In home services, speed wins. A homeowner’s pipe bursts at 7am. They grab their phone, search “emergency plumber near me,” and call the first three results. Two go to voicemail. One picks up in 3 seconds, qualifies the issue, and books a technician for 8:30am.
That company wins the $800 job. The other two never even knew about it.
This happens thousands of times every day across Toronto and the GTA. The difference between winning and losing a job often comes down to a single factor: speed to lead.
What Is Speed to Lead?
Speed to lead measures the time between a customer’s first contact and your first response. This includes phone calls, website forms, Facebook messages, Google Business inquiries, text messages — every channel where a potential customer can reach you.
For home service contractors, speed to lead is the most important metric you’re probably not tracking. It directly determines how many of your leads turn into booked jobs and how much revenue you capture versus lose to competitors.
The data is clear: a Lead Response Management study found that responding within 5 minutes makes you 21x more likely to qualify a lead than responding after 30 minutes. And responding within the first minute increases conversion by 391%.
Speed to Lead Benchmarks for Home Service Contractors
The gap between 60 seconds and 4 hours is massive. A contractor responding in under a minute books 39x more jobs from the same leads than one responding after 4 hours. Not because they’re better at the work. Because they were first.
Why Home Service Leads Go Cold in Minutes
Home service leads aren’t like B2B leads that can wait days for follow-up. They have specific characteristics that make speed critical:
1. Urgency drives the search. Nobody Googles “plumber near me” for fun. They have a problem — right now. Burst pipes, dead furnaces, sparking outlets, leaking roofs. The need is immediate.
2. Multiple companies get called. The average homeowner contacts 2-3 companies for emergency work and 3-5 for planned projects. The first to respond gets a massive advantage.
3. Voicemail is a dead end. 62% of callers who reach voicemail will never call back. They just move to the next result. Your voicemail greeting isn’t winning you any jobs.
4. The booking window closes fast. For emergency work, the window is 5-10 minutes. For planned work, 1-2 hours. After that, they’ve committed to someone else.
The Real Cost of Slow Response Times in the GTA
Let’s do the math for a typical Toronto-area contractor:
That’s not a rounding error. That’s a quarter-million dollars walking to your competitors every year — not because your work is worse, but because nobody picked up the phone.
For HVAC contractors during peak summer and winter seasons, the numbers are even higher. Emergency furnace repairs at $1,500+ and AC installations at $5,000+ mean each missed lead costs significantly more.
How Top Contractors in Toronto Achieve Sub-60-Second Response Times
You can’t hire enough people to respond to every lead in under 60 seconds. What you can do is build speed-to-lead infrastructure that automates instant response across every channel:
Phone calls
AI voice agents answer every call in under 3 seconds. They qualify the lead, book the appointment, and send confirmation — all while you’re on a job site.
Missed calls
Automated text-back fires within 60 seconds with a personalized message and booking link. The lead stays warm even when you can’t pick up.
Website forms
AI-powered follow-up triggers the moment a form is submitted. SMS and email sent within seconds with next steps and a booking link.
Social media
AI chat responds to Facebook, Instagram, and Google Business messages instantly. No more checking DMs at the end of the day.
Text messages
Two-way AI texting handles conversations, qualifies leads, and books appointments from text inquiries — 24/7.
Speed to Lead ROI: Real Numbers from Real Contractors
One of our HVAC clients in Mississauga went from a 4-hour average response time to under 30 seconds. The result:
- + Booking rate increased 85%
- + Revenue per lead increased $340
- + Monthly revenue from the same ad spend increased by $12,000
- + Cost per acquisition dropped by 41%
Same leads. Same ads. Same service area. The only change was speed.
A plumbing contractor in Brampton saw similar results after installing missed call text-back alone — before even adding the voice agent. Just the 60-second text response recovered an additional $8,000/month in leads that would have gone to competitors.
How to Measure Your Current Speed to Lead
Before you can improve, you need to know where you stand:
1. Check your CRM. If you’re using GoHighLevel, ServiceTitan, or Jobber, look at the time between lead creation and first contact. Most contractors are shocked at the actual numbers.
2. Test your own business. Have a friend call your business at 2pm on a Tuesday. Then at 7pm. Then Saturday morning. How long until they get a response? If the answer is “voicemail,” you know the problem.
3. Track by channel. Your phone speed might be decent during business hours, but what about after hours? Website forms? Facebook messages? Every channel matters.
Getting Started with Speed to Lead Automation
You don’t need to overhaul everything at once. Start with the highest-impact changes:
Install missed call text-back. This alone recovers 40-60% of missed leads with zero ongoing effort.
Add an AI voice agent for after-hours calls. This captures the 30% of leads that come in outside business hours.
Set up AI chat on your website. This engages the 95% of visitors who leave without filling out a form.
Connect everything to your CRM pipeline. Full visibility into response times, conversion rates, and revenue attribution.
The entire speed-to-lead infrastructure can be live within 2-3 weeks. The ROI shows up immediately.