Billy Stevens returns with billyGO “plumbing by APPointment”
Grapevine-based billyGO is poised to disrupt the $400 billion home services industry and make getting your broken garbage disposal fixed as easy as hailing an Uber. It’s about time!
The all-too-familiar drill now is: 1) call for service, 2) wait on hold, 3) explain the problem in detail, 4) receive a four-hour window for your APPointment on a day convenient for the company. You arrange your schedule to be at home, and when the day arrives, you hang around the house waiting for the call that tells when you can actually expect help to arrive.
Using the free billyGO Online Scheduler, homeowners schedule service APPointment at the precise hour of the day they choose. No phone calls, no waiting on hold, no mixed messages, no wasting half a day or more waiting at home.
Flipping the home services industry upside down
billyGO is the brainchild of founder and CEO, Billy Stevens, an industry trend-setter who has lived in this community since 1985. The fully app-based approach brings unprecedented operating efficiency to the home services industry, while providing a greatly improved customer experience and better prices.
Stevens developed the concept based on years of experience. Between 1996 and 2011 he built Berkeys Plumbing, Heating and Air Conditioning from a two-plumber shop to one of the largest home services companies in the region. He sold it to a private investment firm in 2011.
“After I sold Berkeys I had time to step back and see things I missed when I was caught up in the day-to-day,” Stevens said. From that introspection, and considerable research, he developed the game-changing approach for billyGO, and in the process flipped conventional home services management thinking upside down.
Game-changing business model
Stevens says work flow in traditional home service businesses is highly inefficient, which means everybody pays more for service than they should. “There are 30 or more steps that employees must take to complete a transaction from start to finish, most of them involving needless duplication,” he said.
The billyGO Online Scheduler-based business model cuts the number of human touch points to fewer than five, including the hands-on work of the techs in the field. Every stage of the transaction is streamlined and highly automated, from scheduling and dispatching through payment processing.
That reduces administrative time and slashes operating costs by about 30 percent, a huge reduction that differentiates billyGO from other service providers. The result is that consumers get the dual benefits of more control of their time and reduced pricing.
While lower prices are baked into the billyGO business model, the overriding objective is to get the job done right the first time, as efficiently as possible. “Everybody likes a bargain; great service doesn’t have to come at a premium price, no matter where you live,” Stevens said.
Reduced overhead has a big impact on employees, too. “Our high efficiency allows us to attract top professionals and provide industry-leading training and opportunities for advancement. Well-trained employees with strong skills get the job done faster without the need for do-overs,” Stevens added.
How billyGO works – it’s about time!
Try to think of a time you’ve heard a plumbing company say, “please don’t call us.”
That’s the message from billyGO. Use the app to schedule your own APPointment in one-hour time slots, such as 1-2 p.m. or 8-9 a.m.
billyGO’s technology makes scheduling quick, easy, and so efficient the company guarantees APPointment times. If the technician is late, billyGO deducts from the price of the service.
The app automatically assigns billyGO techs to jobs using an algorithm and then notifies the customer. All billyGO technicians are carefully-screened employees, not contractors. Customers receive the name and photo of who will be coming to their homes, and can track location and movement along the technician’s route, using the app.
billyGO launched in August with full-service residential plumbing and will add more services next year. Stevens said public response has been enthusiastic, and not just by homeowners – realtors find it especially convenient.
Stevens is excited about bringing his new business to his old Northeast Tarrant neighborhood. “We are locally owned and operated, unlike some of the big-name home service companies you see on TV all the time,” he said.
This article originally appeared in the October 2018 edition of Southlake Style Magazine
