How Inception Plumbing Uses Plecto to Drive 100% Conversion Days
Industry
Home Service
Use case
Eliminating "Data Clumping" to Drive Field Performance
Location
Kansas City, Missouri
Employees
25-35 employees
Integrations used with plecto
Company background
Founded by high school sweethearts Darrell Whiteaker and Lindsey Ramsey, Inception Plumbing balances Darrell’s 20+ years of trade mastery with Lindsey’s background in math and education to professionalize the plumbing experience. Operating out of a 7,000-square-foot training facility, they have built a "tradesmen-first" culture that emphasizes technical excellence and transparency over industry shortcuts.
"We do everything pretty much in the residential home that's possible to do."
– Lindsey Ramsey, CFO
This level of ambition defines Inception Plumbing, from simple drain clearing to advanced sewer repairs and water heater installs, they handle every aspect of your plumbing system with expertise. What started in 2017 as a "one person, one truck" operation has scaled into a sophisticated, multi-departmental business.
While the founder, Darrell, acts as the visionary, Lindsey serves as the "integrator" and General Manager. She oversees the entire operation, from the call center to the dispatch team, ensuring that specialized crews are sent to the right calls to provide the highest-quality service for their expanding customer base.
The Challenge
Before Plecto, Inception Plumbing faced a significant hurdle: data was visible, but it wasn’t actionable. While the team used ServiceTitan, the platform had a major limitation for a growing company with specialized departments: it "clumped" all technician data into one big mass.
The data clump and manual reporting
Because technicians were cross-trained to handle different types of calls such as plumbing service, drains, or water heaters, ServiceTitan provided a single, blurred performance metric. However, Inception Plumbing understood that different calls require different measurements. A drain cleaning job simply doesn't follow the same KPIs as a complex plumbing service call.
To get the clarity she needed, Lindsey had to:
Manually pull multiple reports just to find the specific numbers she was looking for.
Analyze and distinguish data for each individual technician and department by hand.
The whiteboard ritual: Every week before the team meeting, Lindsey would manually write everyone's results on a whiteboard. To make it scannable, she used a color-coded system with highlighters: green for hitting goals, red for missing them, and orange for those who were close.
This process wasn't merely tedious. It was a massive drain on her time, leaving the team without real-time visibility into how they actually compared to one another.
The Solution
Plecto transformed Inception Plumbing’s "data clumps" into clear, automated, and motivating insights. By integrating directly with ServiceTitan, Plecto now handles the heavy lifting of pulling and analyzing data in real time, giving Lindsey back hours of her week.
Real-time visualization and customization
The core of the solution was moving away from static whiteboards to dynamic, specialized dashboards. Inception Plumbing uses Plecto to separate their performance data into the granular categories that actually matter for their business:
Department-specific KPIs: Instead of one blurred number, they now track specific metrics for drain calls, plumbing service calls, and water heater calls.
Conversion rates & average sale: They monitor these percentages per call type to ensure they are providing the right level of service.
The "Batting Order" dashboard: Lindsey set up a custom dashboard that calculates technician rankings for job dispatch based on their own specific statistics and formulas.
Review tracking & transparency: By displaying 5-star review counts and total job opportunities, they ensure every technician sees how they are being treated fairly and how customers value their work.
Gamification: the power of contests
To bring that "bubbly" and competitive culture to life, Inception Plumbing implemented Plecto’s Contests and Leaderboards. Lindsey notes that even though they are just "touching the surface" of gamification, the impact has been immediate:
Increased engagement: Technicians check the competition in real-time on their own devices rather than waiting for weekly meetings.
Healthy motivation: The visibility of contests—like their current "Halo" competition—has energized the team to run their processes more intentionally.
Self-correction: When technicians see a peer succeeding (for example, with a high number of 5-star reviews), it encourages them to self-correct and ask what they need to fix to reach that same level.
The impact was the opposite of subtle. The moment Inception Plumbing put real-time performance in front of their technicians, the "day-to-day grind" transformed into an energized team effort.
Instead of moving through calls on autopilot, techs finally had a reason to check where they stood in real-time and push to protect their stats. As Lindsey noted, the transparency allows them to self-correct instantly; when they see a peer succeeding, they realize it's possible for them, too, and ask, "What do I need to fix, so I can get there too?".
The office felt the relief immediately, moving away from the manual madness of whiteboards and highlighters to a culture built on real-time clarity.
Here’s how the shift showed up in practice:
Technicians reclaimed their own accountability. The transparency of the dashboards means there is no "thinking something is being hidden" from the team. Everyone can see they are being treated fairly and how they are performing compared to the rest of the crew.
A 7% boost in conversion rates. Visibility drove a direct performance lift, moving the team from a 68% conversion rate to a consistent mid-70s average within a month!
Celebrating 100% conversion days. With Plecto, the team has achieved several days of 100% conversion. A result Lindsey describes as a "baseball no-hitter" that the technicians are determined not to drop.
Lindsey reclaimed 2–3 hours every week. By automating the “batting order” and KPI reports, the need for manual data entry and color-coded whiteboard sessions was eliminated.
A surge in 5-star customer reviews. By putting review counts on the dashboard, technicians became more intentional about customer service, leading to a "huge influx of 5-star reviews" across the board.
Healthy, bubbly competition became the norm. Competitions like the "Halo Contest" energized the team, with Lindsey observing that "everybody loves good competition" to help take away the pressure of the daily grind.
Together, these changes didn’t just improve the numbers. They reshaped the company rhythm, allowing Lindsey and Daryl to scale Inception Plumbing with a team that is energized, transparent, and as Lindsey puts it, ready to "pull the trigger" on even bigger goals.
Conclusion
By moving away from manual whiteboards and "clumped" data, Lindsey and Daryl have built a culture where transparency drives excellence. As Lindsey observes, the shift is about more than just numbers—it’s about giving the team the tools they need to "raise everybody’s lid" and get better every day.
Looking ahead, Inception Plumbing is focused on integrating even more automated competitions and deepening their use of digital scorecards to keep the team energized. For any other plumbing CFO or manager still on the fence, Lindsey’s advice is simple: "Pull the trigger... you will see the results."’
So stop wasting hours every week on highlighters, whiteboards and fragmented data. Join high-performing teams like Inception Plumbing and turn your "data clumps" into a culture of 100% conversion days and shared accountability. Sign up for a free demo below.
