Make Technology Earn Its Keep

A technician sits in a customer’s driveway, resetting a password so he can close out a job. The software was supposed to save him time. Right now, it’s costing him.

That scene is more common than most cleaning and restoration owners would like to admit. Technology can schedule crews, document damage, follow up with customers and speed up invoicing. It can also bury a simple task under logins, apps and extra steps.

James Hatfield, chief revenue officer at LiveSwitch, an instant video communication company based in Apex, North Carolina, came to technology from the field. He ran painting and power washing crews for years and fully expected to stay in that work for life.

“My father built the house I was born in, so I was always good with my hands,” Hatfield said. “That’s really what I thought I would do for the rest of my life.”

That background shapes how he responds when an owner says the company needs better technology.

Start with what you already use

Before recommending anything, Hatfield asks what a company uses today, why it uses it and what the owner hopes a new tool will accomplish. With AI generating so much noise, he wants everyone working from the same realistic baseline.

“You start talking to enough tech companies, they’re going to tell you whatever they need to tell you to get you to swipe a credit card and you find out that it doesn’t work that way,” he said. “That is the problem with technology, I find, that it gets overhyped.”

He points to small, practical wins instead. Few facilities workers enjoy typing up work orders, for example. Handing that writing off to AI removes a chore nobody on the crew will miss.

Why veterans have the edge

Owners with 20 or 30 years in the business are often the most skeptical. Hatfield believes they also stand to gain the most.

“AI can’t do anything without the help of what you feed it,” he explained. An experienced owner who walks a job on video, talking through each step, gives AI the raw material to document processes and procedures that otherwise live only in that owner’s head.

That record matters for anyone hoping to take a real vacation or eventually sell the company. Hatfield recommends Chuck Blakeman’s book Making Money Is Killing Your Business to owners thinking about that kind of transition.

He compares the learning curve to his first paint sprayers. He skipped the instructions and made his share of mistakes early on. Before long, he couldn’t work without them.

The nose test

When the friction comes from the people building the tools, Hatfield delivers a different message. Engineers tend to over-engineer, he said, so he asks them to picture a contractor up on a ladder wearing thick gloves, holding a phone in a protective case.

“You need to be able to use our technology with your nose … If you can’t do that, then you over-engineered it,” Hatfield said.

In his view, good technology works like a truck that starts with one push of a button. It has to be easy to use and solve a real problem, such as saving trips in the truck or cutting the time crews spend documenting before-and-after conditions on site.

Pick one and start experimenting

For owners ready to try AI, Hatfield’s first piece of advice is simple. Choose a platform, tell it what kind of business you run and ask what it can do for you.

From there, look for tools made for the work. Software a company already pays for may have AI features built in. Other products are designed with contractors in mind from the start.

“I always say play with it,” Hatfield said.

Watch the complete interview or listen to the podcast below