Customer lifetime value

Customer lifetime value is the total you reasonably expect to earn from one customer over the years they stay, not the total of a single ticket. A one-time garage door repair and a biweekly cleaning client are different businesses hiding in the same word "customer." The cleaner who stays three years is worth the slow first visit. The repair that never refers anyone is worth exactly that repair.

You do not need a formula with a Greek letter. Add up what a typical kept customer spends in a year, multiply by how many years they usually stay, and subtract what you spend to get and keep them if you know it. Even a rough version changes decisions. A lead source that brings cheap one-off jobs can lose to a source that brings fewer people who stay. A review request and a reminder before the next visit are how you protect the years, not decorations.

Lifetime value is also why the first response matters more than it looks. The missed call is not one ticket. It might have been the start of a recurring agreement or a household that refers the neighbors. You will not know, because they called someone else. Speed to lead is a lifetime-value problem wearing a stopwatch.

Keep the history on one record: jobs, notes, and whether they are still active. A CRM does this. An invoicing tool often does too, after the fact. The gap is the people who have not bought yet. Puffly holds both the open lead and the customer so a repeat caller is recognized. It will not compute a financial model for you, and it should not pretend to. Your invoices remain the source of what they paid.

Use the idea as a tie-breaker. When two kinds of work compete for the same afternoon, prefer the one that leads to the next visit or the next referral. Write that preference down so the person answering the phone knows it.