The Detail Is in the Data: Objective Stats Take the Guesswork Out of Building Your Provider Network

When you need to upgrade the lighting at your business, replace or tune up your HVAC system, or perform any sort of general maintenance or repairs on assets, you don’t want to work with just any service provider. You want to work with a trustworthy specialist who has a verified, objective track record of successful execution, efficiency, and reasonable rates.

In short, you want the best bang for your buck. Provider performance data can help you get just that.

What Is It?
Provider performance data includes a variety of information, from how long a provider takes to complete a work order to how much they charge on average. And that’s just scratching the surface of the data that ServiceChannel gathers.

“We collect all quantifiable performance data,” says James Hemsarth, director of provider development at ServiceChannel. Ultimately, he says, that data — or key performance indicators (KPIs) — fit into four major categories: price, engagement, quality, and speed. The fifth, search score, provides the top-ranked provider for a specific search criteria by considering all four categories.

“Understanding what’s good and what’s bad for each of these KPIs is vitally important to choose the right provider or uphold [your] provider’s performance,” Hemsarth says. “You do that, and you will have timely completed [work orders] with the utmost quality at the lowest cost.”

Why Objective Data Matters
Have you ever hired a provider based on a word-of-mouth recommendation only to find they weren’t a good fit for your business’s needs? Working with the wrong provider can be more than a minor inconvenience: It can quickly turn into an expensive time suck.

That’s the pitfall of subjective referrals — and why objective data on a provider’s price, engagement, quality, and speed are so critical for making the best match.

“The detail is in the data,” Hemsarth says. “You can prefer one provider over another based off experience, but it’s the data that tells the true story.”

Having objective insights can help you make an informed hiring decision and establish a trusted, strategic relationship with a highly qualified provider. To put it another way, relying on hard data — like what ServiceChannel collects — helps alleviate risk.

“We have the performance data on the granular level,” Hemsarth says. “Finding a provider on [your] own would be risky, as [you] would have no performance or cost data to rely on. In addition to the general KPIs, we also collect qualifying data (licenses, number of technicians, coverage area, [certificates of insurance], truck count, etc.). We’re able to maintain all of this information for our clients.”

The Best of the Best

To make the most of provider data, you need more than one individual provider’s stats. You need to know how the KPIs of different providers stack up against each other so you can find the best match for your business’s needs.

At ServiceChannel, the pool is large: More than 70,000 high-performing service providers across a variety of trades work on the ServiceChannel Marketplace platform. Providers are listed by several different groupings, such as trades serviced, coverage area, spend, and more. To make choosing the right provider even easier, ServiceChannel also gives each one an overall rating based on their various performance data so you can see, at a glance, how one provider compares with another.

These tools can help you build your network and optimize it over time. That’s because you can continually compare your providers — from electricians and HVAC technicians to general contractors, plumbers, and more — against the best of the best in the market. That data visibility also holds service providers accountable for their performance and empowers them to work more efficiently, which saves you and your business time and money. And when a provider performs well, that shows in their stats, which in turn helps them build their network of customers.

“Having the performance data is the secret sauce in building and maintaining a top quartile provider network,” Hemsarth says. “Too often, [a] provider say[s], ‘Yes, I can do that,’ only to fall short. We have the actual historical performance data that proves the providers can perform fast, at a high level, and at a lower cost (comparatively speaking to their cohort).”

Are you looking to level up your service provider network? Visit the ServiceChannel Marketplace to find top providers across a variety of industries and areas.