Q3-2024 Senior Living Web to Phone Shops White Paper

BILD conducted web to phone shops on senior living communities during Q3-2024. This white paper focuses on shoppers inquiring via web and phone to evaluate the first impressions, needs development, relationship building, sales presentation, and next steps scheduled. This study targets multiple states in the U.S.

Target: 10 different States – (AZ, CA, CO, MI, MT, NC, NM, NV, SC, TX), Canada (SK, ON, MB)

Time Periods Data Analyzed: 7/1/2024 – 9/30/2024

Data Reviewed: Web to Phone Mystery Shop Results

Below is a summary of the key findings:

• After submitting the web form, shoppers that received a response in 2 hours, either 15% were contacted by the sales team via email, and 37% by call.

• 33% of shoppers that did not receive a personalized response in the 2 hours after inquiring never received a response at all.

• The average length of a sales call lasted 13 minutes.

• The average web to phone shop score for Q3-2024 was 56%, which is a 7% increase from 2023.
  • The average phone shop score in 2024 was 53% and in 2023 was 52%.

Average Website and Phone Shop Scores

Web response time from website to first phone call:

• Out of the 39% of shoppers who did not get a response from the community within 2 hours after inquiring via web, 33% of them never received a response at all. While 61% received a call or email after 2 hours.

First Impressions:

• 11% of calls were blind transferred to voicemails. 13% of callers were told they would receive a call back the same day.

Relationship Building:

• Only 16% of the sales associates asked permission to ask questions and explained why. 76% asked questions without asking permission.

Sales Presentation:

• 61% of the sales associates did not drill down to determine needs or interests. While 9% of associates asked only medical/financial questions and 12% asked only yes or no questions but no open-ended questions.

Next Steps:

• 63% of associates vaguely invited shoppers to tour, using verbiage like, “sometime” or “anytime”. 18% attempted to arrange an appointment while 9% did not encourage a visit at all.

Response Times

For 61% of those who received a response within two hours, after inquiring on the website, 15% were contacted by the sales team via email, and 37% by call.

Overall, once the shopper reached a sales representative, the transfer times were mostly within 1 minute.

• 48% of calls transferred within 1 minute.
• 27% of calls were not transferred but handled by another team member or receptionist.
• 10% of calls that were not transferred were handled by the sales associate.
• 9% of calls transferred with over 1 minute of wait time.