Paul Benton: If you’re a plumber or a friend in the trades, you’re in the right place. Today, our guest at the table is Jeff Light. He is the founder of ScheduleBot, a cutting edge software scheduling program for the trades. Um, Jeff has also been a marketer, a longtime marketer in his own right, president and founder of, uh, Vital Storm.

Paul Benton: And at heart, though, Jeff is a software developer. Tell us about ScheduleBot and how it helps, uh, contractors make more money.

Jeff Light: Hey, Paul. First of all, thank you for having me on. Thank you for the nice introduction. Um, and honestly, ScheduleBot is kind of given away in the name of the system, right? It’s about scheduling jobs for home service companies, um, and doing it at a very high rate.

Jeff Light: So, like, for example, normally when I talk about ScheduleBot, people really get tired of me talking about this thing called conversion rate, but we all know conversion rates are extremely important. And so really that’s kind of ScheduleBot’s claim to fame. Um, it came into being, you know, when we were really talking with a, with a big home service company here in the Dallas-Fort Worth market called Baker Brothers, and they just weren’t happy with their online scheduling.

Jeff Light: Um, in fact, um, they did everything they could do to not get people to schedule online. And why is that? It’s because their conversion rate was about, you know, 25%. So in other words, 25% of the people that tried to do an online schedule or tried to schedule a job online with Baker Brothers were actually successful.

Jeff Light: And so that was our challenge, honestly, is trying to get in and just make that better. But of course, the devil’s in the details. There’s a lot to ScheduleBot now. It’s about, yes, it’s about online scheduling at the heart of it, but it, you know, there’s a lot more to it now. For example, texting, um, scheduling through texting or through messaging, right?

Jeff Light: Uh, and ultimately even answering after hours and overflow calls via an AI big voice system. But all that kind of comes together to really create this system that we now call

Paul Benton: ScheduleBot. And the, uh, importance of online scheduling, uh, is greater than ever. People are turning phone averse more than ever.

Paul Benton: And ScheduleBot, as I understand it, it has voice, it has text, it has, uh, a platform, uh, a chat bot on the website, uh, itself. Um, it also integrates into LSA. It also integrates into ServiceTitan and Housecall Pro. So it is like a tentacled octopus to enable the plumber to, um, reach, uh, customers wherever they are.

Paul Benton: And, um- Tell us, do you wanna give us a demo, a little tour about what it is and w- and how it works? And, uh, why does it do better than its larger, well-known peer- Right … in terms of conversion rate? Tell us.

Jeff Light: No, uh, that sounds good. And so, you know, I always kinda joke with people, no death by PowerPoint. No, no PowerPoints.

Jeff Light: But I do have a screen that if you’re cool with, I’ll share and just kinda walk you through a few of the reports. Okay, so you should see, um, a website from a company called Baker Brothers Plumbing. Um, it’s really kinda hard to tell the ScheduleBot story without at least mentioning Baker Brothers. Um, as I was kinda saying earlier, they just weren’t happy with their online scheduling.

Jeff Light: And what I mean by that specifically is here, there’s a Schedule Now button, okay? So I click this, and now it opened up the ScheduleBot AI-based form. Previously, it went to another kinda third-party system which will go nameless at least, at least for this meeting, right? Um, where they were converting at 25 or 30%.

Jeff Light: So okay, so drum roll. So yes, there’s a lot to ScheduleBot and there’s a lot to talk about, a lot of details. But at the end of the day, it’s about this next report. So remember, they were scheduling, you know, at 27%, 25% every month. This is Baker Brothers’ report using ScheduleBot for just this past June. You can see they booked 1,867 online jobs during this timeframe, which is honestly up 1,000 jobs from what they were getting previously.

Jeff Light: They were booking at, you know, 27%. Here you see our lead-to-job ratio for them last month was 72%. So we’re adding 45 points, um, you know, 45 percentage points to their conversion rate, and it’s, it’s kinda hard to overstate how important that is. It also m- it, it, it basically has an exponential effect on your business.

Jeff Light: Um, so instead of losing three out of four, they’re now booking three out of four people that try to book online. And so that’s why people love ScheduleBot. Now, that said, not everybody is a Baker Brothers, okay? Not everybody’s running 2,000, 2,000 jobs just booked online a single month. You know, one of my favorite clients, uh, is a cust- a company called Cannon Electric.

Jeff Light: Um, I’ve known these guys for years. Jim Cannon, um, who owns Cannon Electric is a, is a great person, a great contact. When I first started talking to him about Schedulebot, they were booking three or four jobs a month. They had an online form, like I’m s- I’m sure you’ve seen before, a contact form basically.

Jeff Light: They didn’t really know their conversion rate, but just through my experience, I’ve worked with these for a long time, they were probably converting 20, 25% of those forms submitted into jobs. Um, like I said, before he was getting three or four. Well, here you can see this month he got 34 jobs booked using Schedulebot, so up 30 jobs.

Jeff Light: He loves that. Um, that 30 jobs that Cannon Electric’s getting, and in, in addition, it’s just as important to them as the extra 1,000 jobs we’re getting Baker Brothers. Okay? Now, in all fairness, it’s not all coming through online booking. Um, you know, Cannon Electric also, they were missing calls. Okay? So in my former life when I was a marketer, you know, I might be running, you know, a PPC campaign for someone.

Jeff Light: Uh, they might be spending 50, $100,000 a month on that paid search campaign. They would call me up and go, “Hey, Jeff, uh, man, I don’t know what’s going on. We’re not getting the jobs. You know, we’re spending all this money. What’s happening?” So I would kind of be on my heels, and we did a really good job at tracking phone calls back then.

Jeff Light: And so I would be looking at their phone calls that were coming in, and I noticed, “Well, you’re not answering the phone like 35% of the time.” You know? And of course they’re like, “No way. We answer the phone on the second ring every single time.” Until they look at the report, then all of a sudden they’re on their heels, right?

Jeff Light: Um, trying to understand what to do next. Well, Schedulebot is filling that hole if you over at Cannon Electric. So these are 12 booked jobs that would have gone unanswered, would’ve gone to voicemail or just rang and someone hang up. That’s 12 booked jobs that Cannon Electric was able to book 22 were booked through the online form at, again, a 73% conversion rate.

Jeff Light: We love that. Now remember, that’s up from, from three or four. And so that’s why people love ScheduleBot. So yes, there are a lot of features and functions I wanna kinda briefly touch on with you, but it comes down to capturing more jobs, dropping them on your dispatch board. That’s what ScheduleBot comes down to.

Paul Benton: And Jeff, what’s the reason that, um, you get a higher conversion rate exactly from other scheduling tools?

Jeff Light: You know, there, there’s a lot to it. Uh, but honestly, the simple way to say it is this: we just, we keep it as simple as possible. So for example, um, imagine this is someone’s website, okay? And I click Schedule Now here, and it’s gonna open up a, a ScheduleBot kind of demo form.

Jeff Light: You notice the first thing I do is I get contact information, okay? And I go through and I let them, you know, I welcome them back, right? Now, this is my demo system. I’ve got my address in here a couple of times. Most customers will just have one address, but some might have multiple. It allows them to go through and select their address and go forward.

Jeff Light: I kinda joke that this is my “How do you do and hello” moment. I mean, half the customers, um, you know, on a typical home service company’s website are probably returning customers. I’ve worked with them before. So why not show them some love right off the bat? I’m not gonna go anyplace else. I’m gonna book with this company.

Jeff Light: The next thing we do to keep it simple, this is where the a- the AI comes in, we just, um, let the customer in their own words describe their problem. We’re not putting them through a decision tree where they’ve gotta kinda map it out themselves. Is it plumbing? Is this HVAC? Is it electrical? Oh, it’s plumbing.

Jeff Light: Is it a clogged drain? Is it a water heater? Is it a fixture install? And they kinda work their way down, right? I kinda, I like to joke that, um, I’ve been lucky that, you know, I have, of course, always worked full time. My wife was able to stay home and take care of our kids. She’s the one in charge of managing our house and scheduling jobs.

Jeff Light: Now, this is a little facetious, but she might even type in something like, “The big fan outside is not working,” right? Now, we all know we’re talking about our air conditioning system. The AI takes this, though, and maps it to a job type. Now, in some cases, it may actually go in and ask them follow-up questions, okay?

Jeff Light: And you’ll see here, um, you know, I can tell how old the system is. Maybe it’s 15 years old. Three systems. Now of course, as a system– if a system is fifteen years old, where does that go on the job priority? Higher, right? So ScheduleBot’s also looking at this information and going through and trying to help you schedule or prioritize your jobs when they should be scheduled.

Jeff Light: So this is today’s date. So you’ll notice it’s offering a same-day appointment even though what? Even though, um, we may be booked up. So anyway, we give you the option to, um, to prioritize those jobs based upon revenue potential. Now again, keeping it simple, the customer simply selects a time, they move forward.

Jeff Light: At this point, it’s going to go through, kind of show the customer, you know, about the job they booked. Down here, if there was a dispatch fee, we would have a dispatch fee. Now, for an HVAC or furnace quote, probably not gonna charge a dispatch fee, right? We don’t need that extra friction. But maybe if it was a drain clog, there may be some kind of a standard dispatch fee.

Jeff Light: That’s where we would fit this. Now I’m kind of combining some, you know, based upon, you know, trying to keep this as short as I can. Normally, I would go through and say, “Book this now,” and go through and do a whole another job. If I click this Book It Now button, yes, it goes directly to your dispatch board if you’re running one of the CRM, CRMs that we’re integrated into.

Jeff Light: And basically, if your CRM has got an API, we can build integration into it, okay? In this case though, what I’m gonna do is, is, um, it’s not a perfect world. Right now I’m sitting here, I’ve got multiple screens, I’ve got a keyboard. I’m able to like quietly go through and schedule my home service job. But in the real world, where am I doing this?

Jeff Light: I’m doing this on my phone, right? My wife calls, my kid call. What do I do? I don’t click the Book It Now button. I panic and I close that. You know, I’ve got to answer the phone when the wife calls. So where’d my, you know, my four– replacing four fifteen-year-old HVAC job go? Well, it sort of goes into digital la-la land.

Jeff Light: But another thing that our customers really love about ScheduleBot is this whole concept of second chance leads So in other words, we give every, um, we give you a second swing at every single job. So this is again the Schedulebot backend. This is my demo system. But if I go in here to the leads, see here where it says– I know it’s small, but it says, “Not booked,” you know, Jeff Light, HVAC or furnace.

Jeff Light: So we’re capturing that information as it’s being entered in, so it’s never truly lost. And one of two things can happen here. We’ll forward all this job information to your team so they can do an outbound call. Like, “Hey, Mr. Light, saw you on our website. Uh, looks like you got an AC problem. Great news, I’ve got a technician that’ll be out by your house this afternoon.

Jeff Light: Why don’t they stop by and take care of that for you?” Right? Um, you know, our customers can do a better job at selling this than I can. The other thing we can do if, if you don’t have that outbound person is we can, um, have, um, Schedulebot, you know, um, reach out to that customer via text messaging thread.

Jeff Light: And we actually set up a sequence of text messages that can go to that customer to do what? To reclaim this job. Okay? And our customers love this. Now, a company as big as Baker Brothers, they’re getting over a hundred jobs like this booked a, a month. It’s a lot, okay? Uh, even a company though like Hanna Electric, which I just discussed, they’re getting three or four.

Jeff Light: You know? And that keeps a technician busy for a day or two, so they love it. So that’s really why we’re so successful in getting people through this online scheduling, is we just keep it simple, and then we’re dotting every I and crossing every T when it comes to following up on opportunities. Last thing I will say is this, and you alluded to this earlier, is scheduling has kind of gone off the website.

Jeff Light: So yes, when I think about this, I’m thinking about, you know, clicking this Schedule Now button. But there is also what? There’s also your Google My Business page. So your Google My Business page, if you’re a home service company, this may be your most important, like, local SEO strategy, is making sure that Google My Business page is optimized.

Jeff Light: This is what drives all those map listings, that map pack that we all wanna be asso- we all wanna show up in, right? And so the Google integration allows us to drop this Book Online button right here. So this doesn’t take them to the website, right? This takes them directly to Schedulebot so the customer can do what?

Jeff Light: They can schedule their job, right? Think of it as OpenTable for home services, if you will. So this will book a lot of jobs for our customers. Last but not least, we– I like to talk about local service ads. You know, local service ads are probably the most cost-effective way to advertise on Google to drive, you know, home service jobs.

Jeff Light: So right here, this whole Book Online button, this comes from– Actually, both these companies. Both of these Book Online buttons are, are linked to Schedulebot, right? Now, I’m not gonna click it in this case, ’cause as you know, LSA is watching these stats. I don’t wanna accidentally mess up, um, or impact Baker Brothers or Milestone stats.

Jeff Light: But having these Book Online buttons there, again, it appear– it makes you appear more responsive. So maybe you, um, you probably realize this, but Google is evaluating your responsiveness to these ads based upon– They kinda keep this score, right? Now, we don’t know how their scoring is, right? We don’t see the score anywhere, but their scoring is.

Jeff Light: And based upon your responsiveness, they’ll show your ad more or less. So the more responsive you can be, not only are you converting at a higher rate, but they’re showing your ad more for those most cost-effective ads that are, in fact, you know, that we can get through Google So let me just take a deep breath.

Jeff Light: If you’ve got any questions on that part of it, then I’ll kind of move on

Paul Benton: As you know Jo- Jeff, we have some clients with Schedulebot, and they’re very happy with it. And one of the things that Schedulebot does that others do not is conversational text. So you can go to the, um, GBP link, and you can, uh, communicate with the plumbing company directly through the embedded text button, book entirely through text conversation, and not have to deal with a calendar.

Paul Benton: Some of our clients really wanted that, and that’s an innovation that you have.

Jeff Light: That’s exactly right. And, um, you know, we used to talk about it as a chat session, right? And that’s kind of what this looks like. Here’s a chat session. Okay? We talk about it more as messaging now. And chat, for some people, chat sort of got this sort of like negative vibe, and it was because we spent all this time chatting in our information, and at the end of the chat it would say something like, “Great, thanks for all your information and spending the last 10 minutes entering it.

Jeff Light: Someone will get back to you shortly so we can complete your booking.” And that’s like, wah, wah. No one wants that, right? We live in a society now that wants immediate, you know, gratification. So instead of doing some, some kind of fake chats for you, this, this is, uh, another great customer called The Wire Nut.

Jeff Light: This, uh, these are– this is their report from last month. I can go in here and I can look at their web chats. You can see they booked twenty-four at a seventy-eight percent conversion rate. This actually shows us the conversations as they’re coming in. Uh, I can click on Lauren, for example, and see what’s going on there.

Jeff Light: And so you can see it starts with a greeting. Now, I will tell you this, that, um, on the voice system specifically, people always ask me, “Well, should you tell a, tell them it’s an AI?” And I’m like, “You absolutely should,” because you can tell, right? When you listen to an AI voice. It’s very good, as you’ll hear.

Jeff Light: Now, in this world though, I don’t believe people know that they’re chatting with an AI. The AI is that good, okay? Um, so for example, we give them a greeting. You know, “Hey, need help with HVAC or plumbing or electrical?” You know, “Please describe your issue.” Lauren says, “I need an outlet replaced.” Here’s an empathy statement, right?

Jeff Light: “Hey, sorry you’re dealing with that. To get started, you know, could I please get your phone number?” So I know it’s– there’s no real empathy here. It is AI, but every study under the sun says that we should be offering empathy in these situations. Now, I’m not talking about going crazy, but, “Hey, sorry you’re dealing with that, but you’ve called the right company.

Jeff Light: We can help.” Empathy reassurance. Then Schedulebot does what? We get contact information up front, right? That’s the way the form works. That’s the way the, the chat sessions or the messaging sessions– the messaging sections work as well. You can see now it gathers the address. You know, it says, “Are you the homeowner?”

Jeff Light: Yes. It’s gonna ask some questions like, you know, uh, how old is your home? 42 years old. What date? They say today. We give them options. They selected Wednesday. Here, you know, we’ve got a dispatch fee. So what do we do first? Even the chat session builds value. A skilled certified electrician, or excuse me, a skilled certified technician, um, will assist.

Jeff Light: There’s a $29 dispatch fee, right? Yes. Here’s what we want. Your appointment is confirmed. That’s what we’re after is making sure that appointment is confirmed. This is what our customers want. This person can move on and cross this off their to-do list, and that’s why, you know, the online scheduling through either texting or in this case kind of a chat messaging session is so successful.

Paul Benton: You know, your, your AI voice sounds remarkably human. Do you wanna… Do you wanna sh- demo that voice?

Jeff Light: Absolutely. So this is, um, this is our backend system. Again, this is, these are the conversations. This is just, uh, a recording that I did for a little bit earlier Let me set for to– uh, let me set this for today.

Jeff Light: Yeah, this is the one I did a little bit earlier today. Couple things I’ll, I’ll point out in here is I don’t think we have enough time to really go into all the customizations and how the whole thing is customized, right? Happy to do that for whoever wants to hear it at a, at a later time. But I like to give it a little bit of a hard time, right?

Jeff Light: I don’t– it’s no fun if I just go into schedule without asking any questions. So a few things I’ll point out, and I– this first part I kinda have to laugh at myself ’cause I don’t speak Spanish, but we do, uh, work with a lot of companies in areas where it speaks Spanish. So the first thing I’m gonna say is ask it if it speaks Spanish.

Jeff Light: Then I’m gonna quickly ask it to speak English to me so I understand what it’s saying, but you can see it can switch between voices, right? You’ll hear me ask things like, “Well, you know, what does this cost?” Or, you know, “What can cause this?” Sorta off the wall questions. Then ultimately, you know, it’s gonna talk to me about dispatch fees.

Jeff Light: You know, dispatch fees are a place where we get a lot of pushback. Um, you know, people don’t wanna pay dispatch fees necessarily, or, and they don’t wanna pay ’em ’cause they don’t understand what they’re getting for their money. But you’ll hear me interrupt the AI on purpose. You know, AIs are notorious for getting this thing where you interrupt them, and they don’t stop.

Jeff Light: And then it tries to talk while you’re talking. So we want the AI to stop and listen, just like we would have a highly trained CSR do. So you’ll, you’ll hear me interrupt it. Then at the end, you’ll hear me give it the objection. I always end it with this: “Well, let me check with my wife first.” ‘Cause that’s the way it goes in my house anyway, is I need to check with my wife first about everything like this.

Jeff Light: So I’ll throw that at Schedulebot. And you’ll see in our best practices, we have it set right now so that Schedulebot will say, “Hey, would you like me to hold this appointment for you, you know, while you go check with her?” Then, of course, I’m gonna say, “Yes,” right? So that’s what you can kinda listen for in this call, but I’ll just play this call for you and, and answer questions afterwards.

Jeff Light: Cool?

Paul Benton: Sounds good.

ScheduleBot AI: Hi. It is a great day here at Arrow Plumbing and Drain Services. I am Chloe, a virtual team member here to help when things get busy or after hours. How can I help?

Jeff Light: Um, hablas español?

ScheduleBot AI: Sí, hablo español. ¿En qué puedo ayudarle hoy?

Jeff Light: Um, actually, switch back to English.

ScheduleBot AI: Of course. How can I help you today?

Jeff Light: Um, yeah. I’ve got, like, water sort of, like, leaking up through the floor of my house, and I’m not sure where it’s coming from.

ScheduleBot AI: I’m sorry you’re dealing with water coming up through the floor. Let’s get that taken care of. I see we have you in our system as Jeff. Is that correct?

Jeff Light: Um, yes, that’s correct.

ScheduleBot AI: Is this the best number to reach you?

Jeff Light: Uh-huh.

ScheduleBot AI: Is your address still the one on Greenbriar Circle?

Jeff Light: Yes, it is

ScheduleBot AI: Is there anything else you want to tell me about the water coming up through your floor?

Jeff Light: Well, what could cause something like that?

ScheduleBot AI: It could be a few things, like a slab leak or a broken pipe under the foundation, and that’s something we’d want to check quickly to prevent damage. Are you noticing warm water or does it feel cold?

Jeff Light: Uh, it feels cold

ScheduleBot AI: All right. Give me a sec

ScheduleBot AI: Do you know if it seems like fresh water or could it be sewer water?

Jeff Light: I think it’s fresh water

ScheduleBot AI: Okay, one moment

ScheduleBot AI: I can get someone out Wednesday, July 15th between 12:00 PM and 5:00 PM. Does that work for you?

Jeff Light: Um, yeah, that sounds good

ScheduleBot AI: Perfect. I’ll get someone out Wednesday, July fifteenth, between twelve AM and five PM. There’s a seventy-nine dollar dispatch fee for this visit, and that covers having a

Jeff Light: d- Okay, wait a second.

Jeff Light: What about the dis- what’s the dispatch fee thing again?

ScheduleBot AI: That’s a great question. The dispatch fee covers having a licensed, background-checked, fully insured technician come out to your home, assess the issue, and give you clear options and upfront pricing before any work is done. Would you like to go ahead and keep that Wednesday afternoon slot?

Jeff Light: You know, actually, let me check with my wife real quick. I wanna make sure someone’s gonna be home during that time.

ScheduleBot AI: No problem at all. Would you like me to hold that Wednesday afternoon spot for you while you check with her?

Jeff Light: Um, yeah, that sounds good

ScheduleBot AI: Perfect. Just to confirm, there’s a seventy-nine dollar dispatch fee for the visit, which covers the licensed technician coming out and diagnosing the issue with upfront pricing before any work is done. Is that okay?

Jeff Light: That sounds good

ScheduleBot AI: Okay, I’m getting this booked for you now. All set. You’re scheduled for Wednesday, July 15th, between 12:00 PM and 5:00 PM.

ScheduleBot AI: You’ll receive a confirmation shortly. Thank you so much for choosing Arrow Plumbing. Is there anything else I can help you with today?

Jeff Light: So that’s an example of how a call could go. There are, there are many, many, many different variations of that call. So for example, it could be an emergency call, after-hours call, right?

Jeff Light: And one of the really cool things about, like, when we book after-hours call, an after-hours job like this, is we do notify the on-call technician so that doesn’t sit there and just go unnoticed. So there’s a lot of features and functions that are kind of behind the scenes here happening, but at least that gives you a good example of how the voice can sound, um, at least in this one specific instance.

Paul Benton: And can you customize the voice?

Jeff Light: Um, can you customize the voice? You can. Um, we typically, like, let our customers… We’ll, we’ll install like three or four voices for them, and so I wouldn’t say we’re really customizing a lot of voices. Now, in theory, you can clone a voice. Like, in theory, I could take a recording of your voice and clone a voice that, that sounds a lot like you.

Jeff Light: Most of our customers will go with one of the, uh, the voices that we have that are sort of, um, pre- you know, already prepared. There are just a lot more that kind of go into them, and they just seem to work a little better to me. But you can select a guy voice, a girl voice. You can go through several choices and pick the one that you like the most.

Paul Benton: And suppose you have a Wisenheimer like me who calls up and says to the AI, “I am radically pro-human, and I’m not ashamed of that, so I need to talk to a human being or I’m out of here.”

Jeff Light: Yeah, right.

Paul Benton: Do you have an answer for that?

Jeff Light: We do. Um, so one of the things that we will set up… So this is kind of the process we go through when we set up our customer’s account.

Jeff Light: You’ll see there’s a section here called call routing. Now, in my demo system, I have it just very simple, uh, where it’s just kind of like a mainline office, which is actually my cell phone number, but we can make this pretty complicated. So you could set up call routing for to go to various departments of your company, even go to specific people, but the devil’s in the details.

Jeff Light: Um, there’s a start and end time to these call forwarding, um, to this call forwarding. So for example, if someone calls and says, “Can I speak to a human?” at 9:30 in the morning, it’s a little different than if someone calls, “Can I speak to a human?” at 9:30 at night. You might not have those people in the office, or you may just set up a whole separate number for those after-hours, um, calls when someone wants to speak to a human.

Jeff Light: Now, let’s say that there’s not a human available. At that point, we create what we call follow-up action items, and a follow-up action item is basically, um, it’s like, it’s like us taking a message. So it ends up being like a, an email or a text that goes to your, normally your CSR team or your CSR manager to let you know that you need to get in touch with this customer as soon as possible Now, the AI typically, we can obviously, you know, schedule jobs, we can cancel jobs, we can reschedule jobs and give, excuse me, and give a job status, okay?

Jeff Light: But, you know, a lot of calls that come into home service companies are not about scheduling at all, okay? They’re a salesperson, which we can have Schedulebot transfer that nasty salesperson voicemail that never gets listened to, right? Or it’s, you know, it could be whatever, right? Um, but Schedulebot can also kind of triage those calls for you, transfer them where they need to go, take messages when they need to be taken, but then book jobs when that booking opportunity is available

Paul Benton: So the bottom line is that it’s flexible.

Paul Benton: So if you want to build in protections to give a human to a customer, you can do that, or you can go full AI. I like that, that it’s that flexible.

Jeff Light: That’s exactly right. Um, now the AI oftentimes, let’s say just like our, kind of our standard configuration. If I just say, “Can I speak to a human?” It’s gonna ask me what I’m calling for, and it might soft sell me on getting…

Jeff Light: You know, trying to get me to let it book the job for me, like one time. You know, it might say something like, you know, “Hey, Paul. Um, I can take care of that for you right now. Could you schedule? Or if you still want, I can go and transfer you to our office.” So it, it might take one shot at getting, you know, getting you to let it book the job for you.

Jeff Light: But, um, more than one pushback, it’ll go and transfer you.

Paul Benton: So Jeff, this has been great on the how. Can we take a step back and go through f- some why questions?

Jeff Light: Sure.

Paul Benton: And you’ve, you’ve have a long perspective on home services. And so one question is, why should plumbers have online scheduling? What’s, what’s the straight deal on that?

Paul Benton: We just take it now for granted, but why should you have online scheduling in today’s marketplace?

Jeff Light: That’s a great question. And I… First of all, it’s on the uptick. There’s a whole group of people called millennials out there that we used to think about as these snotty-nosed little kids, right? Not so much anymore.

Jeff Light: You know, they’re in their 40s. They’re buying homes, right? Anybody that age group or younger, um, 70% of them would rather schedule with their thumbs or online, right, than actually talk to a, a human, much less an AI. And so it’s just, it’s just opening up another way for people to interface with your company.

Jeff Light: At the end of the day, the real why you want to do it is because you’re getting more jobs booked, right? You’ve got people seeing your Schedule Now button on things like your Google My Business page. You’ve got people seeing your Schedule Now button on things like your LSA ads. So it, it’s coming. And even someone with as m- I’ve got my gray hair hidden under this hat, but even someone with as much gray hair as I have got, um, for example, I was…

Jeff Light: I’m trying to take my wife out to a nice dinner for our anniversary, go to a fancy restaurant in Dallas. I’m trying to call. I’m not having much luck. I discover this thing called OpenTable. Took me like a minute to get my reservation. And it was so good I didn’t believe it. I called the restaurant anyway.

Jeff Light: Of course, they’re like, “Dude, we got you. Okay? We– Yes, we know there’s this thing called OpenTable. Hello.” Well, now I would never schedule with a restaurant that I couldn’t use OpenTable for, right? So as our customers get more and more educated on how easy it is and how fast it is to schedule online, I believe we’re gonna see more and more people moving that direction

Paul Benton: I’ve noticed just in the last three years, a real acceleration in speed to lead.

Paul Benton: Um, I don’t… Do you re- do you see that as well? And the question is, why do you believe speed to lead matters even more today than it did five years ago? What’s happening to the marketplace that everybody’s talking about speed to lead today? And you’re in the middle of it, of course, with scheduling.

Jeff Light: Right.

Jeff Light: You know, first of all, speed to lead’s ki- it’s a catchy phrase, right? Speed to lead. It makes a lot of sense, right? But what’s happened is, is that there are a lot of these, uh, kind of what I call lead aggregators that exist out there, the Angie’s List, the Thumbtacks, the Yelps, right? Uh, even Google LSA to, to some extent.

Jeff Light: And the thing like the contractors don’t like about systems like Angie’s List, is they let you send out a request to five different contractors at once for your job. So it’s instantly a competition. This lead goes to the contractor as an email, so if I’m not sitting or watching my email and replying within, you know, 30 seconds, I’ve lo- that’s too late.

Jeff Light: These people are in market for about five minutes. So the speed to lead aspect of it is ScheduleBot’s got integration into these systems like Angie’s List and Thumbtack. So it’s watching for those leads to come into your company, and it’s gonna reply immediately via text message, okay? So while we can’t guarantee you’re gonna get every one of these jobs, we can guarantee you’ll be the first one to respond, okay?

Jeff Light: So that’s the genesis of speed to lead, is helping you win the c- competition when you’ve got leads going out to multiple people, right? Or you feel like your customer’s getting quotes from multiple different businesses, we want you to get back to them as quickly as possible. So ultimately, that’s, that’s the functionality we’re providing.

Paul Benton: That’s a great, that’s a great answer. Um, can we end on this note? You covered a lot here, and we saw the i- pretty steep increase in numbers that Schedule- ScheduleBot delivers, um, being present in the lead systems that plumbers use. But can you h- sort of restate and help us understand, um, w- before and after ScheduleBot, what percentage benefit is a mid-level 10 truck plumbing company gonna kind of feel when before and after ScheduleBot and before and after scheduling?

Paul Benton: What’s the… What… How far does that needle move from your experience across the customer base?

Jeff Light: I mean- So everyone is different, okay? So– and, and these, these ten truck– like a ten truck, a ten truck company, pretty good size out there, right? It, it’s hard to say just sitting here right now where their leads are, are coming from.

Jeff Light: But if I’m gonna kinda do a generalization, right? I mean, I believe you will see probably, uh, between a fifteen and twenty percent bump in just leads scheduled in general. So a fifteen to twenty percent bump in just revenue, right? Because we’re taking out that friction when it comes to online scheduling, okay?

Jeff Light: Uh, a company that big is probably gonna go from getting, you know, ten jobs booked a month, okay, to getting like fifty or sixty jobs booked a month. So it’s a delta of, you know, fifty, sixty jobs they get every single month that otherwise would’ve gone missed. Then you can apply your average ticket to that and see what the impact is, right?

Jeff Light: So that’s kinda at, at the, you know, really generalization of, of what I see with companies that size. It’s significant. Um, it makes– honestly, I have to say this, it makes ScheduleBot the best investment they’ve ever made, right? Because, um, the ROI is massive because they’re just getting more jobs booked, right?

Jeff Light: And there’s no advertising cost. So, um, you’re just taking the advertising you’re already getting and getting way more out of it. You know, another thing I sometimes will talk to people about is this whole concept of cost per acquisition. You know, we’re always tracking what’s it cost to acquire a new customer, and this is really where you can show how conversion rate makes a huge difference.

Jeff Light: So keeping the math really simple for me, you know, if you’ve got a lead cost of a hundred dollars, okay? And, and so we’re not your marketer. You’ve got a marketing team that’s in charge of, in charge of driving leads at as low a cost as they can. They’re driving leads at a hundred dollars. If your conversion rate is twenty-five percent, okay?

Jeff Light: It takes four leads to get one job. Simple math, it’s a four hundred dollar cost per acquisition for that one job, okay? If you increase that conversion rate to seventy percent, I’m not– I should’ve done this math ahead of time, anticipated this question, but it’s gonna take your cost per acquisition to like a hundred and twenty-five dollars, right?

Jeff Light: It doesn’t even take two leads to get a job, okay? So you’re going from a four hundred dollar cost per acquisition to a hundred and twenty-five dollar cost per acquisition. So how much more efficient does that make your marketing? It’s, it’s, it’s massive, right? That’s why I say it’s exponential in its effect.

Paul Benton: So instead of paying Google more, you get more out of Google.

Jeff Light: There you go, right? That’s right, right.

Paul Benton: Well, Jeff, uh, l- let’s close on this. You are an entrepreneur. Um, you have been a dyed-in-the-wool marketer, and you are also a dyed-in-the-wool software developer. Which do you like better?

Jeff Light: That’s a great question.

Jeff Light: You know, um, I love what I’m doing now. This got me back to my roots. You know, my wife always jokes that I’m the biggest nerd in any room I walk into, and I’ve just learned to own it over the years, right? And so right now I’m really enjoying software development. And I will say this, marketing has changed over the years.

Jeff Light: So when I started doing marketing for home service companies, it actually, actually was a very technical endeavor. We did all kinds of tricks. You know, I went– I go all the way back to the days, and you’re gonna probably laugh at this, but I would literally have things like a white– like a website with a white background and the word “plumber” a million times in white text, right?

Jeff Light: Now, obviously we can’t get away with that stuff anymore, but I kinda go back to the Wild Wild West days of marketing, where it really was a technical endeavor. Um, and that’s why I think I thrived at it. You know, I really leaned into, in my marketing days, conversion tracking before convert- conversion tracking was even a thing, okay?

Jeff Light: But now marketing has changed, right? Marketing is, is, it’s much more high-level driven. The different marketing platforms take care of a lot of that dirty work for us, and honestly, a lot of that stuff’s not allowed, and it should not be allowed. What I was doing back then, I didn’t know it was gray hat or blackout marketing.

Jeff Light: I just thought that’s what you did to get jobs on the board, right? Or to sell stuff online. Um, we’re now, um, the world of coding has also changed, right? But just really, it, it really lets me get back to my technical roots. Um, it lets me sort of exercise that part of my brain that I love, and that’s my strength.

Jeff Light: Now, that said, coding has also changed a lot. You know, when I was writing software, I was writing operating systems, so really, like, low level, you know, machine level type stuff where I’m actually addressing different areas of memory, you know, looking at how the disk rotates and the actual heads actuate inside to, to read data.

Jeff Light: We’re not doing any more of that these days, right? So we’re actually really lucky. Our whole team works in the same office that I’m in right now. So our technical team is not scattered around the world. We’re all located here pretty much in the DFW market, in Rockwall, Texas, to be specific. Um, but our team, our coders are almost like project managers now.

Jeff Light: So they’ve got multiple AI agents writing this code, and they’re project managing like six– Like they’ve got six different AI coders working for them. They’re, you know, and they’re project managing, putting it all together, coming up with the ideas, building the prompts. And yes, they get in and fine-tune the code.

Jeff Light: I’m not– But, um, I just think that’s amazing. So we’re able to produce code at 100 times the rate that we produced it back when I was writing it. So all those things come together. Getting back to answer your question is I love what I’m doing now. I’m not trying to, like, poo-poo any marketers out there, right?

Jeff Light: That’s a very important function, right? Right. And I, I loved it, and I did really well at it for a long time, but I’m super happy where I’m at. I feel like that, um, you know, Retrait was kind of a, a, a godsend for me. It really, like… It’s really, like, it got me excited about my career again. It got me really excited about building something and taking it to market with the teams that I have here today.

Paul Benton: Well, thank you, Jeff, for being at the table. We, uh, appreciate, uh, the insights here. And everyone, we’ll see you in the next episode of the Plumbing Marketing Success podcast.

Jeff Light: Awesome, Paul. Thank you so much for having me.