hard. There's no way around that. But the companies that come out the other side in good shape aren't the ones with the fanciest setup or the biggest budget. They're the ones that took the basics seriously from Day 1.

Click the bubble. Classify the call. Write the note. Check the board. Fix what's wrong. Ask when you're stuck.

That's it. It really is that simple, even when it doesn't feel like it.

If your company is getting ready to transition to ServiceTitan and you want to make sure nothing falls through the cracks, reach out to us. We help home service companies implement, optimize, and actually use ServiceTitan the way it was designed to be used.