VoltPro Electric Case Study

The Challenge

Rick Delgado built VoltPro Electric from a one-van operation into a 20-technician company over 14 years. The business had two distinct revenue streams: construction electrical work (panel installs, commercial wiring, new builds) and residential/commercial service calls (outlet repairs, breaker troubleshooting, lighting installs). Both were profitable. The problem was that they operated as if they were two separate companies.

Twelve technicians were assigned to construction. Eight handled service calls. Each group had its own dispatcher, its own scheduling system, and its own workflow. Construction schedules lived in spreadsheets maintained by a project coordinator. Service calls were booked through ServiceTitan, which VoltPro used for invoicing and customer management but not for routing or dispatch.

The two systems never talked to each other.

The consequences showed up every day in a pattern Rick found infuriating. A construction technician would finish a panel install at 2 pm, 15 minutes away from a service call customer who had been told the earliest available appointment was tomorrow morning. The construction tech sat idle for the rest of the afternoon. The service call customer waited another 18 hours. Both the technician’s time and the customer’s patience were wasted because no one in the office could see the gap and fill it.

Rick tracked the idle time for three weeks and found the numbers were worse than he expected:

• 12-15 hours per week of technician idle time: Construction projects regularly finished ahead of schedule or had delays that freed up technicians for hours at a time. Those hours went unused because the service call dispatcher had no visibility into construction schedules.
• Service call backlog of 1-2 days: Even with 8 dedicated service call technicians handling 60-80 dispatches per day, VoltPro couldn’t offer same-day service for most requests. The backlog frustrated customers and pushed urgent jobs to competitors.
• Two dispatchers, twice the overhead: Each dispatcher earned $52,000 per year. Rick was paying over $100,000 annually for a dispatch function that could theoretically be handled by one person with the right tools.
• No real-time visibility across teams: When a customer called asking for an ETA, the dispatcher could only answer for their assigned group. If a construction tech had been reassigned to cover a service call, neither dispatcher had a clear picture of where that technician was.

The 65% same-day completion rate for service calls was the metric that bothered Rick most. More than a third of customers who called for service had to wait until the next day, and in a market where competitors advertised same-day availability, every delayed appointment was a potential lost customer.

The Solution

Rick evaluated three routing platforms before choosing Upper. The deciding factor was Upper’s ability to handle mixed scheduling: long-duration construction jobs with fixed time windows alongside short service calls that needed to fill gaps throughout the day. Other platforms he tested were built for one pattern or the other, not both.

The implementation took one week. Rick loaded all 20 technicians into Upper, regardless of whether they were construction or service call specialists. Construction jobs were entered as anchor stops with long durations (4-8 hours) and fixed start windows. Service calls were added as flexible stops with 30-60 minute durations that the optimizer could slot between and around the construction anchors.

One Dashboard, One Dispatcher, 20 Technicians

The most immediate change was operational simplicity. Instead of two dispatchers managing two systems, a single dispatcher managed all 20 technicians from Upper’s dispatch dashboard. Construction jobs and service calls appeared on the same screen, color-coded by type. The dispatcher could see every technician’s schedule, current location, and available gaps at a glance.

Rick’s second dispatcher transitioned to a customer service role, handling estimates and follow-ups instead of routing. The dispatch function that had required two full-time employees now required one, with better results.

The unified view eliminated the blind spots that had caused idle time. When a construction technician finished a job early, the dispatcher could immediately see nearby service calls from the queue and assign one to fill the gap. The technician received the updated route on their phone and drove directly to the next stop.

Hybrid Route Optimization for Mixed Workloads

The core of VoltPro’s transformation was Upper’s ability to optimize routes that combined fundamentally different job types. Construction projects were anchored: a technician needed to arrive at a specific site by 7 am and stay until 3 pm. Service calls were flexible: a customer needed an electrician sometime between 8 am and 6 pm, and the job would take 30-45 minutes.

Upper’s optimizer treated construction jobs as fixed blocks and filled the surrounding time with service calls based on proximity and time windows. A construction tech finishing at 2 pm on the west side of Orlando would automatically be assigned an afternoon service call in the same area, rather than driving back to the shop empty.

The results were visible in the first month. Construction technicians who had previously averaged 6.5 billable hours per day increased to 7.5 hours because their downtime was filled with service calls. Service call technicians maintained their existing workload, but the overflow that had been pushing jobs to the next day was now absorbed by construction techs during their gaps.

Real-Time Reassignment When Plans Change

Electrical work is unpredictable. An inspection fails and a technician needs an extra two hours on site. A customer cancels a morning appointment. A commercial client calls with an emergency that needs someone within the hour. Before Upper, these changes triggered a cascade of phone calls between dispatchers and technicians.

With Upper’s live tracking, the dispatcher could see the real-time impact of any disruption. If a construction job ran long, the service calls assigned to that technician’s gap time were automatically flagged. The dispatcher reassigned them to the next nearest available technician with a few clicks. The affected technician received the update on their phone. The customer received an automated notification with the new ETA.

The customer notification feature also improved the service call experience. Customers received a text when a technician was en route, with an estimated arrival time. For residential customers who needed to be home for the appointment, this eliminated the “wait around all morning” frustration that had been generating complaints.

The Impact

VoltPro Electric’s transformation was not about working harder. It was about making visible the capacity that had always existed but been hidden behind two incompatible scheduling systems. The 20 technicians did not work longer hours. They worked the same hours with fewer gaps between jobs.

The 10+ hours of weekly idle time that Rick had tracked before implementation were almost entirely recaptured. Construction technicians filled their gaps with service calls. Service call technicians no longer faced a next-day backlog because overflow was distributed across the full team. The combined effect was a 25% increase in service call capacity without hiring a single additional technician.

Same-day service completion jumped from 65% to 88%. For customers calling with a broken outlet or a tripped breaker, the difference between “we can have someone there this afternoon” and “our earliest opening is tomorrow” was often the difference between booking with VoltPro or calling a competitor.

The revenue impact was substantial. Rick calculated that the recaptured idle time generated approximately $9,000 per month in additional billable work. That figure came from service calls that would have either been delayed (reducing customer satisfaction) or lost to competitors (reducing revenue). Combined with the $52,000 annual salary savings from consolidating to one dispatcher, the total financial impact exceeded $160,000 per year.

VoltPro still uses ServiceTitan for invoicing, estimates, and customer records. But scheduling and dispatch now run entirely through Upper. The two tools serve complementary functions without the overlap and confusion that had defined the old workflow.

Rick has since begun cross-training his technicians so that more construction specialists can handle common service calls during their gap time. The flexibility has made the entire team more versatile and the business more resilient to schedule changes.

Performance Metrics