Service marketplaces or your own bookings: how a home service firm should split its leads

A marketplace should fill the days your own customers leave empty, and not many more. How many days that is depends on four questions asked in order, and the first can be answered tonight from your own phone. This post walks the chain for a sofa and mattress cleaning firm, because that trade shows every branch.

Question one: does anyone search for your firm by name?

Type your firm's name into Google as a stranger would. If your profile shows a handful of reviews, an old photograph and a phone number that rings out, you are on the first branch. A marketplace is your shop window, and you should use it hard. Take the jobs, photograph every finished sofa with the customer's permission, and move on to question two only when people start asking for you by name.

If they already do, go straight to question two.

Question two: how many customers call you directly a second time?

Open your call log and invoice book for the last year. Count customers who came back without going through the app. A rough starting rule, which you should replace with your own experience: if fewer than one customer in ten returns directly, the repeat engine is missing, and every marketplace job must be treated as a chance to build it.

That means a printed card with the job, a thank-you message sent from your own WhatsApp number, and a reminder noted in your sheet. Read the marketplace's terms first. Many restrict taking customers off the platform, and you should follow whatever yours say. Within those terms, you can still be the firm whose name the customer remembers.

Question three: do marketplace jobs finish as well as your own?

Take the last thirty marketplace jobs and the last thirty from other sources. For each, write down four things: did it complete, was it paid in full, how long did the crew spend including travel, and how much of the price was left after the platform's cut. Small jobs at a low price with long travel can cost more than they bring. A cancellation at the customer's door is easy to overlook, because the crew has lost a morning that nothing will refill.

If marketplace jobs finish worse, use the marketplace only to fill hours your crew would otherwise waste. If they finish about as well, stay in the chain.

Question four: is the crew ever idle?

Look at the diary for the last two months. If your own channels fill most of the week (say four days in five), the marketplace is adding commission to work you would have got anyway, and you can consider pausing it. If there are empty days, the marketplace fills them well. Set a ceiling so that it never takes the weekend slots your own customers want.

A worked case in Bhubaneswar

This is an invented case, with no real figures. A firm with four cleaners takes most of its work from one marketplace. The owner believes the app is four times as productive as the firm's own channels, because it sends far more enquiries than the phone does. The owner is comparing enquiries.

Walking the chain changes that. Nobody searches for the firm by name, so branch one applies. In a year, only a handful of customers have phoned directly a second time. On question three, the sheet shows an unexpected pattern: marketplace jobs are mostly single sofas, and several end in a cancellation at the door when the customer wants a lower price than the one booked. The firm's own referrals are fewer, but they are whole-house sets of sofas, mattresses and carpets, and nearly all are paid in full on the day.

The mistake was reading enquiries as income. The answer is to keep the marketplace but change its job. Weekday gaps go to marketplace work, and weekends are held for referrals and repeat customers. Every marketplace visit ends with a card and a message from the firm's own number, sent only where the platform's terms allow it. The outcome is mixed. Weekday revenue falls a little because the owner refuses some low-priced jobs, and it takes a season before repeat customers show up in the sheet.

Where the chain breaks down

Fewer than thirty jobs on a side tells you very little, so with a young firm treat the answers as a guess and recount after the next thirty. Some marketplaces may treat refused or cancelled jobs against you, so read what yours says before you cap anything. And a busy season can hide a bad source for a while, because everything finishes when everyone is in demand.

Do not walk the chain to justify a decision you have already made. If you leave a marketplace in a temper over commission and have nothing to replace the work, you will have an empty diary and a lesson.

Is your own channel ready to carry more?

Before you shift jobs, check three things. Your Google Business Profile shows the right service area and recent photographs of finished work. A WhatsApp number is on the invoice, the card and the van. And a person, not a recording, answers, since a customer with a stained mattress may try the next number.

If any of the three is missing, fix it before you cut the marketplace. A note on tracking lead source in your CRM shows how to keep the source column honest. A parallel argument for another trade is in beauty marketplaces or your own brand site.

Run the chain on one evening

Write the last thirty jobs on a sheet with the source beside each, then answer the four questions in order. Stop at the first one that tells you what to do. Other crews who work in homes are on our home services page. If you would like the source tracked inside your booking and follow-up rather than in another sheet, marketing attribution is the related service, and you can tell us what you need.