In the Fox Cities, the second call back is the one that loses.

The Fox Cities are a crowded market, and that changes the math

Appleton is not a small town with four plumbers in it. Between here, Grand Chute, Little Chute, Kimberly, Kaukauna, Menasha and Neenah, a homeowner searching for a trade gets a long list of legitimate options, most of them with decent reviews and a real website.

When the list is that long, doing good work only gets you onto it. The job goes to whoever answered while the customer still had the phone in their hand. Everybody else is calling back into a decision that already happened.

Your service area crosses six municipalities and your customers do not care

An Appleton contractor’s territory sprawls. One day is Darboy and Combined Locks, the next is Greenville and out toward Neenah. You are never in the city you are listed in, and the drive between calls is where the phone rings.

That drive is the hour this covers. You are on 41 with a truck full of tools, and somewhere behind you a customer is deciding whether you exist.

What happens to a lead that sits for a day

A quote request that comes in Wednesday night and gets answered Thursday afternoon is not a warm lead anymore. In a market this size, two other companies replied Wednesday night. One of them already booked a look at the job.

Working later does not fix it. A specific written reply going out in under five minutes does, at 9 PM, on a Sunday, from the roof of somebody else’s house. Then a second follow-up if they go quiet, which is where most of the recovered work comes from.

What gets installed

• Ricochet missed call text-back. The call you miss gets a text in seconds asking what they need, in your voice. The conversation stays with you instead of moving down the search results.
• Web leads and estimates. Every form fill gets a real reply within minutes, and every estimate gets followed up until the customer answers.
• Review Requests. Finished jobs turn into review requests on their own, which is what moves you up the map results in a market with this many competitors.

Start with missed calls and add the rest once you see it working. There is nothing extra for you to open, check or remember.

Reviews carry more weight here than in a smaller market

In a town with four options, a customer will call all four. In the Fox Cities they will not. They will call the top two or three in the map results and stop, and those positions move on review count and how recent the reviews are.

A company doing excellent work and never asking gets buried underneath a company doing fine work that asks every single time. That is not fair and it is also not going to change, so the practical move is to ask every single time without having to remember.

Are you actually local to Appleton?

No, I’m not in Appleton.

It does not matter for this one. Customers keep calling the number on your truck, the install works with the tools you already use, and it happens remotely. There is no equipment going into your building, nothing to service on site, and nothing that breaks because I am not down the street.

What you would be buying from a local shop instead is a person who answers when you call. You get that here. There is no support queue and no account manager, because there is nobody else here.

What it costs

Ricochet missed call text-back is $297 to set up and $147 a month, month to month, and if it doesn’t text back at least 5 missed calls in your first 30 days, you get the setup fee back. Afterburner, with everything above, is $1,497 to set up and $397 a month, with a 3-month minimum.

Both are on the systems page. Start with missed calls and add the rest later. The leak is rarely in one place.