The Most Expensive Service Call Is the One You Already Paid For
The Most Expensive Service Call Is the One You Already Paid For
By Joe Crisara, Author of What Should We Do? and Co-Founder of Service MVP
Home service companies spend a lot of time trying to get more calls.
More leads.
More booked appointments.
More trucks on the road.
More customers.
And when revenue slows down, one of the first questions we tend to ask is:
“How do we get the phones ringing more?”
Maybe we need more Google Ads.
More SEO.
More direct mail.
More social media.
More referrals.
Another lead source.
Those things can absolutely matter.
But before you spend another dollar trying to put another truck in another driveway, I think there's a more important question:
What are you doing with the service calls you've already paid for?
Because by the time your technician rings the homeowner's doorbell, your company has already made a significant investment.
And if your technician rushes in, fixes the first obvious problem, writes one invoice and leaves without fully understanding what that homeowner needs, that may be one of the most expensive calls your company runs.
Not because you didn't make a sale.
Because you may have paid for an opportunity you never fully discovered.
A Service Call Costs Money Before the Truck Ever Moves
Think about everything that has to happen before a technician arrives at a customer's home.
You may have paid to acquire the lead.
Someone answered the phone.
A CSR booked the call.
A dispatcher scheduled it.
Your company recruited and trained the technician.
You bought the truck.
You insured it.
You put fuel in it.
You stocked it with tools and inventory.
You pay for software, phones, facilities, management, benefits, uniforms, training, marketing and all the other overhead required to operate a professional service company.
Then you pay the technician to drive to the customer's home.
All of that happens before the first tool comes out of the truck.
This is why I think contractors sometimes ask the wrong question.
Instead of immediately asking:
“How can we get more calls?”
We should first ask:
“Are we making the most of the calls we're already getting?”
More Leads Won't Fix an Incomplete Service Process
Imagine a company running 100 service calls.
Now imagine the technicians routinely:
Rush through the customer conversation.
Diagnose only the immediate symptom.
Miss legitimate problems.
Fail to ask what else has been bothering the homeowner.
Build only one solution.
Struggle to communicate value.
Prejudge what customers can afford.
Leave without documenting future needs.
And never create a clear follow-up opportunity.
What happens if that company buys enough advertising to generate another 20 calls?
They haven't fixed the problem.
They've simply purchased 20 more opportunities to repeat the same process.
More leads can hide an execution problem for a while.
They don't solve it.
Before You Buy Another Lead, Look at the Calls You Already Have
This is one of the reasons I believe contractors should understand the economics behind each service call.
You don't necessarily need some complicated formula.
Start with a few simple questions.
How much are we spending on marketing?
How many booked calls does that produce?
How many calls actually run?
What does it cost us to put a technician and truck in the driveway?
What happens once we're there?
And perhaps most importantly:
What opportunities are we leaving behind?
Not imaginary opportunities.
Not things the customer doesn't need.
Legitimate opportunities to help.
That's where this connects directly to Your Technicians Aren't Selling Enough - or Are They Not Finding Enough?
Before worrying about closing percentages, ask whether technicians are discovering the full situation in the first place.
The Reason for the Call Is the Starting Point
A homeowner calls because the air conditioner isn't cooling.
Or the drain is backed up.
Or an outlet stopped working.
Or the garage door won't open.
Naturally, that problem deserves immediate attention.
But the reason for the call is the starting point of the investigation, not necessarily the entire service opportunity.
Suppose the technician fixes the immediate HVAC failure.
Great.
But did anyone ask about the room upstairs that's always hot?
Did the technician notice a condition affecting system reliability?
Has the homeowner been dealing with unusually high utility bills?
Is there neglected maintenance?
Are there indoor air concerns?
Is the system approaching an age where the homeowner should at least understand future replacement considerations?
Maybe none of those things exist.
That's okay.
We're not trying to manufacture problems.
We're trying to make sure we don't walk past real ones.
Don't Maximize the Ticket. Maximize the Service.
This distinction matters.
When I talk about making more of every service call, I'm not saying:
“How much money can we get from this customer while we're here?”
That's the wrong question.
The question is:
“How completely can we serve this customer while we've been given the opportunity?”
Those are very different motives.
A technician could identify six legitimate opportunities and the homeowner could choose only one.
That's okay.
The homeowner could choose none of them today.
That's okay too.
The technician's responsibility is to investigate, communicate and give the homeowner the information necessary to make a good decision.
The homeowner's responsibility is to decide what they want to do.
That's Pure Motive.
One Truck in the Driveway Is an Opportunity to Listen
Some of the most valuable things a technician discovers won't come from a meter or a diagnostic tool.
They'll come from the homeowner.
Ask:
“Other than what brought us out today, how has everything else been working?”
Or:
“Is there anything else around the home that's been bothering you?”
Or:
“If you could improve one thing about how this system has been working, what would it be?”
Suddenly you may learn that one bedroom never gets comfortable.
The water pressure has been getting worse.
The homeowner has been resetting the same breaker.
There's another drain that has been running slowly for months.
The equipment makes a noise they assumed was normal.
Those problems existed before your technician asked about them.
The question didn't create the demand. It uncovered it.
Customers Don't Always Know What to Tell You
This is another reason a complete investigation matters.
Homeowners aren't HVAC technicians, plumbers or electricians.
They don't necessarily know which symptoms are important.
They may not know that two things are related.
They may have lived with a problem so long that they stopped thinking of it as a problem.
That's why professional service requires more than asking:
“What's broken?”
A professional investigates.
Observes.
Asks questions.
Connects symptoms.
Explains findings.
And helps the homeowner understand the bigger picture.
That is part of the value they're paying for.
Every Legitimate Observation Can Become a Decision
Once the technician understands what's happening, the next step isn't to dump a list of problems on the homeowner.
It's to organize the information into meaningful choices.
Maybe one option addresses today's immediate issue.
Another addresses the immediate issue plus reliability concerns.
Another provides a more comprehensive solution based on what the homeowner said matters most.
That's why we teach technicians to present multiple appropriate options rather than forcing the entire service call into one yes-or-no decision.
We've discussed this in Stop Giving Homeowners One Price: Why Service Technicians Should Present Options.
The goal isn't more options for the sake of having more options.
It's giving the homeowner meaningful ways to solve the problems you've actually discovered.
Your Pricebook Matters Here Too
Of course, identifying an opportunity doesn't help much if your technician can't easily build the right solution.
If the pricebook is confusing, incomplete or filled with thousands of tasks technicians struggle to find, they'll naturally gravitate toward whatever is easiest.
And even a profitable pricebook won't do much good if technicians aren't comfortable explaining the value behind those solutions.
That's why pricing, pricebooks and communication have to work together.
We've talked about that in Your Pricebook Isn't the Problem If Your Technicians Can't Communicate the Value.
The technician needs to be able to move from:
What I found → why it matters → what we can do about it → what choices you have.
When that process breaks down, opportunities disappear.
What Happens to the Things They Don't Buy Today?
Here's another place where companies lose opportunities they've already paid to discover.
Suppose your technician identifies several legitimate needs.
The homeowner addresses the urgent repair today but decides to wait on the others.
What happens next?
Does your company document them?
Does someone follow up?
Is there a defined process?
Does anybody own that opportunity?
Or does the estimate simply disappear into the software?
That's important because “not today” isn't the same thing as “never.”
The customer may need time.
They may want to talk with a spouse.
They may need financing.
They may want to budget for it.
They may simply have too much happening that day.
If your company paid to generate the call, paid to run the call and paid a trained professional to identify the opportunity, allowing that information to disappear makes very little business sense.
Your Unsold Opportunities Are an Asset
Most contractors can tell me approximately how many calls they ran last month.
Far fewer can tell me:
How much legitimate unsold work did those calls uncover?
And fewer still can tell me:
How much of it did we eventually recover?
That's an important number.
Because there may be significant revenue sitting inside work you've already paid to discover.
Again, this isn't about badgering customers until they finally say yes.
It's about having a professional follow-up process.
Maybe circumstances changed.
Maybe the problem got worse.
Maybe financing makes sense now.
Maybe the homeowner simply forgot.
A respectful follow-up can be another form of service.
Your Average Ticket Doesn't Tell the Whole Story
Companies love average ticket.
It's useful.
But it doesn't tell you why one technician consistently produces better results than another.
Maybe Technician A runs a $450 average while Technician B runs $1,100.
It's easy to conclude:
“B is a better salesperson.”
Maybe.
But perhaps B is a better investigator.
Maybe B asks more questions.
Makes more observations.
Finds more legitimate opportunities.
Connects those observations to what matters to the homeowner.
Creates better choices.
And communicates those choices more clearly.
If that's the case, telling Technician A to “sell more” isn't very useful coaching.
You need to understand where the process is breaking down.
Measure What Happens Before the Revenue
Revenue is the result.
If we want to improve it, we should also measure the behaviors that happen before it.
How many legitimate opportunities are technicians identifying?
How many options are they presenting?
Are those options connected to what they diagnosed?
Are unsold opportunities being documented?
Are customers receiving follow-up?
Are technicians completing more work on the first visit?
Are callbacks decreasing?
Are customers making informed decisions?
Those numbers tell leaders where to coach.
Because by the time revenue shows up on the scoreboard, the behaviors that created it have already happened.
Sometimes the Cheapest Lead Is the One You Already Have
There's a strange thing that happens in home service.
A company will spend thousands of dollars trying to get its trucks into more driveways while overlooking the customers already inviting those trucks into their homes.
That doesn't mean stop marketing.
Growth requires new customers.
Marketing matters.
SEO matters.
Referrals matter.
Advertising matters.
But customer acquisition should never become a substitute for improving what happens after the call is booked.
Before asking marketing to produce 20% more leads, I'd want to know:
Are we delivering an exceptional experience to the leads we're already buying?
Because improving that answer can change the economics of the entire company.
The Most Expensive Call May Be the One You Waste
A service call that doesn't result in a large invoice isn't automatically a bad call.
That's not what I'm saying.
Sometimes the homeowner genuinely needs a small repair.
Sometimes they don't want to do anything else.
Sometimes there isn't anything else to find.
That's perfectly fine.
But there's a huge difference between:
“There was nothing else the homeowner needed.”
and
“We never looked.”
One is an outcome.
The other is a process problem.
You've already invested in the marketing.
You've already answered the phone.
You've already dispatched the call.
You've already paid for the truck.
You've already bought the fuel.
You've already trained the technician.
You've already arrived at the home.
Don't waste the opportunity by delivering half the service.
Ask.
Listen.
Investigate.
Observe.
Explain.
Build meaningful choices.
Respect the homeowner's decision.
Document what remains.
Follow up appropriately.
Then, if the customer chooses only the smallest repair, you can still know you delivered the complete experience.
And that's how you grow a home service business without turning your technicians into high-pressure salespeople.
Before You Buy More Leads, Improve What Happens to the Ones You Already Have
Getting more calls is expensive.
Getting better at serving the customers who already call you can be transformational.
At Service MVP, we help home service companies develop the systems, leadership and field behaviors that turn opportunities into better customer experiences and stronger business results.
If your company has plenty of calls but isn't getting the results you believe should be possible, that may not be a marketing problem.
It may be time to look at what happens after the truck pulls into the driveway.
