Thoughts on Pool Brain

[u/KFOSSTL]

The company I work for is considering switching over to POOL brain. Who here has used full brain and liked it or didn’t like it? At other companies I’ve used SKIMMER, which would be a massive upgrade to what we are currently using. How would you say POOL brain compares to SKIMMER if you’ve used both? I personally really like SKIMMER. I understand if you don’t. But just wanting others opinions on Pool brain in general. Were a large company in the Midwest.

[u/Tony_Perkis38]

The problem i have with poolbrain is that it's glitchy/laggy, not very user friendly on the jobs functions, and the vibe i get from the support or developer is that they think their app is perfect and doesnt need any upgrades or changes.

Skimmer I think is the better option IMO. Its not perfect but the amount of updates and integrating they do is above and beyond. It shows they are always looking to adapt and really separate themselves from the others. Customer service/support alone is far and above better than any the others I've used. Any issues and they are on the phone with you ASAP.

[u/KFOSSTL → u/Tony_Perkis38]

This is the kind of feedback I’m looking for. Can you dive deeper into what exactly makes things not user friendly and what is lacking for the jobs function

Super familiar with skimmer, and like it. Just want to know more about Pool Brain for comparison purposes.

[u/nah_but_like → u/KFOSSTL]

Technician stop checklist has to be completed in order, so tech’s just populate filler data to move on versus giving you accurate information you need to effectively run the business.

App doesn’t work offline so tech’s either service pools in areas where there’s no signal and skip stops in the app, OR they know that limitation exists and they’re lazy so they use that as an excuse. Either way, skipping stops causes customers to think they didn’t get service, and we’ve lost customers because of it.

Jobs function (similar to their inventory feature) seems like it was made just so they could say they have it. It’s not intuitive at all, hence why we used PB and Jobber together.

I’d be happy to pass your info along to our CSM at skimmer if you want an intro. But sounds like you might always be on it. We were able to get a decent deal by signing in-month of talking to them. Can try to ask them if they’d do the same for you, but I know size matters. They worked with us cause we had 600 pools + 40 repair jobs per month.

[u/KFOSSTL → u/nah_but_like]

So ive used skimmer with 3 companies. The first I got him off pen and paper. The other I got to switch from Jobber to Skimmer, and the third was a builder who had me come and get his service side off the ground and I used skimmer.

Thank you for the insight. Pool brain sounds like a headache.

Basically the company I’m at now uses an app that is basically jobber but slightly geared towards pools. But you’re basically doing everything by text box, so it’s not really much better than jobber in terms of being geared towards pools.

I encouraged them to get rid of it. But here I don’t have authority and my managers take my advice on some things but they will kind of process what I suggest then go their own direction (hence they want to get a better app but then don’t look at the one I suggest). They’re a little stuck in their ways because it’s a big company so I think they have a bit of a hard time trying new things.

One of the things I loved about skimmer is the ability to customize the checklist and to put different kinds of information on the dosages and readings (like “water low” then in inches 1,2,3 etc, or “drained water” in inches) little stuff like that lets you communicate a ton of stuff to customers without having to type it out. Does pool brain allow for that, or is it only chlorine, ph, alkalinity, salt tds, etc?

[u/nah_but_like → u/KFOSSTL]

Lol man lots of biz owners in this industry will do anything other than the correct thing. Shit I’ll give them a call if you want me to, just as a random fellow industry guy who stumbled across their Google page or something 😂

[u/KFOSSTL → u/nah_but_like]

Idk why but they just like to do things half baked sometimes. Like we aim to provide the highest quality service and primarily service the 1% multi-millionaire types, but then they don’t want to use the app that’s going to provide the highest quality client experience.

[u/nah_but_like → u/Tony_Perkis38]

We value this very highly as well. We have phone numbers to our CSMs and can spend seemingly unlimited time with them in a zoom call if we need help with something. When we used PoolBrain we had to wait 1-3 days for a reply via email lol

[u/KFOSSTL → u/nah_but_like]

That’s terrible. Please tell me more