Almstead Tree & Shrub Care has supported homeowners across New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut since 1964. The company is known for its arboriculture expertise, emergency response capabilities, and high-value services that often begin with a single phone call. With four regional offices and year-round demand, Almstead relies heavily on its intake operation to capture leads, respond to emergencies, and deliver the exceptional service the company has built its reputation on.
When Merrick Lee joined as Head of Growth, he discovered that, despite the company’s strong history and customer trust, Almstead’s internal systems were not equipped to provide the visibility and accuracy needed for modern marketing decision-making. The company was unsure which marketing efforts were generating leads, how frontline teams were handling calls, or how many customer opportunities were being lost each week.
I wanted to know the call performance numbers, not think I knew them.
– Merrick Lee, Head of Growth, Almstead Tree & Shrub Care
This lack of data made it difficult to make informed decisions about marketing spend, coach intake teams, or protect high-value job opportunities. Almstead needed a lead engagement platform that could expose blind spots, strengthen operational workflows, and ensure that every call was answered or captured. CallRail became the foundation of that transformation.
By using CallRail as a centralized lead engagement platform, Almstead has been able to:
- Uncover ~60 legitimate missed calls in a single week that were previously assumed to be spam.
- Reduce robocalls and form spam, improving intake and reporting accuracy.
- Confirm phone calls as the primary lead source, correcting form-led assumptions.
- Improve intake performance with call recordings and sentiment analysis for coaching and follow-up.
- Capture and route after-hours and emergency calls reliably when staff were unavailable.
- Validate marketing campaign performance, linking calls and appointments to initiatives like seasonal inspections.
The hidden cost of limited visibility in lead engagement
Before adopting CallRail, Almstead’s operational challenges all stemmed from a lack of visibility. The team handled a high volume of inbound calls but had no clear view into who was calling, which channels drove leads, or what happened after each conversation. In a service business with urgent, high-value opportunities, these blind spots carried real financial risk.
Marketing performance was equally unclear. Leadership believed forms drove most leads, but that assumption was based on anecdote rather than data. Campaigns ran without a reliable way to track which ones led to appointments or high-value jobs, while robocalls and fraudulent form submissions flooded the system, masking real customer demand.
Intake operations also lacked structure. Calls were answered but not documented or reviewed, leaving managers unable to determine whether lost leads resulted from missed calls, incomplete intake, or poor handling. Together, these gaps made it difficult to report confidently, evaluate team performance, or understand what was truly driving business. Almstead needed a solution that could bring clarity, consistency, and control to the entire lead journey.
Implementing CallRail to reveal the true impact of missed calls
Merrick had previously implemented CallRail at a larger organization, so he was familiar with the platform’s ability to quickly surface insights. Even so, the impact at Almstead was immediate and eye-opening. During onboarding, CallRail surfaced a critical insight that leadership had not expected. Almstead had missed approximately 60 calls in a single week, and nearly all of them were legitimate customer inquiries, representing real, unrealized revenue.
That was the moment everything clicked. We were not missing junk calls — we were missing business.
– Merrick Lee, Head of Growth, Almstead Tree & Shrub Care
This discovery revealed the urgency of implementing a complete lead engagement strategy, and leadership’s assumption that missed calls were mostly robocalls was disproven within days. The company now had clear, irrefutable evidence of how many real opportunities it was losing, and why change was necessary.
To solve the problem, Merrick implemented the following CallRail products across Almstead’s four regions:
- Call Tracking to reveal exactly which ads, listings, and campaigns were driving calls — and which ones led to booked appointments.
- Form Tracking to unify form and call attribution in one platform.
- Premium Conversation Intelligence to automatically transcribe calls and identify sentiment.
- Voice Assist to support the new zero missed calls workflow and protect after-hours callers.
The setup process was straightforward, and the platform immediately began delivering insights that allowed Merrick to evaluate marketing channels, validate assumptions, and bring accurate reporting to leadership.
CallRail moved us out of a state of unknown. It gives us a roadmap for the future.
– Merrick Lee, Head of Growth, Almstead Tree & Shrub Care
CallRail also helped Almstead understand the relative importance of calls and forms. For years, the team believed forms were a primary driver of inbound leads. CallRail revealed that calls generated the majority of new business. This insight reshaped marketing strategy and supported decisions around campaign planning and budget allocation.
AI-powered transformation for intake performance and emergency response
CallRail transformed both Almstead’s marketing insights and its intake operations. With Premium Conversation Intelligence™, Merrick could review call transcripts to understand not only what callers needed, but how intake teams handled each interaction. Sentiment analysis surfaced moments of customer confusion or frustration, allowing him to follow up quickly and address issues before they escalated.
In one case, negative sentiment flagged a scheduling issue for a customer. Merrick intervened, resolved the problem, and prevented a potential lost job. Over time, these insights became the foundation of a more structured intake training program. Rather than relying on general guidance, Merrick now uses real customer conversations to highlight best practices, pinpoint areas for improvement, and define what constitutes a high-quality interaction.
Voice Assist also played a critical role in Almstead’s transformation. When intake teams were unavailable, Voice Assist captured caller information, identified urgency, and routed calls appropriately. This capability proved especially valuable after hours, reinforcing Almstead’s ability to respond reliably even when staff were unavailable to answer the phone.
Voice Assist ensured we did not miss a single detail, even at 2 A.M.
– Merrick Lee, Head of Growth, Almstead Tree & Shrub Care
The 2 A.M. emergency that changed Almstead’s call workflow
One weekend at 2 A.M., a distressed homeowner called to report that a tree had fallen on their house. In previous years, this call might have gone unanswered until morning. Instead, Voice Assist captured the details, recognized the urgency, notified the emergency team, and transferred the caller to the dedicated emergency line.
This experience prompted Almstead to update its escalation rules. Any call containing urgent keywords would now be automatically routed to the emergency team. The incident also provided real proof of Voice Assist’s reliability, which helped increase internal trust in the technology.
The introduction of Voice Assist even influenced intake behavior. Agents became more responsive because they understood that AI would answer if they did not. Rather than relying on automation, they were motivated to perform at a higher level.
A more confident, data-driven operation with complete lead visibility
Today, Almstead operates with greater precision and confidence. The team finally knows which marketing channels are delivering results, how intake agents are performing, and how many real opportunities are coming through each region. Spam volume has decreased significantly, making it easier to identify and prioritize genuine customer inquiries.
Merrick utilizes CallRail to track which calls result in appointments, analyze campaign performance, and inform data-driven decisions about budget allocation. Almstead now understands the value of campaigns like its seasonal inspection initiative because results can be tied directly to call volume.
CallRail has become the backbone of Almstead’s lead engagement strategy. By strengthening intake workflows, improving emergency response, and optimizing marketing effectiveness, the platform has helped Almstead build a more reliable and scalable system for capturing and converting customer demand into actual jobs and revenue.
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