Turning service calls into business growth

By Jesse Sanchez. 

Learn how contractors can strengthen their service departments by identifying opportunities during routine maintenance visits. 

For many roofing contractors, service and maintenance work is often viewed as a routine part of operations. Yet when managed strategically, service departments can become powerful drivers of long-term customer relationships and business growth. At The Coffee Shops™ sound stage during the International Roofing Expo (IRE) in Las Vegas, Karen Edwards spoke with Adrian Hilton, a strategy consultant at Service First Solutions, about how contractors can approach service work with a more intentional structure. 

Adrian brings more than a decade of roofing industry experience to his role. Before joining Service First Solutions, he spent over a decade working as an estimator for contractors in the Dallas–Fort Worth area. Today, instead of assembling project estimates, he focuses on helping companies develop stronger internal processes that support profitable service operations. 

Service First Solutions was founded with the goal of helping roofing contractors either establish dedicated maintenance departments or improve the ones they already have. According to Adrian, those improvements often ripple throughout the entire company. “It started with the idea of helping contractors either create a dedicated maintenance department or polish the one that they have,” Adrian explained. “And over the last five years, what we’ve really found is while it all starts with service, eventually it bleeds into the projects team, the administration team, just really all aspects of the company.” 

One of the ways Adrian supports that development is by working directly alongside field technicians. By joining crews during service visits, he helps them identify additional conditions or maintenance needs that may not always be documented during routine work. “Lately, we’ve found some real success in going out to work with the technicians with the purpose of helping them identify those field recommendations that only they have eyes on,” Adrian said. 

Those observations allow contractors to provide more proactive guidance to building owners while also creating opportunities for future work. At the same time, Adrian clarified that his role is not to critique technical installation methods. Instead, he focuses on helping technicians recognize how their field insights can strengthen both customer service and overall company performance. 

Watch the full interview to learn more about how service visits can uncover maintenance opportunities, strengthen customer relationships and support long-term business growth for roofing contractors!