Thirteen calls, one price: what a plumber job cost to run.
Eight of thirteen calls connected, four reached a person, three could come, and only one named a price. The calls cost $2.55 between them.
A homeowner in Medford, Massachusetts needed a clogged toilet fixed that day. Boocki found twenty plumbers nearby and spent one Friday calling them. Eight calls connected, four reached a person, three of the plumbers could come, and exactly one named a price. The calls in this post took eight and a half minutes of talking and cost $2.55.
- 20
- plumbers found
- 13
- calls in this study
- 3
- could come4 reached a person
- $2.55
- cost of those calls8:30 of talking
How to read this
Three phrases carry the piece, so they are defined before the numbers.
- Connected: the carrier reported the call as connecting at all, whatever was on the other end.
- Reached a person: somebody other than a recording or a voicemail greeting spoke on the line.
- Confirmed they could come: the provider said so on the call. That is a stricter test than answering, and much stricter than picking up.
The method is one job, one ZIP code and one frozen search phrase: ZIP 02155 (Medford), phrase plumber toilet clog unclogging. Twenty plumbers were found. This post counts thirteen calls, and every number below is the sum of those thirteen.
The thirteen calls, one by one
Each plumber gets a code, P1 to P12, because one of them was dialled twice. The address and the callback number spoken on these calls are not reproduced anywhere in this post.
| # | Provider | What happened | Length | Person | Confirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | P1 | Never picked up | 0:00 | No | No |
| 2 | P2 | Answered; quoted $240 and two to three hours | 1:31 | Yes | Yes |
| 3 | P3 | A greeting; the line was with another customer | 0:39 | No | No |
| 4 | P4 | Answered; no price by phone, earliest Monday | 1:34 | Yes | Yes |
| 5 | P5 | A recording pointing at a different number | 1:02 | No | No |
| 6 | P6 | A recording: the number is no longer in service | 0:05 | No | No |
| 7 | P7 | A voicemail greeting | 0:08 | No | No |
| 8 | P8 | Answered, then declined: try a drain cleaning company | 0:38 | Yes | No |
| 9 | P9 | Answered; within two hours, price on site only | 2:53 | Yes | Yes |
| 10 | P10 | Never picked up | 0:00 | No | No |
| 11 | P11 | Never picked up | 0:00 | No | No |
| 12 | P12 | Never picked up | 0:00 | No | No |
| 13 | P1 | The repeat call failed before it connected | None | No | No |
Five of the thirteen produced nothing at all: four lines that never picked up and one call that failed before it connected. Those five cost nothing, because nothing was said on them.
The funnel
The same thirteen calls, narrowed four times. Every row is the sum of rows in the table above, and the “Calls” column says which, so nothing here is an orphan number.
| Step | Calls | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plumbers found | n/a | 20 | n/a |
| Called | 1 to 13 | 13 | 100% |
| Connected by the carrier | 2 to 9 | 8 | 62% |
| Reached a person | 2, 4, 8, 9 | 4 | 31% |
| Confirmed they could come | 2, 4, 9 | 3 | 23% |
| Named a price | 2 | 1 | 8% |
The expensive drop is the second one. Eight calls connected, but four of them connected to something that could not talk: a greeting, two recordings and a voicemail box. Four rang, eight connected, and half of those were machines.
The arithmetic
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Calls counted | 13, to 12 plumbers |
| Connected | 8 |
| Calls that produced nothing | 5 |
| Talk time | 8:30 |
| Charged for these calls | $2.55 |
Talk time is the sum of the Length column in the first table: 1:31 plus 0:39, 1:34, 1:02, 0:05, 0:08, 0:38 and 2:53, which is 8 minutes 30 seconds. The five calls that produced nothing contributed zero seconds and zero cost. At thirty cents a minute, 8 min 30 s is $2.55, and $2.55 is what these calls were charged.
What each answer cost
The number that matters is not the total. It is the total divided by what you actually got.
| Bought | Count | Cost each |
|---|---|---|
| A call placed | 13 | $0.20 |
| A call that connected | 8 | $0.32 |
| A person on the line | 4 | $0.64 |
| A plumber who could come | 3 | $0.85 |
| A quoted price | 1 | $2.55 |
Every figure in that table divides the same $2.55 by a different denominator, which is the only honest way to publish a cost per answer. Reaching a person cost 64 cents. Getting one of them to say a number cost the entire spend.
That last line is the finding. Three plumbers would come, and only one of them would say what that costs. Two wanted to see the door before pricing it. Of the three, one offered to be there within a couple of hours, one within two to three hours, and one not until Monday.
What we would change next time
- Ask for a price in the same words every time. One call got a number, and two were told pricing happens on site. That may be the trade, or it may be how the question landed.
- Report the cost per outcome, not just the total. A bill of $2.55 for a job says nothing on its own. $2.55 per quoted price is the figure a homeowner can act on.
- Separate a machine from a person in the result. Four of the eight connected calls reached a recording or a greeting, and a summary should never present that as an answer.
- De-duplicate the list before dialling. One plumber was called twice because the directory returned it twice.
Why publish the cost per answer
A total says what a job cost. It says nothing about whether the money bought anything. Publishing the division is the part a homeowner can use, and the part that shows where a calling product is actually weak. It is not the dialling, and it is not the connecting. It is getting a number out of the person who picks up.