A walkthrough of an urgent decision made in minutes, showing that the winning business was the one that answered three questions on the first screen and picked up the phone.

7:42pm Sunday: the discovery

Water is coming through the kitchen ceiling. She has turned off the main supply, which she found because a previous owner labelled it.

She is not researching. She is finding somebody who will come tonight, and she has already decided to pay whatever it costs.

She searches on her phone, standing in the kitchen, with a towel on the floor.

7:43pm: the first two results

The first is a directory listing several businesses. She skips it, because she wants a business rather than a list.

The second is a business site. It loads slowly, shows a photograph of a van, and the visible text says quality plumbing services since 1998. She scrolls, finds a contact form, and leaves.

What was lost: the enquiry, on a form. Nobody with water coming through a ceiling fills in a form on a Sunday evening.

7:45pm: the third

This one loads immediately. Across the top: emergency plumbing, the town name, and a phone number as a button.

Underneath, in the first screen: available 24 hours, and the after-hours callout fee stated as a figure.

She calls. It rings out to voicemail.

What happened: this business did everything right on the site and lost the job at the phone. The site earned the call and nobody answered it.

She does not leave a message. People with an urgent problem do not wait for a call back.

7:47pm: the fourth

Similar site. Number at the top, availability stated, and one additional line she notices: what to do while you wait, with a link.

She calls. A person answers on the third ring.

7:48pm: the call

He asks three questions. Where is the water coming from, has she turned off the supply, and what is the address.

Then he tells her the callout fee, that he can be there within ninety minutes, and that turning off the supply was the right thing to do.

She books it.

What happened: the whole decision took six minutes from the first search, and the deciding factors were that somebody answered, gave a number, and gave a time.

She did not compare prices. She did not look at reviews. She did not visit an about page.

7:53pm: while she waits

She goes back to the site and reads the what to do while you wait page. It tells her to move things out from under the leak, to take photographs for insurance before anything is cleaned up, and not to turn the supply back on.

The insurance point is the one she would not have thought of.

What happened: that page did not win the job, since she had already booked. It did something else: it made her certain she had chosen well, before anybody arrived.

It is also the page she mentions when she recommends him.

What decided it

Reading the sequence back, the decisive factors were few and none was about plumbing.

  1. The site loading quickly, which eliminated one business immediately.
  2. A phone number visible without scrolling, as a tappable button.
  3. Availability stated, so she knew before calling.
  4. A fee stated, which removed the fear of an unknown emergency price.
  5. Somebody answering, which is where the third business lost it.
  6. A time given on the call.

Four of those six are website decisions costing nothing. One is answering the phone. One is a sentence spoken on the call.

The businesses that lost

Worth stating plainly, because none of them will know.

The second business lost on load speed and a form. It will conclude that emergency work is competitive.

The third lost by not answering. It had the better site of the two that were considered, and it will never know how close it came.

Neither appears in anybody's analytics as a loss, because a visitor who leaves without contacting is indistinguishable from somebody who was never going to.

The lesson that generalises

Emergency work is not won by being the best tradesperson. Everybody available at eight on a Sunday is acceptable to a customer with water coming through a ceiling.

It is won by being reachable, by answering the three questions on the first screen, and by picking up.

The after-hours number is the whole business. A site that generates emergency calls into a voicemail is worse than one that generates none, because the money spent producing those calls is spent.

And the page she read while waiting is the reason he is recommended rather than merely used, which is the same set of first-screen answers set out in the plumbing website that loses the call.

Frequently asked questions

How long did the decision take?

Six minutes from the first search to a booking, across four websites and two phone calls, on a Sunday evening.

What eliminated the first businesses?

A directory listing she skipped, and a site that loaded slowly and offered a contact form. Nobody with water coming through a ceiling fills in a form.

Where did the best site lose?

At the phone. It stated availability and the callout fee, earned the call, and rang out to voicemail. She did not leave a message.

What did she actually decide on?

That somebody answered, gave a figure, and gave a time. She did not compare prices, read reviews, or look at an about page.

What did the what-to-do-while-you-wait page achieve?

Not the booking, which was already made. It made her certain she had chosen well, and it is the thing she mentions when recommending him.

What generalises from this?

Emergency work is won by being reachable and answering three questions on the first screen. A site generating calls into voicemail is worse than one generating none.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Emergency calls going to voicemail after hours?

We check what happens between somebody searching and somebody answering, which is usually where the money is going.

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