"we'll call you back"
(someone else already did)
11:47 AM. A property manager is staring at a water stain spreading across the ceiling of a tenant’s unit.
She needs a restoration company. Today.
The tenant is furious. Her boss is asking for updates every 30 minutes.
She Googles. Clicks the first 3 results. Calls the first number.
Voicemail. “We’ll get back to you within 24 hours.”
She calls the second. Rings six times. No answer.
Third company. Picks up on the second ring. “This is Mike, how can I help?”
By 12:15, Mike’s team is scheduled for 2 PM. Contract signed by end of day. $40,000 job.
The first two companies? They called her back at 4 PM and the next morning.
She didn’t return either call.
Why would she? Problem was already solved.
Company #1 and Company #2 will never know this happened.
It won’t show up in their CRM. There’s no “lost deal” report.
No angry customer review. No cancellation email. Nothing.
Just silence. A call that came in. A call that went out. No connection.
At the end of the month, the owner looks at the numbers and thinks “leads are slow right now.”
They’re not slow. They’re gone.
Disappeared into the gap between “we’ll call you back” and “someone else already did.”
78% of customers buy from the company that responds first.
Price doesn’t matter.
Reviews don’t matter.
The only thing that matters is who picks up.
And your chances of booking that job drop 10x after just 5 minutes. Wait 30 minutes and you’re 21x less likely to close them than if you’d responded under 5.
Average response time for service companies? 47 hours. Not minutes. Hours.
This usually amounts to 294,000 to $420,000 per year in lost revenue, from ONE problem they don’t even know they have.
Today, you’re getting the 3 response time mistakes that live between “someone reached out” and “someone got back to them”… the gaps where $300K/year walks out the door… and how to close every one of them this week.
➔ What the person who called you is actually thinking while they wait (and why they already picked someone else)
➔ The 5 places between your phone ringing and your team calling back where people fall through the cracks
➔ Copy-paste response scripts and systems you can implement before Friday
Let’s fix the gap that nobody’s watching...
Sponsored by The Revenue Recovery People
Your competitor isn’t better than you. They just respond faster.
While your quote request sits for 48 hours, someone else already booked the job.
You paid for that lead. But the competitor down the street got the revenue.
See what’s leaking in your business for free → seemymissedrevenue.com
3 Response Time Mistakes That Cost Service Companies $300K+ Per Year
Most service companies make these mistakes without realizing what they’re costing them. Because the lost revenue never shows up on a report. It just... doesn’t arrive.
These are the three that keep showing up in every audit:
1️⃣ Treating “End of Day” Callbacks Like Acceptable Response Times
You’re on a job site. Phone rings. You can’t answer. You’ll get to it later. Makes sense, right?
Except… “later” is a graveyard.
That person Googled 3 companies and called all three within 90 seconds.
You’re not competing with your service quality right now. You’re competing with a clock.
This is what’s going through their head while they wait:
→ “If they can’t answer the phone now, what happens when I have a problem mid-project?”
→ “If I’m not important before they have my money, I definitely won’t be after.”
→ “The company that answers is the company that cares.”
When someone calls 3companies and you’re the one who doesn’t answer, they’re not thinking “they must be busy.”
They’re thinking “if this is how they treat me before I give them money, what happens after?”
Your response time is the first review they write about you in their head.
❌ Before: “We can’t answer every call, we’re out on jobs. People understand we’re busy. Our quality speaks for itself once they talk to us.”
✅ After: Missed call triggers an auto-text in under 60 seconds: “Hey, this is [Name] from [Company]. Just missed your call, I’m with a client right now but I have your number and will call you back within 10 minutes. If this is urgent, reply ASAP.”
Fix the Ring Gap this week:
1️⃣ Set Up a Missed Call Auto-Text: Every missed call gets an immediate text back. Not “we’ll be in touch.”… a name, a timeframe, and a way to signal urgency. This alone stops 30-40% of callers from dialing your competitor while they wait.
2️⃣ Get Buzzed on Your Phone, Not Buried in Email: Move your new message alerts from email to push notifications on your phone. A “new call” email sitting in an inbox with 47 other messages doesn’t create urgency. Your phone buzzing in your pocket does.
3️⃣ Put One Person in Charge of Calling Back: “Someone will get to it” is the most expensive sentence in your business. Pick one person per shift who owns every callback. Track how fast they respond. Go over it every Monday morning.
2️⃣ Letting After-Hours Calls and Messages Sit Until Morning
A homeowner notices a pest problem at 8 PM on a Wednesday. They’re anxious. They Google. They fill out 3 contact forms before bed.
Your office opens at 8 AM. That’s 12 hours of silence. Twelve hours for one of those other two companies to respond first. And one of them will, because they have an after-hours auto-reply that fires a text within 30 seconds of any message.
When do people actually reach out?
About 40% during business hours.
35% between 5 PM and 11 PM. 20% on weekends.
5% late night.
If you only respond during business hours, you’re ignoring 60% of the people trying to give you money.
Those 60% aren’t waiting patiently for your 9 AM. Half of them are booking with whoever responded at 8:02 PM.
❌ Before: “Messages received outside business hours will be responded to the next business day. Thank you for understanding.”
✅ After: After-hours auto-text: “Hey! Got your message. Our team reviews evening requests first thing at 7 AM. Want us to call you as our first priority? Reply YES and you’ll be first on the callback list. Need someone sooner? Reply URGENT and our on-call lead will reach out tonight.”
Close the After-Hours Abyss:
1️⃣ Set Up an After-Hours Auto-Reply: Don’t try to handle everything after hours. Just let them know you got the message. An auto-text that confirms you saw it, tells them when you’ll call, and gives them an urgency option handles 90% of what they need.
2️⃣ Give Them a Way to Book Without Waiting for You: Include a booking link in your after-hours auto-reply. “Want to get on the schedule? Grab a slot here.” A link that lets them book right now beats a promise to call tomorrow 100% of the time.
3️⃣ Make Overnight Messages Your First Job Every Morning: Every after-hours message should land in a separate list, not mixed into the general inbox. First task every morning: call back the people who reached out overnight before you touch anything else.
3️⃣ Never Measuring What You Can’t See
The scariest part of the property manager story isn’t that Company #1 and #2 lost the job. It’s that they don’t know they lost it.
They can’t fix what they can’t see. They’ll keep blaming “slow season” and “price shoppers” and “tire kickers.”
Meanwhile, the Mikes of the world keep answering on the second ring. Keep booking the jobs that should have been theirs.
Ask most service company owners their average response time and they’ll say “a few hours” or “same day.” Ask them to prove it with data and they can’t.
Because they’ve never tracked it. They’re guessing. And the guess is almost always generous.
❌ Before: “We’re pretty responsive. We always call people back the same day.” (They’ve never once measured it.)
✅ After: “Our average response time last week was 3 minutes and 42 seconds. We had two outliers over 15 minutes, both on Thursday during the team meeting. We moved the meeting to fix it.”
Plug the Measurement Gap:
1️⃣ Mystery Shop Yourself This Week: Call your main number at 2 PM on a Tuesday. At 7 PM on a Thursday. At 10 AM on Saturday. Submit your own web form. DM your business page. Time every response. What would a customer experience?
2️⃣ Track Two Timestamps for 30 Days: Every call, form fill, and message gets two numbers: when it came in and when someone responded. Don’t round. Don’t average in your head. Write it down. At the end of 30 days, you’ll have a number that either confirms you’re covered or reveals a six-figure gap.
3️⃣ Set Response Time Goals Like Revenue Goals: Under 5 minutes for anyone who calls or fills out a form. Under 1 hour for emails and social media messages. Under 5 seconds for an auto-reply that says “we got your message.” Check these numbers every week. Because how fast you respond IS revenue, you just haven’t been counting it that way.
That’s it.
Here’s what you learned today:
➔ The revenue isn’t gone. It’s redirected. To whoever picks up.
➔ “We’ll call you back” is the most expensive voicemail greeting in your business.
➔ You can’t fix what you don’t measure. And you can’t measure what you don’t track.
How fast does your company actually respond right now? And I mean the real number, not the one you’d tell a customer.
Mystery shop yourself before Friday.
Call your own number at 3 different times and write down how long it takes to hear back. That number might be worth $300K.
Ready to find out your exact response time, and fix it this week?
You just saw the math. Now the question is: what’s YOUR number?
Today’s paid member mega-prompt builds you a custom Response Time Revenue Leak Calculator and Callback System, specific to your business type, how many calls and messages you get, your team size, and the tools you’re already using.
Paid members get:
✔ Revenue leak calculator showing your annual loss at 5-min, 30-min, 4-hour, and 24-hour response times
✔ Self-check report card across all 5 places people fall through the cracks (Ring Gap, Voicemail Graveyard, Form Black Hole, Handoff Fumble, After-Hours Abyss)
✔ Done-for-you response scripts, voicemail greeting, missed call auto-text, form auto-reply, and after-hours auto-response
✔ Tool recommendations matched to your setup (Simple, Moderate, or Advanced)
✔ Response time tracking template that does the math for you
✔ DIY mystery shop checklist with scoring rubric
