From the Yellow Chair
From the Yellow Chair
The Importance of the Speed to Lead With Danielle from Contractors In Charge
Leads aren’t dying. They’re expiring while your team gets to them. We unpack a practical playbook for contractors to capture more jobs without buying more clicks, focusing on speed to lead across online scheduling, AI-enabled chat, and automated follow-ups that never sleep. Joined by Danielle from Contractor In Charge and OnePath, we talk through what actually converts: fewer fields, faster confirmations, wider time windows, and a frictionless path from “I have a problem” to “I’ve got a booked visit.”
We start with the hard truth from the data: if you wait six hours on a weekday or forty-eight over the weekend to reply, the customer is gone and the lead looks “bad.” From there, we show how to strip obstacles out of your web experience—let customers describe the issue in their own words, enter a phone and ZIP, see availability, and book in four steps. Worried about routing or edge cases? Book first, optimize later. Then we dive into chat, where most visitors want simple answers fast. AI can greet, qualify, and schedule 24/7, but must offer a human-out at any time to build trust and handle nuance.
Form fills still matter, but only with instant automation. We outline how to trigger same‑second replies via text and email, push to scheduling, and follow up on abandoned interactions without relying on a busy inbox. Danielle explains how OnePath brings all of this together—web scheduler, chat, text‑to‑book, and AI-driven, human-backed support—so every channel stays fast, familiar, and flexible. The result is higher conversion, better customer experience, and real protection when shoulder season softens demand.
If this conversation helps you spot your slowest link, share it with a teammate, subscribe for more field-tested growth tactics, and leave a quick review to tell us where you’re losing speed today.
If you enjoyed this chat From the Yellow Chair, consider joining our newsletter, "Let's Sip Some Lemonade," where you can receive exclusive interviews, our bank of helpful downloadables, and updates on upcoming content.
Please consider following and drop a review below if you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to check out our social media pages on Facebook and Instagram.
From the Yellow Chair is powered by Lemon Seed, a marketing strategy and branding company for the trades. Lemon Seed specializes in rebrands, creating unique, comprehensive, organized marketing plans, social media, and graphic design. Learn more at www.LemonSeedMarketing.com
Interested in being a guest on our show? Fill out this form!
We'll see you next time, Lemon Heads!
What's up Lemonheads? Welcome to another episode of From the Yellow Chair. I am critical the cover and we're strategic marketing with this access power by today. I have 400% about to tell you how you have to get on your face, about gathering and capturing every single week opportunity that comes your way. We're having a real conversation about the power of Facebook and how you're probably failing at it, and a really need to draft up your purpose and your idea about the data Facebook. I've got a great guest at one reading here, so let's diseliminate Danielle.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you, girl. Appreciate it.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. So listen, for all of you that are listening and maybe watching, um Danielle and I have kind of started talking recently, even more than we we've always been acquaintances. You know, we kind of run in the same circles, but we started talking more and more because my pest control company that my sister runs, um, we have been wanting to add some online scheduling and all these different things. And you were telling me about a product. So Danielle works with contractor in charge, um, also what is now OnePath. And so OnePath is literally one path for the customer to get in contact with the pack description. Yay, one path for them to get in contact with the contractor. So in the pest control industry, that is a challenge for sure. So got to hear about you guys and what you do. And Danielle and I really got into some good conversations about the power of speed to lead, meaning your team moves and acts quickly, no matter how the client's reaching out. So gone are the days of the 80s and 90s, which is when I grew up, where my aunt literally answered the telephone, and that was how people they either were coming to the office or they were calling. Now you can reach out to us like 15 different ways. So, how do we get where we are good at capturing those leads? So, Danielle, I wanted to kind of start off like, is there someone or an example client, example situation that you have to where the client was really struggling to book leads? They weren't taking advantage of multiple ways of leads to be booked.
SPEAKER_00:And honestly, um, I don't even know that I could list one client in in particular, because I think a lot of the clients that we've worked with have had this struggle at one point in their business or another. And what it often comes down to, or the thing that I think brings it to light for them most heavily, is number one shoulder season, where they're relying a lot more on those incoming, you know, one-to-one leads where these people are actively seeking your business. But also a lot of times what we see too is everything runs really smoothly until someone is out or someone leaves, and then all of a sudden, this big hole gets kind of created and shown to light where people are not responding quickly, um, or they think the process is really solid until we really help them dig into the numbers. Like for example, we have one, we had one client that we did a discovery with. Um, and the tools that they were using were bringing in a lot of forms. They were getting a lot of form fills, they were getting some um, like their web scheduler tool, I want to say was more of like a submit, give us the preferred time, and then someone else is going to reach back out. And in that client, what they thought was really successful, they thought they were getting bad leads. But in reality, when we looked at the data, they were taking sometimes 48 hours to respond to a request on the weekends and even six to seven hours on a Monday or Tuesday to respond to the customers that were actively scheduling on their website. So by the time they got them and reached out, it was too late. Customer had moved on and they were losing that lead. So in their mind, it was a bad lead, but in reality, it was a problem with how quickly they were connecting with that lead.
SPEAKER_01:Sure. And so, you know, marketers, marketing companies, so anybody that offers a service that guarantees leaders, we get the raw end of that deal quite often because I literally had a client the other day like super mad at their digital company. Uh, and I'm like, you only have SEO going on your website. So there is nothing, if there's no demand for the service that you're offering, there is no one searching for it. So your website is doing what it's supposed to do. There's no demand. That's why all of our eggs can't be in the digital basket.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. And the other thing that's important too is making sure that you, especially if you spend a bunch of money on SEO, for example, and you're trying to drive that traffic, the traffic does nothing if they have no place to go. So if they go to your website, great, you got them there, but how are you getting them to convert there? And how are you making it more known and rememberable? So even if they don't use your service this time. So kind of like what you guys do with branding and community, even if they don't use you this time, how do you make sure that you're in their face constantly so that when they do use you, it's rememberable? It's not something where they're Googling again for the same companies, they can actually go and Google you instead.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so you know, Lemon Seat's whole goal is to get you known by your name, not by your necessarily, you know, through a Google search. So we want you to be known by your name. But you know, when we're going into the shoulder things, then we have to be ready to grab all of those things. So let's talk about a couple of the ways that contractors need to be prepared to take leads. So one of the ways that I know you guys have a lot of uh experience with there is the online scheduling side. So people get all in their feelings, Danielle. That well, I don't really know. What if somebody listen, if you live your life worried about the outliers we're not getting anywhere, literally?
SPEAKER_00:Well, and so one of the things I would always encourage people to do is don't think about how you think it's going to work. Because like one of the things that we educate on a regular basis is this general concept of online scheduling is that one, the appointment is set in stone, it doesn't have to be. Two, that they have to have all of their ducts perfectly aligned and everything absolutely 100% right in their system in order to be able to offer online scheduling. And they are so deep within their business that they think of every potential road fork or, you know, whatever. They think of every potential turn that could happen. And it oftentimes terrifies them from actually doing anything. They get so nervous that one thing is gonna go wrong. In reality, capacity in terms of having availability for your customer to then grab an appointment is not as difficult as you think it is. Enabling them to schedule something does not have to be that difficult. And you have fail safe, you have people that can make up on calls if you need to move something in the event that it doesn't work out, but you can enable your customer by giving a broader time window, for example. So instead of having your specific like eight to nine or eight to ten, give them a morning window so you have a ton of flexibility. Like one of the things that we run into a lot as a question is routing. So can you assign to my technician or can you make sure that it's only going here and here? One, there are ways to control your routing, but there also is a bigger thing that says you don't need to worry about that yet. Get the appointment first, then figure out how you're getting there. Don't necessarily panic about the end result when you haven't even gotten to the beginning yet.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. We worry about the outliers so much that we have paralysis by analysis, right? We're just like, but we're here and I analyzing things and we're like never moving forward. So, so good note there. So online booking, too, I think you know, we want to be gradually and slowly moving towards people that prioritize ease of use. So customer journey. So as a limited person, we look at the overall customer journey with your brand. Okay. So that means what does it look like from start to finish? So when they're driving around, do they see your brand? When they're listening to music, do they hear your brand? When they're on social media, do they experience your brand? But also once they decide to call you, what does that workflow look like? What does that experience look like? So that is why your CSRs, all the way down to the installers, to the thank you call person, all have to be above reproach. We've got to be above board on our experience with the client. Um, so you're trying to build something memorable. And it sounds so corny because literally what you sell is heating and air conditioning or plumbing or roofing or electrical, whatever. But at the end of the day, you are still a service provider. So you need to be providing a service and an experience that is so good that people can't help but talk about it. They can't help but give you a five-star review. And right now, I feel like online scheduling and booking is imperative to having a more aggressive and innovative approach to business. Well, the next one's chat. So again, people are petrified that someone's gonna ask a question in chat that can't be answered. And there's caveats for all of this, right? Like, what if someone asks a question that I can't answer?
SPEAKER_00:What happens? So let's play that out for a second. Let's say someone does answer a question that you can't answer. What stops you from picking up the phone and calling them or letting them know, hey, you know what? I'm not 100% sure. Like, let's say we're working on human-to-human chat, because I think that one of the things to definitely look at and that all contractors should consider, regardless of the size of their business, is like AI-enabled chat, right? So AI-enabled chat would give you the ability to customer can connect with you at any time and ask a question. But in the event that that customer can't be answered with AI, then it goes to someone in the office or someone that knows your business better. But in reality, think about what you do when you go on a website. What do you do when you chat with somebody? You're not asking about the freaking formula for rocket science. You're asking about something that they do that every standard person would know pretty in depth. One of the things that I think people get fear, especially in the HVAC industry, is this idea of um price, like ballpark pricing, right? So if I ask, if I have a chat, they're gonna ask me ballpark price, and then I'm not gonna be able to convert them. But why is the conversation any different? If you're on the phone or if you're chatting, the conversation can be exactly the same. You still want to push that value. There is there is no reason to fear the questions that you're worried about not being able to be controlled, because at the end of the day, the customer is gonna engage with you, you're going to get their information. So even if you can't convert them because the question isn't something you know how to answer, you can call them and discuss it with them or follow up with them the next day. But it's really just making sure one of the things that I think is a good just general statement is always be ready to meet your customer where they're at and how they want to.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So give them that choice if that's what they want, it's gonna be okay.
SPEAKER_01:Well, yeah, it's human to human versus AI to human. Like you have choices as a contractor uh to have a multitude of those things, or are you okay with AI starting out with an easy transition to human conversation? Like those are such easy things to do. So, again, so number one thing that I think we need to talk about is online scheduling that we talked about it. How can you get that on your website and figure it out? Number two, a good chat process. So even if you're like, hey, here's our top-answered questions, here's things that you know they're gonna ask for. But is it do you want human to human, AI to human, AI only? Like, what do you want? Um, the good news is you have choices there, right? But the other thing that I think is important on speed to lead, and you might tell me if I'm wrong, and it's weird, but form bills, those are the most unthought about thing when we talk about speed to lead. Because you know why you're like, oh, if number one, it dumps into an email that's normally like in a list of 5,000 email. Yeah, so you're like gross, right? And so now we've got to figure out you have to be intentional about those form fills. So either get rid of form fills altogether, go to chat, or get your own form fill. So a lot of times when you have form fills on websites, it's some sort of plug-in, right, that your web provider is using, and that plugin can break, right? Things happen digitally, so that can happen. And so, how do you keep that from happening? Is like owning your own, like JOT form or something like that. But I am slowly but surely, yeah, like getting away from that, where you can go to things that are a lot more automated where people don't have to worry about filling in a form.
SPEAKER_00:And so, yes, that's very, very true. And I think never get rid of it because it is something that's familiar for people, right? So, part of what we never want to do, especially because the world is so AI driven right now and all conversations are talking about AI or how it can implement your business, you don't ever want to take away the familiarity from the customer so that they feel like they're using something brand new that's uncomfortable. So keep the form filled. But what I would always tell people is number one, if you have it going to an email, it better not be the email that you get everything else in because you are losing them. You're gonna, it's gonna go into the unknown, especially on a Monday. But one of the things that we focused really hard on offering was the ability to have something or someone automatically respond to your form fill. Because those people are actively taking the time to fill something out for you. Get back with them immediately. And if you can't do that with your office, then utilize something like AI to do a response to them. Because if you don't take it away, you still want to be able to respond and answer it immediately because that is someone that is actively putting an effort to reach out to you, even if your website is enabled with every other tool in the book. That's the one that they chose. You still have to be able to meet that customer where they're at and respond to them immediately so you don't lose them.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Um I definitely I want to choose my words carefully here because I love the idea of meeting clients where they are, including a little bit of something like people still want to call you. Oh, yeah. Like people still want to send a form fill in. Then you've got like new, like fancy people, you know, that chat and book online, all those things. So I think today's main piece of the conversation is you have to be intentional about putting the right people in the right seats to understand how important it is to grab every single lead, especially in a shoulder season, right? We fought tooth and nail for every lead we got. How do we utilize softwares to help us be more efficient and quicker to the draw on these programs? I think it's definitely um a part that's missing. So, Danielle, now that everybody knows that they need to do these things, tell us a little bit about one path. Well, give me a little bit about contractor in charge, because I know that that's kind of how it works. And then I want to lead into one path.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so to kind of put them both into context, what contractor in charge does, um, at least in this sector, how we how it relates to speed delete, is that we have a full-scale live human um answering solution. It's really honestly a booking solution, not necessarily answering service. Our goal is never to take a message, always to schedule an appointment. Like we don't, we don't want those calls because where a third party in general can be most productive is if they can schedule that appointment for you and reduce the follow-up. So as a service, we do that. We also do um human-to-human outbounding. Now, the reason that we went on this venture, and you know, I'm gonna give shout out to Lynn real quick. We have been searching for a solution that allows us to meet customers where they're at all the time and also be able to provide that support 24-7. So along came OnePath. Um and what OnePath does is it gives you all of the tools to have speed deletes. So it gives you a web scheduler, web chat, it gives you text to book, web form responses, AI driven, but human-backed. So in the event that your customer is communicating with you on a web chat form, if you are using something like OnePath, then not only are they gonna be able to speak to you through that application, but they also, if it's not working, if they don't want to work with AI, because I'm gonna be fair and I do, I personally love AI, but the world isn't caught up with that yet. And I mean that with my whole heart. Customers are not as ready for AI as some of the businesses are. So give them the chance to have it out. And that's what we built OnePath for was that everyone gets to try AI, but no one is stuck with AI. No one has to use it. They can all decide to go somewhere else too, and work with a person that can then do the exact same thing that someone in your office can do. They can schedule an appointment, they can respond to questions, answer things about cost, or um, you know, do you provide this service? So, what the tool does is AI can do everything. So if customer chooses to work with AI, let's say on a web chat form, they could schedule through AI, or if they don't want to work with AI, they can reach out to a person and the person can work with them. Um, and then our web scheduler is my favorite tool. And I say this because I've seen a lot of them. And the whole purpose behind the OnePass scheduler is that it is frictionless. So you as a customer get to come on the website instead of having to click buttons and upload things and do all of the extra steps that are typically needed. All you have to do is put in your issue in one text box and say, here's all here's my problem in your own language, put your phone number in and your zip code, and then the next thing the customer is being met with is the ability to schedule. So forget having to answer questions, forget having to fill in all of your information before you ever know when someone can come out. The goal is here's my problem, let me grab an appointment, great enough put your address in if you're not existing, and now you're booked and you're done. Four steps. And that truly has been the biggest goal for us is with all of the solutions out there, there's so many things that customers have to do, and companies lose the lead at that point. Because if I have to go through seven things, I'm over it, I'll just call you. Yeah, quickly, quickly, but also frictionless, and give the customer the ability to express things how they want to. Because I, as a customer and as a consumer, if I can't find my answer in a checkbox, I will immediately call you. Because hey, it's not letting me pick what I need, but I need to tell you what I need. I need to be able to give you my explanation because if I'm filling out boxes, I feel like I'm putting myself into categories immediately. Right. And so I automatically think that I can deprioritize or honestly up my priority based on what I'm saying. Whereas if I just get to explain to something or someone, hey, here's the information and this is what I need, the system can then push and read what the customer is saying, create urgency demand off of that, provide a lead score based on who they are and what they need, and then give them availability that sometimes, if it's needed, can be sooner than what they normally would have seen if they were just using a traditional method. And then the web chat and stuff, all of it's AI-driven, human-backed. And we also have the follow-up built in. So if the customer is on any of those tools and does not complete what they were trying to do, the system is going to immediately follow up through AI. So no humans are involved in that because that's one of the fail points is humans get busy, calls get busy, things get busy, someone's sick. So our goal is for all follow-up to never have to have a human touch it unless they choose to.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so I love that. I mean, you know, the AI-driven but human-backed, I think is a great differentiator. So, you know, as as we kind of wrap up today's episode, this is our encouragement, mine and Danielle's both. Like, you need to be looking for vendor partners that can help you get quicker, have cleaner communication, and protect the customer journey. Your customers deserve multiple ways to reach out to you, multiple ways to book with you, multiple ways to interact with you, all in multiple ways. And so you need to start investing in partnerships and a part of your vendor stack, um, needs to be a partner that can help you um maximize and optimize these things. So, Danielle, if anybody wanted to reach out to you for you know a demo or just has questions, what's the best way for them to do that?
SPEAKER_00:Um, so you can email an email spine. My email is d Bardis. Um, so D B-A-R-T-U-S at contractor in charge. Or you are also welcome to call or text me. Um, my direct line is 813. Oh, hmm. 813-807-5654. Sorry.
SPEAKER_01:We don't have to remember phone numbers very much.
SPEAKER_00:No, I really don't anymore. Um, but we we're happy to connect and kind of go through it and don't think of it as being a demo as much as let's talk strategy. Let's talk what you have, what you're looking to solutionize, because one of the things that we also have heavily focused on is how to control cost and make it as affordable as possible for someone to use the solution. So it's not just out there for all the big, big, big companies, but we also want to support, you know, the onesie, the onesie twosie guys that still need the same solutions. And how do you how do we make that happen for you?
SPEAKER_01:Perfect, perfect. I love it. Well, listen, I know this was a little sip of lemon egg today, but this guy is not rocket science. You need to invest in figuring this out for yourself. So thank you for listening to another episode of From the Yellow Chair. Gosh, I got ahead of myself. Go follow us on social, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and of course, TikTok. And uh, we'll see you next time. Talk to you soon. Bye.