Service Excellence is strengthening PRESS PLAY as its flagship learning platform for home service companies, using a recent Canada training visit with The Gentlemen Pros to show how the platform helps contractors align sales, service, technician communication, customer experience, company culture, and manager reinforcement.
PRESS PLAY is a contractor training and learning platform created by Service Excellence for home service companies. The platform helps owners, managers, salespeople, technicians, and service teams use a shared language for customer conversations, trust-building, sales communication, service delivery, and follow-up.
For home service companies, customer experience is not only a service issue. It is a culture issue. Every call, every estimate, every service visit, every explanation, and every follow-through moment teaches the customer what kind of company they are dealing with. Over time, those repeated experiences become the company’s reputation. That reputation becomes the brand.
The training took place in Calgary, Canada, on May 23-24, with 25 team members from plumbing, electrical, HVAC, and management participating. The workshop focused on PRESS PLAY FOR TECHNICIANS, providing The Gentlemen Pros a structured approach to train new team members and equip managers to reinforce the training post-session.
The Canadian workshop focused on one of the most common problems in contractor training: what happens after the training event ends. Many home service companies invest in training, see a burst of energy for a few days, and then watch old habits return once the team is back in the field. PRESS PLAY was designed to address that gap. Rather than treating training as a one-time workshop, PRESS PLAY is structured to help home service companies teach, coach, inspect, and reinforce the behaviors that affect customer trust, revenue, culture, and brand reputation.
Led by Service Excellence founder and CEO Todd Liles, the workshop brought salespeople, technicians, and managers together around a common customer standard. The goal was not simply to introduce new techniques. It was to help The Gentlemen Pros build a more consistent customer experience from the first sales conversation through the completed service call.
That consistency matters because a contractor’s brand is not built only by logos, advertising, trucks, or taglines. It is built on what customers come to believe after repeated interactions with the company. When a salesperson communicates clearly, when a technician respects the home, when a manager reinforces the right behaviors, and when the company keeps its promises, trust becomes part of the brand.
“For a contractor, the customer experience happens one conversation at a time,” said Liles. “That does not change whether the company is doing one million dollars or one hundred fifty million dollars. What changes is the complexity around the business. PRESS PLAY stays focused on the part that has to remain consistent, which is how your people communicate, build trust, and serve the customer in the home.”
The Gentlemen Pros, with locations in Calgary, Edmonton, and Red Deer, has worked with Service Excellence on multiple training initiatives over the years. The company brought Liles back to Canada to train newer team members and help managers reinforce the PRESS PLAY standards after the workshop.
“We’ve worked with Service Excellence for many years, so when it was time to reset and reinforce our culture, they were the first call we made,” said Brham Trim, CEO of The Gentlemen Pros. “As we’ve grown and brought new leaders into the organization, it became important to make sure everyone was aligned around the same customer-first philosophy.”
This return engagement highlights the training's significance. The Gentlemen Pros’ continued work with Service Excellence points to a long-term training relationship built around standards, field execution, culture, reputation, and manager support.
Service Excellence implemented a six-week reinforcement sprint in the PRESS PLAY engagement, aiding The Gentlemen Pros' managers in coaching and supporting post-training behaviors. The structure includes short weekly sessions, direct manager follow-up, and practical field assignments connected to technician performance.
“What I appreciate about PRESS PLAY is that it isn’t focused on selling more. It’s focused on serving better,” Trim said. “The training gave our team a common language and a consistent approach to serving customers, which is critical for protecting and strengthening our brand. For us, this wasn’t just training. It was an investment in our people, our culture, and the experience we deliver to every customer.”
According to Liles, that reinforcement is what gives training a better chance of becoming part of the company’s operating rhythm. “The goal is not to overwhelm people with more information,” Liles said. “The goal is to make the training usable. When a manager knows what to look for, how to coach it, and how to hold people accountable without making it feel heavy, the training has a much better chance of showing up in the field.”
PRESS PLAY is designed for home service companies that want sales and service to speak the same language. In many contracting businesses, salespeople are trained one way, technicians another, and managers are left to connect the dots. Customers do not experience departments separately. They experience one company. That is why PRESS PLAY focuses on alignment across sales, service, technician communication, leadership, customer experience, and culture. The platform helps contractors connect the people who sell the promise with those who keep it.
For smaller contractors, PRESS PLAY creates a clear foundation for customer conversations, technician professionalism, and service communication. For larger contractors, it gives leadership a repeatable language that can be taught, coached, and reinforced across multiple departments, locations, and teams.
“As contractors grow, their operations become more complex,” said Liles. “But the standard for a great customer experience should not become more complicated. A competent salesperson doing the right things and a competent technician doing the right things will always matter. PRESS PLAY gives companies a way to keep that standard clear.”
Trust in the brand is one of the most important growth assets a home service company has. It helps contractors attract new customers, retain existing customers, earn repeat business, deepen relationships with current customers, and grow through stronger referrals and reputation. PRESS PLAY supports that growth by helping companies make trust easier to teach, coach, and reinforce in the field.
The visit to Canada also reflects Service Excellence’s broader international reach. Liles has trained contractors in countries beyond the United States, including Canada and Australia, as home service businesses look for better ways to improve customer experience, technician communication, sales performance, leadership consistency, and brand trust without reducing customer conversations to a script.
For home service companies, PRESS PLAY connects contractor sales training, technician training, service communication, leadership coaching, customer experience training, culture development, and brand reputation inside one learning platform. For Service Excellence, PRESS PLAY is more than a workshop. It is a learning platform built for the real conditions that home service companies face after the trainer leaves. The training room matters, but the field is where the customer decides who they trust. PRESS PLAY was built to help home service companies make that trust more consistent, more professional, and easier for managers to reinforce.
