2026 Home Services industry research

The Broken Funnel ReportHome Services Edition

How AI has transformed the home services buying journey, and the data needed to shape your 2027 AI agent roadmap

Respondents: 137 home services marketing leaders
Role: 78% director or higher
Company size: 100+ employees

Introduction

The trouble starts once the lead is in hand

Home services marketers are the most AI-forward group in our 2026 Broken Funnel study. Half have conversational AI agents live with customers, and another third are piloting them, well ahead of every other B2C industry we surveyed. Like the rest of the group, website traffic is holding up, with over half reporting growth. And 95% say they can identify a lead that started its research in an AI answer engine like ChatGPT, Claude, or Google AI Overviews, the highest share in the study. On the surface, home services looks like the industry that has figured out AI.

The trouble starts once the lead is in hand. Over 80% of home services marketers running or piloting AI agents can’t follow a lead from the first digital interaction through to a sale, the worst result of any industry surveyed. AI agent performance isn’t determined by conversions either, as 65% judge it by factors other than revenue or booked outcomes. Over half lose sight of a lead the moment it’s routed to a franchise or local branch, and few can reliably send conversion signals from AI agents back to their ad platforms.

Home services businesses have deployed AI faster than anyone else, and that speed has created visibility gaps that the rest of the funnel hasn’t caught up with yet.

Whether you’re a CMO looking to maximize digital marketing ROI, a digital marketer working to improve conversion rates, or a CX professional building customer experiences for the AI age, this data will help guide your AI strategy in the coming year.

At a glance

Research highlights

57%

Report website traffic growth

50%

Have conversational AI agents live

65%

Judge AI agent performance on factors other than revenue

14%

Can reliably send AI agent conversion data to ad platforms

Section 01

AI search hasn’t killed home services website traffic, but it has moved the digital front door

Home services brands aren’t seeing the apocalyptic traffic drops dominating headlines in the B2B and publishing worlds, but they’re feeling some pressure. Compared to 12 months ago, 57% report gains in website traffic, though a third report modest growth of 9% or less, and 42% say traffic is flat or declining. When asked what’s driving the change, home services marketers spread the blame almost evenly across AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews, zero-click search results, and competition in their category.

Change in website traffic vs. prior 12 months

Up 1–9%34%

Up 10% or more23%

About flat11%

Down 10–24%14%

Down 1–9%5%

Down 25–49%8%

Down 50% or more4%

Up · 57%FlatDownNot sure · 1%

45%

Say AI answer engines are among the biggest effects on website traffic in the last year

The best leads are coming from AI answer engines

As we previously reported in the Invoca Lead Benchmark Report, the most qualified leads are now coming from AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. That holds true for home services, where 45% rank AI answer engines among their top three sources of qualified leads, ahead of paid social, Google Business Profile, and organic search. The qualitative responses explain why: AI is delivering buyers who are more informed, closer to a decision, and who have done their research about your brand outside of your website.

Consumers now often arrive with more specific questions after using AI tools for research, and they also expect websites to give quick, clear answers while making it easy to book an appointment or request a quote.
Marketing manager, home services, 100–499 employees

Which entry points produce your most qualified leads

AI answer engines45%

Paid social42%

Google Business Profile41%

Organic search40%

Google Local Services Ads36%

Paid search33%

Section 02

Home services lead in AI agent adoption, and the shortcomings are showing up

Conversational AI agents are becoming commonplace in home services, with 83% of marketers reporting that they’re piloting or have live agents in front of customers. Only 14% are still evaluating, and just 2% have no plans at all. Among those with agents live, SMS is the most common channel at 82%, followed by phone at 77% and website chat at 74%.

Where home services brands are with AI agent implementation

Live in at least one channel50%

Piloting or in limited testing33%

Evaluating, but nothing running yet14%

No current plans2%

Not sure1%

Survey noteWe specified that “AI agents” must be customer-facing and capable of holding a 2-way conversation via phone, website chat, or text message. Voice response IVR or phone tree menus, notification, promotion, or nurture messages, tools teams use internally, and chatbots that only serve canned answers do not count.

Customers want to find answers without having to navigate through several layers of menus.
Marketing manager, home services

Most home services marketers don’t measure AI agent success on revenue outcomes

Roughly four in ten home services marketers rank qualifying leads, moving conversations toward a sale, or booking appointments among the primary purposes for their AI agents. However, only a small percentage are actually measuring their agents on revenue outcomes.

Outcomes used to determine AI agent performance

35%

65%

Revenue or booked outcome

Other KPI

Revenue or booked outcome

Conversion rate on agent conversations14%

Appointments or consultations booked13%

Revenue attributed to agent conversations8%

Other KPI

Cost per contact or cost to serve14%

Customer satisfaction score13%

Qualified leads produced13%

Share of conversations handled without a person13%

Volume of conversations handled12%

We don’t measure it formally0%

The missing link: AI agents are disconnected from the buyer journey

AI agents should ostensibly contribute to the bottom line, but most home services marketers aren’t measuring their success against revenue-related metrics. The data shows this may be because they can’t. Only 14% of home services marketers surveyed said they can connect complete conversion data from their AI agents to their ad platforms, and only 19% can confidently track leads handled by AI agents from click to conversion.

This disconnect also impacts the buyer experience and conversion rates. Fewer than a third of home services marketers said their AI agents can use a lead’s digital journey data prior to the engagement. Without that data, agents start every conversation from scratch, frustrating homeowners by making them repeat the service they need, the address, and the timing they’ve already typed into a form or a search bar.

81%

Cannot track leads from click to conversion that are handled by AI agents

30%

Agent can see the customer’s digital journey and use it

24%

Conversations tied back to the campaign, keyword, or ad

14%

Outcomes can be returned to ad platforms as conversion signals

Effective systems transfer users smoothly to live agents when issues get complicated.
VP of marketing, home services

Section 03

Home services marketers can spot AI-driven leads, but then lose them further down the funnel

Home services marketers are the most confident group in the study when it comes to attributing leads to AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. 95% say they can somewhat identify a lead that began in an AI answer engine, and 59% say they can do it for most leads, compared with 46% across all B2C industries. That confidence doesn’t survive to the bottom of the funnel.

Can you tell whether a lead started their research in an AI answer engine?

95% answered yes

59%Yes, for most

36%Yes, for some

95%

Say they can usually identify a lead that began in an AI answer engine

Attribution breaks down when leads leave marketing’s hands

The clear view of attribution breaks down at the most important part of the buyer journey. Nearly three-quarters of home services marketers (73%) cannot both see and influence a lead once it’s routed to a franchise or local branch. Phone calls and text or chat conversations fare only slightly better, with 34% and 30%, respectively, able to see and influence the lead after handoff.

Where leads lose attribution

Share that cannot both see and influence the lead after handoff, by lead destination

Lead destination	Cannot see and influence
Business locations, franchises, dealers, etc.		73%
Text or chat		70%
Phone call		66%

A staggering 81% of home services marketers running or piloting AI agents cannot fully track leads from the first click through to conversion, the worst result of the five industries surveyed. Home services can see where a lead came from better than any other B2C category, and is the least able to say what happened to it. That makes revenue attribution, ROAS calculation, and conversion data-driven ad optimization inaccurate at best and, realistically, impossible.

One home services marketing executive said that to fully trust an AI agent with a revenue conversation, it would have to “provide granular, turn-by-turn analytics so I can see exactly why a revenue conversation succeeded or failed…” However, the data shows their agentic AI platforms are not capable of connecting the buyer journey from click to conversion.

Section 04

Are home services marketers overestimating their speed-to-lead?

When we surveyed consumers earlier this year about how quickly brands respond after someone submits a lead form, the data showed they were clearly falling short of expectations. Nearly 60% of consumers said they expected a response within an hour, but only 41% actually received one within that window.

Responding to a lead form within one hour

What marketers report vs. what consumers experience

Marketers

Say they respond to lead form submissions within 1 hour

88%

Consumers

Expect a response within an hour

57%

Consumers

Say they got a response within 1 hour

41%

Consumer data: Invoca Home Services Buyer Experience Report

When we posed the same question to home services marketers in this survey, 88% said they respond to lead form inquiries within an hour. That’s a massive disparity that is difficult to reconcile or dismiss as self-reporting bias. In our previous consumer survey, 20% of consumers said they expect a response within 5 minutes, and 79% choose the brand that responds fastest.

Survey noteIn the question, we specified that the “response” to the lead form must be a conversation, whether with a human agent or an AI agent capable of two-way communication. Auto-replies, one-way text messages, and confirmation emails do not count.

Home services brands lose a significant number of leads—and revenue—to slow response times and unanswered calls

Whether or not brands are actually responding to leads within an hour of contact, they concede that they are losing significant lead volume to slow responses and unanswered calls. Nearly 1 in 4 home services marketers (23%) say they lose 20% or more of inbound leads to slow response times and unanswered calls. In a category where many jobs start with a phone call or a form fill, that is a significant revenue leak.

Share of inbound leads lost to slow response or unanswered calls

Respondents reporting each range

16%

22%

39%

16%

Under 5%5–9%10–19%20–29%30–49%50%+

Section 05

What AI agent capabilities do home services marketers really want?

Home services marketers want AI agents that can tell a real job from a tire-kicker and carry what they learn into the next step of the buyer journey. Ask them what would make their agents more useful, and qualifying leads or determining serviceability tops the list, with 44% ranking it among their top three improvements. It was the most common first choice, too. Three of the top five responses depend on what the agent knows before the conversation starts or can pass along at the end. Evidence from across the survey suggests that agents disconnected from buyer journey data are causing significant reporting headaches and revenue leakage.

Which of these would make your AI agents more useful? (Top five)

Qualifying leads or determining serviceability44%

Tailoring the conversation to the consumer’s digital journey42%

Warm-transferring a sales lead with full context42%

Containing non-leads and routine inquiries so sales teams don’t spend time on them41%

Recognizing a returning consumer and having their history39%

Depends on what the agent knows before, or passes along after

Trust runs through all of it. Asked what it would take to hand an AI agent a revenue conversation, one home services marketing director’s answer was brief:

I would need complete audit logs showing every automated sales interaction.
Director of marketing, home services

Learn how the Invoca Data + AI Platform powers better experiences and outcomes for home services brands

Invoca connects every online and offline touchpoint, and every AI agent conversation, in your buyer journey to revenue. Learn how home services marketing, ecommerce, and contact center teams use Invoca’s Data + AI Platform to optimize demand, qualify leads, and convert more inquiries into booked appointments and completed jobs.

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Methodology

Survey methodology

Gather fielded a 20-question guided interview with US marketing leaders between 14 September and 5 October 2026. Respondents qualified at the manager level or above, at companies with 100 or more employees. This report draws on the 137 home services responses from the broader study of 451 B2C marketing leaders across automotive, healthcare (including dental), home services, financial services (including insurance), and telecom. Respondents have direct or shared responsibility for lead conversion, paid media performance, customer engagement channels, or website and demand generation.

Home services responses after quality screening

137

Total responses after quality screening, all industries

451

Field dates

9/14/26–10/5/26

Geography

United States

Respondent roles

Director of marketing46%

Marketing manager22%

VP of marketing22%

C-level or SVP in marketing10%

Company size

100–499 employees35%

500–999 employees34%

1,000–4,999 employees29%

5,000 or more employees2%

Notes on calculationPercentages are calculated from unique respondents rather than mentions, and single-select questions use largest-remainder rounding so that the distributions sum to exactly 100. Questions asked only of respondents running or piloting an agent carry a base of 113 and are labeled accordingly. Ranking questions report the share of respondents placing an option in their top three, so those values exceed 100% by design. The qualified-lead entry point question excludes respondents who ranked an unlabelled option in the fielded instrument and carries a base of 111.