Customer Service Leads AI Deployment Among Home Services Franchisees

There's the abstract idea of a "small business market" and then there's the reality, which is very far from the uniformity that term implies. Below the surface, the small business market is millions of companies that have superficial similarities and lots of differences. They can be segmented by industry, headcount, revenues, years in business, marketing maturity, age of owner and other variables. 

In that context, we surveyed a group of 96 franchisee operators in the Home Services vertical to better understand their views on technology and AI in particular. This is a small sample but directionally instructive. These are small businesses (SMBs) but with a twist: they're backed by brands, which are often quite sophisticated. So they're SMBs but not identically situated to independent local businesses, which typically don't have their resources or access to franchisor expertise.

The franchise survey is effectively our fifth and final survey of 2024, completing our tour of the local digital ecosystem (with the exception of multi-location brands). It was fielded in late December and early January, without an incentive using an internal list.