Everything from the first missed call to the first real recovery for one person is one episode, however many calls happened in between. A connected callback or a text back from a company line closes it. It records the reason it was missed, who owed it, whether somebody else covered, and whether the close was something we saw or something somebody claimed. Built only for post-frame and barndominium builders, where one homeowner who rings and hears nothing can be a whole building gone to someone else.
Also called: speed to lead · response time · callback time · how long before we ring back
One number: how long it takes you to get back to somebody you missed
The clock starts at the first missed call from a person and stops at the first recovery the system can actually see — a call back that connects, or a text sent to them, from one of your lines. Everything in between is one episode, so four calls from one number before one callback reads as one problem, not four failures and a success. Home shows who is still owed a call and, under it, your typical callback, your slowest, and how many were measured. Speed to lead is the number that decides who gets the job, and most builders have never seen theirs.
Nobody can say whether the shop calls a missed homeowner back in ten minutes or two days, so nobody notices when it slides to two days.
The owner finally sees one honest number for how fast his team gets back to people — and a team that can see its own speed gets faster without being told. The episode follows the customer, not the line or the attempt, so the number describes what the customer lived through.
A miss nobody could have answered is not counted against anybody
Each person still waiting shows why the call was missed — left a voicemail, rang out to a personal voicemail, nobody picked up, line was busy — and who owes it. A miss on a line nobody owns is owed by the shop, not by whoever happened to be nearest. Misses nobody could have answered — a line with nothing set to ring, a call after hours — are kept out of the figures unless the caller left a message. A rep who covers for a colleague is recorded as covering, not as an exception to explain. A number that makes a good employee look bad gets the whole dashboard distrusted, permanently — which is exactly why the rules are written this way.
The rep whose phone had no signal inside a steel building gets the same red mark as the one who let it ring.
Reps stop dreading the list because it tells the truth about each miss — a dead zone reads as a dead zone, not as somebody ignoring a ring — and a team that isn't defensive actually works the list. Naming the cause also tells the owner what to fix: a phone, a line setting, or a habit.
Texting a missed caller counts as calling them back
For a builder standing on a jobsite a text is often the better move, and it closes the wait exactly the way a call does — timed to the moment it went out. Sheila texted Rosalyn back four minutes after the miss; that's her four minutes. Without that, the rep who did the right thing looks like the one who ignored the lead.
Sheila answers a missed call with a text from the roof of a pole barn, and the report says she never called back.
The rep gets credit for the quick text he actually sent, so he keeps doing the thing that wins jobs instead of gaming whatever the scoreboard counts. A text from a company line is something the system saw, so it counts the same as a connected call.
The number cannot be improved by dialling more or by tapping a button
When somebody settles a call from their own cell they tap Handled — which clears the waiting list but is left out of the response times, and the card says so before they confirm. A manual close can never fake a fast number. And dial counts measure nothing about whether a customer got called back, so they are not scored here at all.
A number that can be improved by tapping a button gets tapped, and within a month nobody believes it — including the owner.
The team trusts a number they can't push around — and an owner who trusts the number manages from it instead of from hunches. Clearing the work and measuring the speed are separate on purpose, so tidying the list never improves the score.
Ring back from any company line and the wait closes — whoever makes the call
The call back doesn't have to come from the line they rang or the person who owed it. Call from the phone's queue, the contact, the card or the keypad — a call that connects to that customer from any of your lines closes the wait, and if somebody else made it, that's recorded as covering. The missed caller drops off the list on Home and off the call list in the phone the moment it happens.
Marcus calls back the customer who rang Sheila's line, and the list still says Sheila owes him a call.
Whoever's free makes the call, and nobody has to tidy up afterwards — the customer gets called back sooner, and the rep who covered gets the credit. It keys on the customer's number rather than the line, because a lead is recovered by whoever reaches him.
- 1The clock starts on the first missed call from a person.
- 2It stops the first time somebody gets back to them from a company line — a call that connects, or a text.
- 3Four calls from one person before one callback is one episode, not four failures.
- 4Ring them back from a different line and it still counts — it follows the customer, not the line.
- 5A miss nobody could have answered is marked as such and never scored.
- 6Handled clears somebody off the list when the callback happened on a personal phone — and stays out of the timings.
Speed of callback is the number that decides whether a lead becomes a job — but measuring it the obvious way makes it useless. Four missed calls from one person before one callback is one problem, not four failures and a success. Counting per call reports it the wrong way, and the rep it lands on stops believing any of it. A callback made from a personal cell is invisible, so Handled clears the list but never fakes a fast number. And a forwarded call that a rep's own voicemail picked up used to look answered — so the person who left a message was never owed a callback at all. Now that miss is counted, and where the owner of a miss is uncertain, it is owed by the shop rather than pinned on the wrong person.
- No measurement of speed-to-callback
- Metrics that punish a covered save or an unavoidable miss
- Numbers improvable by tapping a button
Who is still waiting for a call back
Everyone whose call has not been returned. How long they have waited. Whether they left a voicemail. Why it was missed. Who owes it. Beside it, the honest figures: how many are open, the oldest wait, your typical and worst response, how many were self-reported, how many were covered by somebody else.
Texting a missed caller counts as calling them back
A text out to a number with an unreturned miss on it closes that miss, timed to the moment it went out. It is credited to whoever sent it — and marked as covering when that is not the person who owed it.
