In January of 2024, HL Bowman had a problem. They were spending more on marketing but Cost per Conversion was getting worse. Their path from $50M to $100M was looking like it would be more expensive than planned.

The Challenge

“In 2022, when we needed leads the answer was, ‘Let’s just smash it into pay-per-click’ – and we would get results. When that changed, we knew we needed to start thinking about the call center differently.” - Bryan Enders, President @ HL Bowman

Bryan dug in. As an experienced operator, he knew the 8% of Revenue he was spending on his call center wasn’t as efficient as it could be: call answer rate wasn’t 100%, CSRs were getting tied up with ETAs and other non-demand calls, and not every CSR had a great booking rate. 

A second problem was managing peak demand. Like many home services businesses, HL Bowman needed 4x the number of CSRs in June and July vs. March. But overflow call center performance was lower than the in-house team.

“Avoca isn’t designed to replace your best performing CSR. It’s designed to take the weight off when you need to answer 30 calls at once, when you need to distinguish between someone just asking for a copy of their bill and someone looking to replace a 30 year old air conditioner that’s not working.”

The Solution

HL Bowman couldn’t keep spending more on leads, they needed to make their CSRs more productive with the leads they were already getting. Bryan was asking himself these questions:

• “How do we answer the call in less than 7 seconds?”
• “How do we figure out all the time sinks that our CSRs are getting tied up on?”
• “How can we gather as much information as possible automatically?”

So Bryan reached out to Avoca to help. Like many operators, he was skeptical about the hype around AI agents: Will the AI actually work? Will customers care if they talk to a robot? Will they even try it? Will booking rate go down?

Results

The team put Avoca’s AI CSR agent, Responder, to the test. In the first 3 months, Bryan’s questions were clearly answered:

• Avoca’s call answer rate was 100%
• 93% of callers were willing to work with the AI agent
• Cost per conversion dropped from $350 to $215
• Revenue grew 70% YoY with ZERO increase in Marketing and no new CSRs

Choosing Avoca for Bryan wasn’t just about the technology and the numbers. He wanted to partner with the leaders in the industry, the best technology backed by the best investors in a rapidly growing market. 

“Avoca’s team explained a lot about how AI works, how it’s growing, and how that informs their roadmap, which has been really important to us as we think about how to grow and evolve our business.”

Avoca’s intensive, hands-on implementation with a team that knew home services was an important factor in their decision. And he’s glad they did.

“I don’t think I can keep growing this business without Avoca. A business of our size would normally employ 50-60 CSRs, but we have 9-12 depending on the time of day. Our cost per conversion has gone down because we've just flat out answered more calls”

Impact

Bryan went so far as saying partnering with Avoca has been the best decision his business has ever made. Bryan said he and his team have personally recommended Avoca to every single business owner they know and haven't gotten any negative feedback from any of them. 

To other business owners who are trying to grow their business like Bryan has been able to do, he says:

“You are not booking as many calls as you think. That’s because you’re not actioning all the leads you’re paying for! It’s like setting money on fire. Leads are expensive– focus on converting all the ones you have before you invest in getting more”