Calling back leads at a 12-person HVAC company: half of one person's day

For the executive who decides

• The customer acts
• The machine acts
• A person decides
• Nothing runs

An illustration built from the owner's numbers: the times are examples, and the job's value is an estimate.

1The job

Calling back inbound leads to book the appointment. A 12-person HVAC company, 40 to 50 leads a week.

2The number today

My office manager spends half her day just calling people back to book appointments. Half the time they've already called someone else. About 1,040 hours a year: $22,400 to $34,700 in wages, or $10 to $15 a lead. And the jobs: at an estimated $880 a booked job, about $7,500 a week is at risk when half the leads book someone else first.

Estimate. About $880 a booked job is worked out from what homeowners pay for tune-ups, repairs and replacements, because the owner never gave his average ticket. About $7,500 a week rests on it and on a 38% booking rate for HVAC calls, and is the most that could be won back, not what will be. His own average ticket replaces both the day he gives it.

3The verdict

Hand over the first reply. Keep the quote.

• Hand to the machine: the first reply within a minute, and booking the routine jobs, a tune-up or a standard service call.
• Keep with a person: emergencies, anything about price, replacements, commercial accounts, and any caller who asks for a person.
• Not yet: letting it reschedule, cancel or quote a price.

What the office manager is for now: the schedule's exceptions, the big jobs, and the customers who matter most. The machine takes the dialing, not her judgment.

4The bill

About $160 a month at this volume inside the scheduling software many of these companies already run on; a standalone service costs about the same. Building it is about $90 a month in parts, plus the build and the upkeep. Checking: every booking reviewed each morning for the first three weeks, since owners report tuning took that long. The check time is not known until it is counted.

5Owner and off switch

The office manager owns it: she knows the calendar and the exceptions. To switch it off, turn the receptionist off in the software and calls go back to her phone. She should be able to do it in under a minute, and try it once in week one.

6The brief to hand your builder

The job: reply to every inbound lead within a minute and book routine jobs into the calendar.

Today: 40 to 50 leads a week; the office manager calls each one back; many have already booked someone else.

Done when: for two weeks, every lead gets a reply within 5 minutes, no emergency lands in a maintenance slot, nothing is double-booked, and the share of leads booked is higher than the week before switch-on.

It may never, on its own: quote a price, book an emergency without a person calling back, or handle a commercial account.

You get from us: 20 real past calls or texts, including the messy ones; the job types and slot rules; the list of commercial accounts.

We own: the phone number, the software account and the billing.

We get back: a morning list of every booking it made and every lead it handed to a person, with the reason.

Ask whoever sets it up	A good answer	A bad answer
What happens when it doesn't know the answer?	It says so, takes the details, and a named person gets a task within minutes	"It handles everything"
How will I know it booked something wrong?	Every booking is flagged for review for the first weeks, with a daily list	"It's very accurate"
What does it cost at our volume, all in?	One monthly number at about 200 leads, with the overage and who keeps its answers current	A price per seat with no volume

For the operator who builds and runs it Paid layer

7The working set

• Trigger: a missed call or a web-form lead.
• Steps: text back within a minute; sort the lead into five types (maintenance, repair, emergency, replacement, commercial); book only maintenance and standard repair; hand every other type to a named person as a task; emergencies go to the on-call tech.
• Data: one record per lead: name, phone, address, source, type, minutes to first reply, booked or not, slot, handed to a person or not, and why.
• Review step: every machine booking lands flagged; the office manager clears the list each morning.
• Alerts: no reply within 5 minutes; an emergency slot filled without an emergency tag; two bookings in one slot; and the wrong-but-green count, the bookings staff had to change.
• If it breaks: you see leads with no reply or a customer complaint; check the receptionist switch and the call forwarding first; the safe fix is to switch it off so calls go to the office manager.
• Cost per lead: $0.79 a conversation in the scheduling software after the first 30; about $0.35 if built.
• Baseline, before switch-on: one week of leads in, minutes to first reply, and the share booked.

Estimate. The money uses about $880 a job, worked out from what homeowners pay, until the owner gives his own average ticket.