Most CallRail case studies begin with a little shoe-leather research on our end — we review our internal analytics, see which users and industries are the most active, and then reach out to do interviews with the most notable accounts we’ve discovered. It’s less common for a case study to come directly to us, but that’s exactly what happened with Mold Busters, a Canadian home services company that specializes in mold removal and inspection. They’ve seen how call tracking for home services can bring a big boost to their bottom line, so they’ve been longtime CallRail users.

Mold Busters was equally eager to share their story with us, and for good reason: Thanks to CallRail’s advanced call analytics and features, they’ve been able to make better use of their advertising dollars while maintaining their commitment to superior customer service.

Customer service is key, even as you streamline and scale

Running a franchise can be a difficult balancing act — operators must weigh demands and performance targets from the head office against the needs of their specific region, and still turn a profit at the end of the month. Scaling a franchise takes plenty of hard work, and it only gets more difficult the more you grow.

“The way I like to explain it is, if I have one shop, and I open up three more shops, that doesn’t mean my business is going to suddenly become 300 percent more profitable,” Mold Busters CEO and co-founder Michael Golubev explains. “But it does mean that my business is going to get 300 percent more complex, maybe even more than that!”

It’s why Golubev and the rest of the Mold Busters team are big believers in efficiency and streamlining. An essential part of growing any franchise involves learning how to manage complexity as the business grows — what Golubev calls “doing more with less.”

“But the other half of that is, at the same time, we work in a field where customer service is critical to our business,” he continues. “So while we want to work smarter and more efficiently, we absolutely cannot sacrifice the quality of our customer service in the process. And that’s especially true in this environmental services field, where customers are placing their health and well-being in your hands.”

Mold Busters’ customers invite specialists into their homes in order to help them resolve a difficult and sensitive issue. Golubev and his team don’t take that trust lightly and have made it their mission to ensure that the customer’s needs and comfort are always the top priority.

Call tracking that empowers businesses to do more

Fortunately, Mold Busters soon found a tool that would allow them to fill two needs with one deed: Advanced call tracking and analytics from CallRail. After investigating the other call tracking providers available on the market, CallRail was the clear favorite for its ease of use, advanced features, and superior customer service.

It was CallRail’s excellent customer support team in particular that compelled them to sign up — excellent customer service is one of Mold Buster’s core values, and seeing that value reflected by CallRail was a sign that they were in good hands.

“We joined CallRail pretty much as soon as you launched, and we’ve been very satisfied customers,” Golubev says.

Using CallRail’s API to integrate the platform with their current CRM and other marketing software, the Mold Busters team was able to achieve a full-spectrum view of the customer’s path to purchase.

“It has helped us to create a truly versatile phone analytics system for our business, while also helping us continue to deliver great customer service,” Golubev explains.

By tying sales and service calls back to specific ads and campaigns, they’re able to see which marketing channels are generating the most calls, and the different types of callers being driven by these initiatives.

That way, they can not only make sure they’re getting the most out of their ad dollars, they can also be sure they’re effectively nurturing their relationships with their customers at every stage of the sales and service journey.

“To be honest, it’s difficult to even remember how we ran our business before CallRail. For me, anyway, that period almost feels like the age of the dinosaurs, compared to where our business is now,” Golubev says with a chuckle.

He continues: “We were spending way too much money on ads without knowing which ones were actually effective and which weren’t. With CallRail, we can use our call data to see exactly how well our different ad buys are performing and how much business those ads are driving to each of our locations.”

Call tracking for home services is essential because calls are still king

As Moldbusters has discovered down through the years, calls can still be a stumbling block for many businesses in the home services field. They’ve learned that many of their competitors and contemporaries just don’t have the staff or infrastructure to return missed calls promptly. Or, they might not even be aware they’re missing a call in the first place.

But thanks to CallRail’s recording and notification features, they can be confident that no call goes unheard, even when there’s no one around to pick up the phone.

The Mold Busters team knows a soon as they missed a call, which means followups are equally prompt. Or, as Golubev puts it: “In this business, making sure you’re replying as quickly as possible is something that can make all the difference between a good quarter and a bad one.”

Golubev and the rest of his crew see this superior level of customer service as their ultimate competitive advantage — anyone can don gloves and a mask to scrub away mold, but few can match the service, professionalism, and peace of mind Mold Busters brings for their customers.

“Calls are absolutely the lifeblood of our business,” he explains. “We’re not an e-commerce business and we don’t really have an online storefront, so it’s a lot more difficult for us to measure things like goal conversions and other metrics that are typically used in digital sales.”

This means they have to rely on the insights derived by measuring the folks who actually pick up the phone to call them. And that, in turn, necessitates answers to some key questions: How did they arrive at the Mold Buster website? Where are they calling from? What’s their budget? Are they returning clients? And what are their specific needs?

“With CallRail’s features, like the Google Analytics integration and Automation Rules, we can actually see what drove a call, and answer some of those critically important questions,” Golubev says. “It’s not an exaggeration to say that without CallRail and call tracking, it’d be impossible for us to answer those questions.”

Fortunately, CallRail allows them to directly measure the effectiveness of this approach: In one recent example, a new franchise location in the suburbs of Toronto more than doubled their call volume, thanks to Mold Busters’ customer-first and data-driven business model.

“We recently opened a new franchise location in the suburbs of Toronto, and to begin with, they were getting about 30 to 50 calls a day. After about 6 months of using call tracking, that number increased to about 70 to 100 calls a day, with a similar increase in sales and revenue as well.”

He adds: “All of that was made possible with call tracking. We wouldn’t have seen that kind of improvement without the data we’re getting from CallRail.”

If you’d like to see the benefits call tracking can bring to your home services business, you can start right now: Begin your 14-day free trial of CallRail or request a personalized demo.