The Way That Customers Convert On Your Website Is Changing

Here are the latest trends and what to do about them to help grow your home service business

The third week of July showed slower demand for HVAC contractors across the US, and we’re hearing more and more direct feedback that customers are being tougher shoppers.

If you’re experiencing the same thing, you are not alone!

We’ve heard that customers are shopping around more to get a better sense of pricing, that they’re more service-oriented than install-oriented at first, and they aren’t as quick to accept estimates without some more explanation.

While we’ve seen demand pick back up to normal levels again, I hope that this is a call to action to tighten up your revenue flow operations to provide a customer experience that transcends some of the macroeconomic conditions that we are all feeling.

I’ve written before about why we may see slowing demand in 2023 and 2024 based on historical data (however, there do appear to be some political headwinds that may help create enough new demand to buck this trend) and that now is the time to go deep into your data to ensure that your customer experience is buttoned up.

This is a nice segue into today’s topic, which is based on a guest post I wrote for Schedule Engine titled Building a Successful Home Service Business: How to Maximize Revenue from Your Website Visitors, which you can read here.

I’m going to pick out some highlights that can help you think differently about customer behavior today and in the future and what changes you need to make to capitalize on those trends.

Phone Calls Are Still the Dominant Conversion Tool, But A Growing Number of Customers Use Chat and Online Booking Tools To Convert

We measured over 16,000 PPC and Facebook leads to revenue from for HVAC contractors across the US and found that while 78% of the leads converted via phone calls, 10% converted via online booking and chat tools.

The average home service business can expect the majority of their leads to come from phone calls, so the best place to start with tightening operations is to make sure you have a quality control process in place.

There are a few ways you can do this without spending a lot of time on it:

(1) Request access to the call-tracking tool your vendors use - if you advertise or have an SEO agency, your vendors probably use call-tracking tools, so make sure you get access

(2) Make it a daily habit to review the length of your calls - if you see calls longer than 6 or 7 minutes, make sure the reason they are that long is not because your customers are on hold

(3) Check the match rates of your phone calls - if that number is 25% or lower, there may be a problem and you need to dive deeper

Now, if you’ve been following us long enough, you know that match rate is the percentage of leads that make it into the CRM with a new job associated with that lead.

It’s a critical step in the revenue flow cycle - if a customer doesn’t end up in your CRM, it means they aren’t going to buy something from you.

If you’ve buttoned up your phone handling operations and match rates look strong, you may be wondering what you should do next.

Notice that 10% of leads from paid advertising channels came from online scheduling and chat.

If you don’t have chat or online scheduling on your website, you could be missing out on customers who want to use those tools to convert (remember, they’re pickier now).

If you do have them on your site, make sure you or your team tests using the tools and that you have a good follow-up process.

However, lead volume doesn’t mean anything if those leads don’t convert to revenue.

We need to be savvier about how we measure the impact of various conversion tools, which is why we like to look at match rate, average ticket, and revenue, not just lead volume.

So let’s take a look at how those metrics compare to phone calls for chat and online scheduling.

Chat and Online Scheduling Tools Drive Higher Match Rates and Higher Average Tickets

Phone calls are high volume, but they have the second-lowest match rate out of all conversion tools:

• 3,785 phone calls (29.59% match rate)

• 824 online booked appointments (72.98% match rate)

• 471 forms (23.61% match rate)

• 390 chats (70.65% match rate)

In this example, chat and online booking have more than twice the match rate as phone calls.

That means you could get 100 phone calls, and 50 forms / chats, and still get the same number of sellable opportunities.

Now let’s look at average ticket by conversion tool:

Phone calls drive the lowest average ticket out of any conversion tool at $4,343, while chat drives an average ticket of $6,033 and online booking drives an average ticket of $5,023.

To drive $50,000 in revenue, you would need about 12 booked jobs from phone leads.

You would only need 10 from online scheduling to drive $50,000 in revenue.

And you would only need 8 from chat to drive $50,000 in revenue.

So while fewer customers convert via chat and online scheduling than phone calls, the rate at which they turn into paying customers is higher, and they spend more on average.

If you’re looking to drive more revenue for your business or get an edge over your competition, spend time evaluating chat providers / online scheduling tools and get serious about perfecting the experience for customers who use them.

How Much Closed Revenue Did Each Conversion Tool Drive?

Phone calls led the way with $10.9 million in closed revenue, but online scheduling drove $2.7 million, and chat drove $1.4 million.

When I do the math, chat and online booking tools accounted for 24% of revenue despite accounting for just 10% of the total initial leads.

Phone calls accounted for 65% of revenue, despite converting 78% of the leads.

If this trend were to accelerate, meaning more customers using chat and online scheduling instead of calling your business, the revenue data would be more pronounced.

For example, if 20% of leads used chat and online scheduling to convert, based on the patterns above, we would expect those conversion tools to account for 48% of revenue!

My prediction is that over time, this will happen (as customers are used to shopping online in almost every other area of their lives) and most home service businesses will be late to the party to add the tools to the site and make sure they’re handling those leads properly.

You can get ahead of this trend right now but vetting various chat and online scheduling vendors, testing the experience and preparing your team to capitalize on the high value leads that turn into revenue from these tools.