If you can only run one report on your sales floor, run this one.
What OBE Means
OBE stands for Online Booking Engine. In MoveRight, it’s the system that receives and routes every inbound lead — web form, phone call, text, referral. The connection rate is the percentage of those inbound leads that actually connected to a sales agent within the target response window.
Connection rate = Connected leads ÷ Total inbound leads
That’s it. One number. Per day, per agent, per source, per location.
Why This Metric and Not Any Other
Booked revenue is a lagging indicator. By the time you see it in a report, the month is over. Lead volume is an input, but it doesn’t tell you what happened to the leads after they came in. Close rate tells you about the agents who closed, but not about the leads that never got contacted in the first place.
Connection rate is actionable today. If it’s 80%, you’re doing well. If it’s 55%, you have a problem you can fix right now — staffing, call routing, after-hours coverage — and the impact will show up in booked revenue within a week.
It’s also hard to game. You can’t inflate your connection rate by marking a voicemail as “attempted.” You can’t boost it by calling a dead number three times. Either the agent talked to the lead, or they didn’t.
And it correlates tightly with booked revenue. Not perfectly — a bad agent can connect 100% of leads and still close 10%. But more tightly than any other input metric we’ve tracked across the MoveRight customer base. Improve your connection rate, and booked revenue follows.
What “Good” Looks Like
Industry rule of thumb:
- >80% connection rate during business hours — Solid. You’re not leaving money on the table.
- >90% connection rate during business hours — Excellent. Your team is responsive and well-staffed.
- <70% connection rate during business hours — Problem. You’re losing leads to slow response or understaffing.
The single biggest drag on connection rate is the lunch hour. From 12–1 PM, connection rates drop by 15–20 percentage points across the industry. If your team takes lunch in shifts, you can recover most of that. If everyone breaks at noon, you’re dark for an hour in the middle of the day.
The second biggest drag is the Monday morning scramble. Leads come in over the weekend, the team’s not fully staffed yet, and the first two hours of Monday are a catch-up session. Staggering start times by 30 minutes can clear the backlog before it builds.
What Kills Connection Rate
- Lunch hour — Everyone breaks at the same time. 12–1 PM is a dead zone.
- Post-lunch lull — 1–2 PM. Agents are back but warming up. Leads that arrived at 12:30 are now stale.
- Single-agent staffing on Mondays — The lead volume on Monday morning is 2–3x a typical weekday. One agent can’t handle it.
- After-hours gaps — 5 PM to 8 AM. Every lead that comes in during this window goes to voicemail or waits until morning.
- Manual routing — Leads sit in an inbox until someone assigns them. The assignment can take hours.
What MoveRight Reports Show
The OBE connection-rate dashboard in MoveRight gives you:
- Per-day connection rate — yesterday, last 7 days, last 30 days
- Per-agent connection rate — public to-the-team leaderboards
- Per-source connection rate — which lead source connects at the highest rate (and which is a waste of money)
- Per-location connection rate — for multi-location operators, this is the single most important cross-location metric
The leaderboard effect is real. When agents can see their connection rate next to their peers, the bottom quartile improves within a week. Not because they’re shamed — because they can see what “good” looks like and adjust their behavior accordingly.
What Changed When Customers Started Measuring This Consistently
Across the MoveRight customer base, operators who measure connection rate consistently and share it with their team see a 10–15 percentage-point improvement within 30 days. Not because the software ismagic — because measurement drives behavior. The agents know the number is being tracked. They respond faster. They take fewer breaks during peak hours. They don’t let leads sit in the queue.
It’s the simplest management intervention in the book: measure the thing, share the measurement, watch the thing improve.
Existing user? The OBE connection-rate dashboard is in Reports → Sales Floor.
Access your connection rate report
References:
- IBISWorld — Moving Services in the US — https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/industry/moving-services/1154/
- HireAHelper — Moving Industry Statistics — https://www.hireahelper.com/moving-statistics/