Halved the time from inquiry to first booking for a pet-care company with 25 caregivers
Client snapshot
A pet-care company offering dog walking, drop-in visits and home sitting in one metro area. Two people in the office, 25 caregivers in the field, and HubSpot as the CRM. Most new customers come from search and referrals.
The problem
The company had a HubSpot setup that someone had started and nobody finished. Inquiries came in through the website form, by text and by phone. Some got a same-day reply, some waited until the weekend. After an inquiry came a meet-and-greet, then a caregiver had to be matched, then a first booking, an invoice and a welcome pack. Each of those steps lived in a different place, and each handoff depended on someone in the office remembering.
New customers took about six days to get from first message to first walk. Around one in five inquiries went more than a day without any reply.
What we built
One pipeline in HubSpot, with each stage triggering the next.
Every inquiry, whatever the channel, creates a HubSpot contact and gets a reply within minutes: a text with two questions (what kind of pet, what service) and a link to book a meet-and-greet. When the meet-and-greet is booked, n8n checks the caregivers' calendars and the service area, and Claude suggests the two best matches with a one-line reason each. The office picks one with a click.
When the meet-and-greet is marked done and the customer says yes, the first booking goes on the caregiver's calendar, and a Stripe invoice goes to the customer. When the invoice is paid, the customer gets the welcome pack and a form for the pet's details, vet and access notes. The answers land on the HubSpot record, where the caregiver can see them before the first visit.
Caregivers get their own short flow: a text the evening before each new client, with the pet's notes and the address.
Results, 90 days in
- First message to first booking: about six days → about three.
- Inquiries without a reply after 24 hours: around 20% → under 2%.
- Office time on scheduling, invoices and welcome packs: about 15 hours a week → about 5.
- Caregivers arrive at a new client's door with the notes already read.
Quote
"We used to lose people between the meet-and-greet and the first walk. Now that step happens by itself." Owner
Build snapshot
- Timeline: 14 business days
- Stack: HubSpot, n8n, Claude, Twilio, Stripe, Google Calendar
- Investment: $4,500
- Who owned it: the office manager owns the pipeline stages and approves every caregiver match.
The pattern
This is the pattern we ship in the Lead-to-Cash Starter engagement: inquiry, booking, invoice and onboarding as one system. If a customer regularly falls between two of your tools, the build is the same, with your stages swapped in.
This is an illustrative composite drawn from operator engagements. Names, identifying details, and exact metrics are anonymised. The workflow, stack, and approach are real.
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