When a care home has a vacancy problem, the instinct is almost always to go looking for more enquiries. More visibility. More marketing. Get in front of more families.
And sometimes that’s the right answer. Looking after the enquiries you already have usually pays off faster, and it costs very little.
There’s a question that comes before “how do we get more enquiries?”, and care home owners rarely pause to ask it: what’s happening to the enquiries we’re already getting?
The honest answer, for a lot of care homes, is: not enough.
Calls are being missed. Online forms are going unacknowledged for days. Callers reach a voicemail and never call back. Families who were ready to book a visit have moved on, because someone else answered the phone.
Before you spend another pound on marketing, it’s worth conducting a simple audit of how your care home handles the enquiries it’s already receiving. What you find might be more revealing than you expect.
The phone call reality
According to TrustedCare Pro’s analysis of 12,000 enquiries in 2024, 67% of new care enquiries are made by telephone. TrustedCare sells call answering, so read its figures with that in mind.
That call is the moment a family stops researching and starts talking to you. How you handle it, or whether you handle it at all, decides what happens next.
Now here’s the challenge. The same research found that 29% of enquiries arrive between 10am and 12pm, with a further 23% between 12pm and 2pm. That’s 52% of the day’s enquiries in a four-hour window.
Think about what’s happening in your home during those hours. Morning medicines, personal care and lunch. It’s the busiest part of the day, and it’s when families are most likely to call.
Missing an enquiry during a busy shift is rarely a failure of effort. It’s a problem with how the day is organised, and that needs a plan as well as goodwill.
The impact of a missed call can be large. Say a room earns £1,200 a week. One missed call that would have led to a placement is a lot of lost income.
Questions to ask about your phone enquiry process:
Is there a named person responsible for answering and logging enquiry calls during the busiest hours, 10am to 2pm?
What happens to calls that go to voicemail? Is there a defined process for returning them, and within what timeframe?
Are calls logged on a simple enquiry list, or even a spreadsheet, so that no enquiry is lost?
Can the person who answers enquiry calls do more than take a message? Are they trained to have a warm, helpful conversation that books a visit?
Monday: the most important day of your marketing week
The TrustedCare Pro data showed that Monday accounts for 21% of enquiries. Tuesday to Thursday each take around 18%. Friday drops off, and weekends account for about 8%.
A likely reason is that families do their research over the weekend, reading websites, comparing options and talking at home. On Monday they pick up the phone.
This has two practical implications.
The first is about what families find. Their weekend reading may shape who they call on Monday. If your website says little and your Google profile is out of date, you may miss them.
The second is about staffing. Monday morning is your busiest time for calls. If they are handled by whoever picks up the phone between other tasks, you may be missing families.
The online form gap: where most homes fall short
While telephone enquiries dominate, just over 25% of enquiries come through online forms. That’s a lot of families, and forms are easy to leave sitting in an inbox.
Here’s what can happen. A family fills in the contact form at 9pm on a Sunday. It goes to an inbox that’s checked on Monday. A reply goes out on Tuesday afternoon, if at all.
By Tuesday afternoon, that family has probably already spoken to two other care homes that responded faster.
Speed matters. For a family in the middle of a care crisis, the first home that responds well may well be the one that gets the visit.
Practical fixes for online enquiry response:
Automatic acknowledgement email. Set up an immediate “Thank you, we’ll call you by 10am tomorrow” reply, so families know their form has been received.
A set response time. The same day during working hours, and by 10am the next morning for evening and weekend enquiries. Write it down and make it a policy.
Call as well as email. For a decision as big as choosing a care home, picking up the phone shows you take the enquiry seriously.
Form design. Make sure your contact form asks for a phone number as well as an email address, so you have the option to call.
Weekend coverage: the 8% you might be ignoring
Weekend enquiries are a small share of the total, around 8%, but they’re worth thinking about carefully. A hospital visit on Saturday or a family conversation over Sunday lunch can bring things to a head.
These families may be moving fast. If they reach a voicemail that says “our office is closed, please call back Monday”, they may call every other home on their list too.
You don’t necessarily need to staff an enquiry desk on weekends. But you do need a plan:
A voicemail message that sounds warm and gives a clear expectation of when they’ll be called back (not a generic “leave a message”).
A care manager or senior staff member with visibility of weekend email and form submissions.
A website that answers the common questions, so a family who can’t speak to anyone on Saturday can still feel confident enough to call on Monday.
Live chat: worth watching
Currently only around 6% of enquiries use live chat, up slightly over the year. It’s a small share, but it suits someone researching outside calling hours.
If you try live chat or a chatbot, make sure it collects contact details and answers common questions accurately, and that a person follows up.
The enquiry audit: your six-point checklist
Run through these honestly. Be the mystery shopper of your own care home:
Call your own home at 10:30am on a Monday. Who answers? How long does it take? How does the conversation feel? Does it inspire confidence?
Submit an enquiry form on your website at 5pm. When do you get a response? Is it warm and personal, or generic?
Check your voicemail message. Does it sound welcoming and helpful, or transactional and impersonal?
Look at your last 20 enquiries. Were they all followed up? How many became visits? How many just went cold?
Ask your reception or care staff: what happens when they’re busy and a call comes in? Is there a clear protocol, or does it depend on whoever is nearest the phone?
Check your Google Business Profile hours. Do they accurately reflect when someone can expect to speak to a human? Is there a note about how to reach someone out of hours?
You may well find two or three gaps. That’s not unusual in a home as busy as yours.
Once you know where the gaps are, how to handle care home enquiries shows you how to close each one.
The good news is that the fixes are usually straightforward. They take process and training more than money.
The final thought: look after the enquiries you already get
More enquiries won’t help if families are enquiring and then going somewhere else. The thing to fix is what happens between first contact and a booked visit.
For many homes the best value improvement has nothing to do with a new website or a new advert. It is fixing the gaps in how you handle the enquiries you already get.
A care home that answers every call, replies to every form the same day and follows up kindly is already ahead. That is well within your reach.
Want an honest look at how your enquiry process stacks up?
25 years in brand, digital and marketing, six of them only in care. Barry writes the Quick Wins email every week and still answers the phone.
The questions people ask. Answered in a line or two.
How quickly should a care home respond to an enquiry?
Send an automatic acknowledgement within minutes, and have a person call the same day, or by 10am the next morning for evening and weekend enquiries. Families often shortlist a handful of homes.
Where do most homes lose enquiries?
Often through online forms and out-of-hours calls that nobody owns.
An enquiry that arrives at 8pm on Friday and gets a reply on Tuesday may already be lost.
Check how you handle enquiries first, because it is faster and cheaper to fix. If every enquiry already gets a fast, warm, tracked follow-up, then spend on being seen.
A care home CRM puts every enquiry on one list so none is forgotten.
