Home Services Solutions

The home services industry sits on top of a paradox that would be funny if it were not so expensive. There are roughly 3.5 million home service businesses in the United States, generating over $600 billion in annual revenue across plumbing, HVAC, electrical, roofing, painting, and general contracting. Demand has never been higher — the average American home is 40 years old, housing inventory is aging, and the DIY generation is aging into the “just call someone” generation. Homeowners spent an estimated $420 billion on home improvements and repairs in 2024.

And yet, the average home service company struggles to answer the phone.

That is not an exaggeration. Industry data shows that 30-50% of inbound calls to home service companies go unanswered during business hours. Of the calls that are answered, 40% of the resulting leads never receive a follow-up estimate. Of the estimates that are sent, 30% are never followed up on. The funnel leaks at every stage, and it leaks because the person who should be managing leads, scheduling calls, dispatching technicians, and following up with customers is also the person running the business, managing the team, and occasionally still doing the work.

The operational challenges in home services are fundamentally different from other trades because of the unpredictability. A construction company has projects that last weeks or months. A landscaping company has recurring routes. But a plumber, an electrician, or an HVAC technician is managing a constantly shifting mix of emergency calls, scheduled service appointments, and estimate requests — each competing for the same limited technician hours and requiring real-time coordination that changes by the hour.

ServiceTitan, Jobber, and Housecall Pro have become the dominant platforms in this space, and for good reason. ServiceTitan handles the full workflow from call to invoice for larger operations. Jobber is excellent for smaller companies managing quoting, scheduling, and payment. Housecall Pro sits between them with strong mobile capabilities for field technicians. All three platforms handle the core transaction well — booking a job, dispatching a technician, generating an invoice.

Where the gap persists is in the operational workflows that happen around those transactions. The lead that comes in through Angi and needs to be contacted within five minutes to have a realistic conversion chance. The estimate that was sent on Tuesday and needs a follow-up on Thursday and again next Tuesday. The satisfied customer who would happily leave a Google review if someone asked them at the right time in the right way. The technician dispatch that needs to account for real-time traffic, job overruns, and emergency calls that arrive mid-morning.

The math of home services is unforgiving. Customer acquisition costs through paid channels (Google Ads, Angi, Thumbtack) run $75-$250 per lead depending on the trade and market. If half those leads go unanswered and half the estimates go unfollowed, the effective cost per acquired customer doubles or triples. A plumbing company spending $3,000/month on lead generation that only converts 10% of inbound leads is paying $300 per new customer — in an industry where the average service call is $250-$400. The first visit barely covers the cost of acquisition.

The companies that build profitable, growing home service businesses do it through retention and referral — getting the first customer to come back three, five, ten times over the following years, and to recommend you to neighbors and family. That requires a follow-up system: service reminders, seasonal maintenance offers, review requests, and the kind of consistent communication that makes a homeowner think of your company first when something breaks.

The difference between a $500,000 home service business and a $2 million one is rarely the quality of the technical work. It is the systems that connect the marketing, the scheduling, the dispatching, the customer communication, and the follow-up into a machine that runs consistently regardless of how busy the owner is or how many emergency calls came in today. Every plumber knows how to fix a leak. The ones who build substantial businesses are the ones who also know how to ensure that the customer who called about the leak gets scheduled promptly, receives a professional estimate, gets status updates during the job, receives a review request afterward, and gets a reminder about their water heater flush six months later.