HVAC homeowner leads can come from a lot of sources these days. Gone is the time when you only waited for the phone to ring. Now these leads can come through social media, your website, texting, and other forms of communication.

How do HVAC contractors make sure they are covering all the bases and not letting leads get lost? I talked with Keith Massey and Katie Hill of Podium to find out. Podium is a software company that helps out HVAC contractors.

Here were the major takeaways on the different leads that can come to a contractor.

Phone call. As far as phone calls go, you want to be able to respond in a minute or less. Also, you should be able to have all of your calls recorded and transcribed. This way, when you need to reference back to those phone calls, you already have all that information at your fingertips. This allows contractors to provide the best customer experience possible for the homeowners they are working with.

This can really help businesses set themselves apart. Subsequently, if you can’t answer the phone, have a tool in place that will send that customer a text message that says you are sorry their call has been missed and how can we help you today. By doing this, you’re making sure those missed opportunities don't immediately hang up the phone and call a competitor up the street. Instead, you're keeping them on the line a little bit longer to be able to have that conversation continue over text instead of over the phone.

Website: Make sure you are casting the widest net possible with your website. And when you get people there, make sure you have a website form.

But ideally, you will also have a live chat tool. Podium has found that with their web chat tool on a website, customers are 11 times more likely to start a web chat conversation than they are to fill out an actual form on the website.

According to Podium, they see about a 2% conversion on people who will go onto a website and fill out a form, so it's just becoming less of a thing for HVAC contractors.

Also, be sure to give them a phone number they can call, because there are going to be people that are in an emergency. And in an emergency situation, they don’t want to fill out a form or start a chat. They just want to talk to someone immediately.

If it is not an urgent situation, a lot of people — especially the younger demographic — prefer to text. Give them an option to be able to start a text message, because they are going to jump on that.

Chats can be handled by a person but more and more are being handled by AI. That is because speed is the differentiator. Podium found that if you are able to respond in under five minutes, that homeowner is four times more likely to do business with that HVAC business.

Social Media. A lot of HVAC contractors are utilizing the built-in systems offered by the social media platforms they are on — Facebook, Instagram, etc. — that will automatically relay messages and inquiries from potential leads via email. This allows them to respond immediately to those as well. That is important because contractors want to make sure every lead gets the same treatment, no matter where it is coming from.

The overall concept for HVAC contractors is that you need speed to lead. The stat is that 78% of leads are going to go with the first business that responds. It is very important to be the first HVAC contractor to respond. Because they are not just going to simply wait for you.

Podium shared with me some data that they had accumulated from their 11,000 home service customers.

“We looked at leads that were coming in through the web chat tool on the website, and we looked at the response time. What we found was if they were able to respond in less than five minutes, they were four times more likely to close that deal,” Massey said. “If they're letting them sit there for five minutes, for 10 minutes, for 20 minutes, they're basically pushing those customers to a competitor.”