Chantel Dooley was born to Dazzle Pools. Since her parents opened their pool service business in 1998, she’s been right there with them.
Back then, that meant accompanying her parents for weekend runs to shut off hoses and clean filters. “Customers would come out and give me a $5 bill when I was in their backyards with my dad,” she says. Dazzle Pools still has some of those same customers, and Chantel still works with them—though today, it’s as the company’s COO.
Chantel returned to Dazzle Pools full-time in 2022 after teaching high school for seven years (though even then, she’d sometimes duck out to clean filters on her lunch hour). Her return marked a pivotal time for the company, and she had a critical role to play. “Before I came back on, it was just my dad doing the best he could, the fastest that he could,” she says. “He’s a brilliant businessman who’s built a great business, but eventually, he realized he needed to split up all the roles he was already doing as he prepared for retirement.”
To help make this transition possible, Chantel knew she would need to systematize Dazzle Pools’ operations as much as possible. “We’ve always been a business that holds ourselves accountable to the highest standard. We’re in it to get it right, not to be right,” she says. The last thing she wanted was for the foundation her father had spent so long building to disappear when he retired.
Chantel also wanted to improve the work environment for Dazzle’s employees. Over the years, the team had grown substantially. With 13 technicians, two repair technicians, three subcontractors, and one “pool whisperer you can drop into any backyard,” Chantel wanted to introduce the right tools and changes that would benefit everyone.
In short, Chantel had her work cut out for her. So, just as she’d been doing since she was a kid, she rolled up her sleeves and got to work.
A technology that helped Dazzle tread water—and not much else
From day one, re-evaluating Dazzle’s technology was at the top of Chantel’s to-do list. The team had been using a different pool service software for years that “was working, but we were basically treading water with it,” she says.
Chantel’s main qualm with the software was that it imposed too many restrictions on the team’s daily workflow. While they could use it to manage daily tasks, many of the company’s core operations had to be tracked and managed elsewhere. Dazzle’s work orders, subcontractors, bids, estimates, and routing assignments were all done through Excel, while the team used QuickBooks for payroll, profit, and loss.
The software also lacked communication features, which signaled a future problem. “My dad’s cell phone was the only business line we had,” says Chantel, “And I was adamant that I wasn’t going to walk around with two phones.” Finally, the software made it difficult for Dazzle’s technicians to be efficient on-site. “It allowed for photos if you had an extra seven minutes to stand in one place while it spun in circles waiting for the picture to upload,” quips Chantel.
Knowing there were more powerful solutions out there, she started evaluating other systems. At a technical level, Chantel knew exactly what she was looking for and drafted a list of all the perfect-world features she wanted, including:
- GPS-based, real-time route scheduling and managing
- The ability to filter jobs by technicality level and provide enough guidance for technicians who may not be as technically or physically able
- Professional-looking photos to attach to work summaries
- An app-based system (as opposed to web-based) that would allow technicians to access information at the touch of a button
More broadly, Chantel wanted a solution that would make everyone’s lives easier—both technicians and customers.
“I can’t grow and sustain this business alone,” she says. “I needed to provide the tools to let people work smarter and be more efficient. And if I could do that, it would also help deliver a better level of service for our customers.”
Chantel was also well aware that whichever solution she chose would only be as good as its customer support. “I went through a lot of demos and trials where it was clear that tech support and response time were lacking,” she says. When I asked about that and got the deer-in-the-headlights look, that was my cue to move on.”
Thankfully, Chantel didn’t have to look far for a better solution. In fact, she’s had one on her radar for nearly 10 years, and when she revisited it, she knew she’d landed on the right platform.
A perfectly tailored solution
Chantel saw an early Skimmer prototype when Skimmer founders Ron Hash and Ethan Eckberg came by the office in 2015 to show it to her and her father. Back then, however, it was only available on iPads, which felt like a deal breaker at the time. Chantel remembers her dad holding up a beaten-up, waterlogged binder and saying, ‘We’re not buying our guys iPads. They can barely take care of a binder.'
By 2022, however, it was clear that Skimmer had substantially evolved its product. For one, it was now available on iPhones. But Chantel was mainly struck by how perfectly tailored Skimmer now was to pool service professionals. “No other software is as customized or as efficient,” she says. On a features level, Skimmer checked every box Chantel had laid out at the outset of her search.
But she knew that even with a perfectly tailored list of features, the ultimate test would be whether Skimmer could rise to the challenge of excellent customer support. During her trial period, she sent a test support email to Skimmer and received “an immediate, personalized response back.” The response acknowledged her by name, clarified her challenge, included more questions to properly understand her problem, and had a detailed action plan for follow-up. “They also made it clear they were available round the clock,” she says. Having passed the test with flying colors, Chantel’s mind was made up: Skimmer was the obvious winner.
From blizzard to bulldozing
Migrating from one software to another is always a process, but luckily, support from both Dazzle and Skimmer’s teams made the transition as smooth as possible. “We have a team member who’s a retired engineer, and he’s brilliant at understanding how software should work,” says Chantel. “He did a lot of the exporting and data cleanup.”
A local Skimmer ambassador also helped her set up Skimmer specifically for Dazzle Pools’ operations. “It was truly a tailored experience,” says Chantel. “He would ask what I needed Skimmer to do, then show me exactly how to do that.” This was a crucial step in setting up Chantel and her team for success. Armed with the information she needed to maximize the platform for Dazzle Pools, she was ready to integrate it into her team’s daily workflows.
Chantel knew that Skimmer would solve many of her problems, but she wasn’t expecting things to feel so different so quickly.
“Before Skimmer,” says Chantel, “I felt like I was driving in a snowstorm with no visibility. I was constantly worried about windshield time for technicians, how long pools were taking them, communicating with the customer, and whether we were billing incorrectly. Now, I not only feel like I’m in the passenger seat with all of our technicians… I also feel like I’m bulldozing the path for them so that they can just worry about doing a wonderful job of dazzling their pools. Everything else is handled.”
The crux of this paradigm shift has been the real-time insight Chantel has into where her technicians are at any given time. “I get live pictures when they have problems and can dispatch a repair tech based on GPS,” she explains. “If a customer calls in with a request, I can pull up Skimmer and see who’s where, then dispatch a technician within 30 seconds based on who’s closest.” She can also be more strategic about dispatching repair technicians, and assigning them jobs that require a more advanced skill set over simple tasks.
For technicians, less time behind the windshield also means more time on the field. “Our techs love that because it gives them an opportunity to make more money,” says Chantel. And the app is so easy to use that even the most unlikely candidates are getting on board. “Our subcontractors are on Skimmer now, and they wanted nothing to do with our old software,” says Chantel.
Chantel also knew that finding the right software would impact Dazzle’s customers, but seeing the direct impact has been great. “It’s hard being a homeowner and working with contractors and vendors,” says Chantel. “You never know when they’re going to show up, who will show up, or what they did if they did show up. As a society, we need that instant proof. Skimmer provides that, and customers appreciate the consistency and the full transparency.”
Eliminating hours of work with Skimmer Billing
While Chantel is thrilled that Skimmer has improved both the technician and customer experience, she’s also grateful for the differences it’s made in her own workday. Dazzle Pools migrated over to Skimmer Billing from QuickBooks in January 2023, which has greatly reduced the number of hours Chantel spends billing each month. “End-of-the-month billing used to take all day,” she says. “I would shut down my computer and restart it so the only windows open were Skimmer and QuickBooks. The export was so tedious. If it timed out, it was a nightmare. When Skimmer opened up billing, I was so grateful.”
Now, what used to be an all-day affair takes less than an hour. Part of that drastic reduction is thanks to the level of automation Skimmer Billing offers—route stops are automatically paid by a credit card on file. But Chantel has also been able to change her entire billing workflow. “I don’t have to wait until the end of the month to do everything for every single site,” she says. “Now, I can sit down at the end of each week and bill for all my work orders. It shortens my to-do list so that everything is so simple at the end of the month.”
Those hours saved are precious to Chantel. “They’re allowing me to build relationships with realtors, secure new customers, come up with opportunities for technicians to earn more money, send out broadcast emails advertising additional services, and adjust pricing according to inventory costs. That’s a big deal.”
Growing a legacy
Today, Chantel can’t imagine how Dazzle Pools would operate without Skimmer. At this point, it’s a running joke for Dazzle’s technicians to suggest going back to the old software “just to see the look that comes over my face,” says Chantel.
And while getting familiarized with each feature didn’t happen overnight, it’s been time well spent. “We’re at a level of service delivery and management that I didn’t even know was possible until we were fully submerged and using all the features,” says Chantel. “Everything from routing to assigning routes and work orders to communicating with the customer… so many things have been solved by utilizing the whole Skimmer platform.”
Looking to the future, Chantel can clearly see how she wants the company to advance. “I want Dazzle Pools to grow sustainably and steadily, and I never want our quality of service to suffer,” she says. She knows that will be possible with Skimmer.
“When I think about the insightful creativity that Skimmer has in offering not just a software, but truly supporting and elevating the pool service industry, it gives me goosebumps. They want to help us, and they want us to get better.”
Above all else, Chantel is grateful that she’s found a solution that will help her preserve and enhance all the hard work her dad has done. “I’m really excited for him to see his legacy grow,” she says.
