How to Double Your Average Service Ticket Now

The average ticket—or the average transaction size— is a big number in the home service game. This is your revenue per completed transaction and a number that tells you a lot about where your business operation is going.

But how do you increase that number? You have options. Today, I’m going to go over four ways that Wilson doubled the average service ticket and how you can get that same growth.

We went from a $1,100 average plumbing ticket to $2,900 by leaning on these key areas.

And that growth is attainable for all service industries.

Key Takeaways

• Service Selection: Focus on services that can drive bigger transactions.
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• Training: Continuous improvement in staff training can lead to better service delivery and increased upselling.
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• Staffing: Hire personnel who can effectively communicate and educate customers about various options.
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• Pricing: Regularly reassess and adjust your pricing strategy to reflect the true value of your services and cover desired profit margins.

Why You Want a Higher Average Service Ticket

Part of increasing that average ticket value is knowing what your biggest, most valuable services are doing. For Wilson, we identified six core services in the plumbing space that moved the needle.

And remember: Service ticket is the amount you did over a period divided by the number of invoices. If you did $10,000 over ten invoices then you’ve got an average ticket of $1,000.

Playing the law of averages means your high-price services will bump up that final number.

So, industry matters a lot in this. Plumbing has a higher average ticket than, say, landscaping. However, landscaping is going to have more invoices.

Numbers game.

Don’t be afraid to focus and push those big-ticket services. Make them a core of your package. Offer discounts, and get customer engagement up. Cross-selling is the way to go.

A Training Investment

One of the most overlooked aspects of the service ticket pipeline is training your technicians—primarily in the sales department. If you talk to the average home service tech you’ll find they aren’t always salesmen first.

But that is where training and education become crucial.

Ask these questions: Who's performing installs? Who's the guy that's going out and estimating it? How much training have they gotten?  

How does your pricing structure work? How much are you charging an hour? That's a big one. People charge as little as 80 bucks an hour, and as much as a thousand dollars an hour, but it all makes a difference.

Train those techs in sales, and focus on your core business aspects.

For Wilson, our training is a multi-week onboarding process, along with training each week, team by team—Role playing, invoice breakdown, the good, and the bad.

Don’t be afraid to get dirty. It’ll help your techs and raise that average ticket.

Hiring Your Needs

Sometimes you can’t always train the skills you need in your current people. That is when you need to think about quality of service, upsell ability, and getting people who are effective communicators. Hire the best people for the job.

Are you hiring people who want to educate customers and who want to help them understand what the different options are inside their homes?

Having that closer is huge. This is another avenue where constant training becomes key. At Wilson we’ve made huge use of AI training for techs and CSRs with Avoca, getting them those repetitions needed to improve.

The Price Is Right

The biggest direct factor on that average ticket number is going to be your prices. The cost of those core services you’re going to focus on needs to be absolutely right.

If you're priced at 200 an hour or 100 dollars an hour then it's going to be difficult to get to a large average ticket. This doesn’t mean gouging your price and chasing that magic number just to make the line go up.

What it does mean is using some math and the likes of a flat rate calculator on services. We use one in our warehouse and if you have ServiceTitan then you already have access to something similar.

This way, you know what you should charge every house based on your overhead and tax wages.

Don’t leave money on the table—or take it off just because you want the big number.

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