The challenge 

Independent Home, a nationwide bathroom replacement remodeler, had a sizeable call center that handled the bulk of inbound calls in-house. Over the years they had tried a number of dialers, in search of one that could meet the specific needs of a home remodeling business.  

At the time, their setup relied on Five9, which is a larger dialing platform that is industry agnostic. Five9 was a solid product for speed-to-lead—getting to a fresh lead quickly—but where it struggled was in working leads over time. If a prospect didn’t answer the first call, the follow-up process wasn’t there. Leads that required two or three additional touches to reach the homeowner slipped through the cracks, and by the time the call center spoke with them, they'd often booked with a competitor.  

The cost of home improvement leads has steadily climbed over the years, making this process gap expensive for Independent Home. Leads that went cold after the first call attempt represented thousands of dollars of marketing spend every month, with no return on investment. As Yale Lipschik, the CEO of Independent Home, put it, that was where the real waste was hiding. It wasn’t in generating leads, but in failing to reach the ones that were already paid for.  

Call center capacity was the other major constraint facing Independent Home. Traditional dialers are one-to-one, so the number of reps working in the call center at any given time represents the number of possible customers who can be reached at once, both inbound and outbound. Scaling the call center meant hiring more people, which didn’t make sense considering that lead volume moves in bursts, rather than at a steady rate.  

Why they started where they did 

When Independent Home brought in Leaping AI, the plan was not to replace the whole call center with voice agents on day one. They started with a narrow mandate: have the AI voice agent work aged and dormant leads their existing staffing and infrastructure couldn’t call. This was a low-risk, clear task for the agent and a direct fix for the gap in their lead funnel.  

This narrow initial use case gave Independent Home a clear idea of the return on investment for Leaping AI in their business. These leads would have otherwise gone cold, and would not have brought in any revenue, making it easy to see if the AI agent was providing value. Since proving the initial use case with Leaping AI, Independent Home has added front-end call handling and qualification, as well as a new evening and weekend calling campaign. The long-term goal is a single system that can carry a new lead from first contact through to a booked appointment without needing a handoff to a live CSR.  

Getting set up 

Leaping AI’s CEO, Kevin Wu, personally onboarded Independent Home. He spent several days on-site at their Long Island office, working through the voice, scripting, back-end setup, and the overall experience with Yale and the rest of the team. Because Leaping AI operates independently of Independent Home’s existing tech stack, there was no heavy API integration to coordinate. The voice agent was up and running by the time Kevin left.  

Where the line sits between AI and their team today 

Live call center reps still handle the majority of fresh leads—prospects that just came in that day either by calling Independent Home or filling out an online form—giving those prospects a more hands-on, personal experience. But a CSR’s performance varies over the course of a shift. Their energy can dip after a tough call, after their lunch break, or simply from fatigue late in the day. An AI agent doesn’t have that kind of variability, handling the fiftieth call of the day the same way it handled the first.  

Customer satisfaction from interactions with the Leaping AI agent has been high. In most cases, homeowners don’t even realize they’re speaking with AI. Independent Home hasn’t measured a meaningful bounce rate from customers who would rather speak with a live call center rep. That said, the full transition to AI-led booking without a human CSR has not happened yet. Some transfers are still manually reviewed and marked, which was flagged as a next step for Independent Home. Full trust in end-to-end AI booking, and the staffing efficiency that comes with it, is the next milestone in their implementation process.  

Results so far 

Time to value.  Independent Home saw the impact of Leaping AI on the business early. Within the first 30 days, they had reliable connectivity and were seeing strong customer satisfaction. By 60 days in, Yale made the call to start paying for the service even though Leaping AI's offer of a free trial hadn't expired, as he didn't want to take advantage of a free ride once he could see the return on investment in the technology. 

Speed to lead.  There was no speed to lead issue for Independent Home since Five9 already delivered near-immediate contact on fresh leads. Their initial time to contact hasn’t changed, but what has changed is the rate at which those leads are contacted the second time and beyond.  

Aged lead reactivation.  This is where Independent Home has seen the largest ROI from bringing Leaping AI into their business. Leads that were years old are now being revived into appointments and sales. According to Yale Lipschik, “Our old dialer couldn't call old leads—they'd just be out there to die. Now we're reviving them and turning them into appointments and sales.”  

After-hours and weekend coverage.  One of the hardest things to do with a call center is staffing off-hours—evenings, weekends, and holidays. The team at Independent Home has recently launched an after-hours agent, dedicated to covering those hours. This agent will provide meaningful support during those hours, and the team expects it to close a real coverage gap once it's been running longer.  

What's next 

Next, Independent Home is integrating Leaping AI with their CRM. That gets them two things: a lead can move from first contact to a booked appointment without a handoff, and the team gets real visibility into how the voice agent is performing. 

Independent Home is turning years-old leads into booked appointments. If your call center is sitting on a similar backlog, let's talk about what that could look like for your business. Book a demo.