From 40% missed calls to a 100% answer rate across 62 franchise locations
How America's largest fence franchise put a real system behind its phones for the first time, and now books $2.34M a month in revenue through NaiL at a 34x average return per franchisee.
The starting point
Every Monday started with 60 missed calls
Superior Fence & Rail is one of the fastest-growing fence franchises in the country: roughly 125 locations, an average job worth $7,500, and phones that ring 500 to 1,000 times a day across the system. Before NaiL, there was no systematized way to answer them.
Each franchisee was on their own. During business hours, office staff picked up what they could, at roughly $800 per week for each person answering phones. After hours and on weekends, most calls went to voicemail or simply rang out. Across the franchise, about 40% of calls were missed entirely, and when staff called those people back, only about half ever picked up. The rest had already moved on to a competitor.
Drew Raymond, who runs Superior's New England locations, came back to more than 60 missed calls every single Monday. His team spent the first two or three hours of the week on callbacks, and most of them went nowhere.
The average Superior job is worth $7,500. Most customers who reached voicemail just called the next fence company on the list.
What they tried first
An answering service, then a “fancy voicemail system”
Many franchisees tried AnswerConnect, a traditional answering service, at $2,000–$3,000 per month depending on volume. It took messages, but that was about it. A single agent worked from a one-page summary of the business. They couldn't book appointments, couldn't answer real questions about materials or pricing, and didn't know what made each franchise territory different. And when several calls came in at once, which is exactly when coverage matters most, one person physically couldn't keep up.
Some locations then tried a low-cost AI voice provider called ZyraTalk. It saved a few hundred dollars a month, and customers hung up on it.
“I listened to some of the recordings and I was terrified because of just how awful the quality was. It was essentially a fancy voicemail system that so many customers would just hang up on instantly, because they can tell right away that they're talking to AI.”
The turning point
One demo settled it
Zach Peyton was Superior's brand president at the time. He is now chairman of the board, and he also owns the Jacksonville and North Florida locations himself. A mutual friend introduced him to NaiL, and the first meeting was a conversation about what Superior was dealing with and where the brand wanted to go.
What sold him was hearing NaiL live. After ZyraTalk, franchisees had good reason to believe customers wouldn't tolerate AI, because the AI they had heard sounded robotic. Then Zach got a demo. His response: “Yep, all right, let's talk about getting a pilot going.”
NaiL also never asked anyone to replace their office staff. It works as a safety net. If a location doesn't pick up, whether during a lunch rush, on a Saturday afternoon, or when three calls come in at once, NaiL answers.
“Our sales reps will tell them, ‘Well, actually, that was an AI solution.’ They're just flabbergasted because they could not tell the difference.”
The rollout
From pilot to half the franchise in four months
NaiL answers Superior's calls, qualifies customers against each location's own criteria (job type, linear footage, budget, which materials they install), answers questions, and books estimates straight into Fence360, Superior's proprietary CRM, through the brand's RingCentral phone system.
That per-location detail is what an answering service could never offer. Every territory qualifies jobs differently, so NaiL's team met with franchisees one on one to learn how each business runs and built those qualifiers into each location's agent.
The rollout had hiccups, and most of them involved RingCentral. Every franchisee had configured call forwarding differently, so NaiL standardized the setup during the pilot. That work is a big reason new locations now go live within 72 hours of signing up. Franchisees fill out one onboarding form and NaiL handles the rest. What the team learned in that first 90-day pilot also shortened new brand pilots to 60 days.
The pilot begins
Superior Fence & Rail and NaiL kick off a 90-day pilot. Roughly half the time goes to building and integrating with RingCentral and Fence360, and half to testing against real call traffic.
Franchise-wide rollout
With pilot results in hand, corporate opens NaiL to the entire franchise. New franchisees fill out one onboarding form, and NaiL handles everything else.
Half the franchise in 4 months
NaiL goes from 0 to roughly half of Superior's locations. Most franchisees are live within 72 hours of signing up.
62 locations and growing
About 70% of Superior's actively operating franchises run on NaiL, with SMS speed-to-lead for website leads rolling out next.
The transformation
1,314 appointments booked last month. $2.34M in monthly revenue.
The numbers below cover all 62 live locations and are tracked from the first ring through closed-won revenue in Fence360.
The knock-on effects matter just as much. Owners have moved the money they were spending on phone coverage into marketing and sales. And in April, Zach's own Jacksonville location posted its best residential sales month in company history.
“We never miss any calls. We never miss any appointments with customers. We have unlimited capacity now to take calls from customers, to get appointments scheduled with our sales reps, and to go out and win business.”
In their own words
Hear it from Superior's leadership
Unscripted, unedited video. No production crew, no talking points.
“Our Jacksonville location had its best residential sales month ever.”
Zach Peyton · Chairman of the Board, Superior Fence & Rail
“I'll pick NaiL every single day of the week.”
Zach Peyton · On low-cost AI vs. NaiL
“Nine other brands within Empower are knocking on your door.”
Joe Dominiak · Brand President, Superior Fence & Rail
What's next
Now the rest of Empower Brands wants in
Superior Fence & Rail is part of the Empower Brands franchise portfolio, and word has traveled. NaiL is now expanding within the portfolio and rolling out SMS speed-to-lead so website leads get the same instant response as callers.
“You started with one brand, but now there's nine other brands within Empower knocking on your door saying, ‘Hey, what you got here?’ It is because you've got a great product, but it's also because you've got great people with passion, dedicated to that product and to the reputation of your company.”
Joe Dominiak, Brand President, Superior Fence & Rail
Running a franchise with the same phone problem?
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