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Service Magic links homeowners, contractors

By Rebecca Jones , Special to the Rocky

Published January 14, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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Golden-based Service Magic, founded by Michael Beaudoin and Rodney Rice, is part of a growing group of Web-based services that match homeowners with home service professionals.

Photo by Ahmad Terry / The Rocky

Golden-based Service Magic, founded by Michael Beaudoin and Rodney Rice, is part of a growing group of Web-based services that match homeowners with home service professionals.

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So many home improvement contractors, so few you'd ever hire again in a million years.

Enter Service Magic, a Golden-based firm that has grown like crazy in the past few years by aiming to make it easier for homeowners to find reliable service providers and then giving those homeowners the opportunity to rate and review the quality of the work they received.

Since its founding in 1998, Service Magic has joined a growing group of Internet-based services that match homeowners with local home service professionals. The company, which has more than 800 full-time employees, recently opened a second office in Lenexa, Kan.

Service Magic has nearly 50,000 contractors and other service professionals across North America in its stable of providers and has matched more than 7 million consumer requests to its network of contractors.

Service Magic founders Rodney Rice, 38, and Michael Beaudoin, 45, were part of the founding management team at Golden-based Einstein Bros. Bagels, now Einstein Noah Restaurant Group. When Rice and Beaudoin left Einstein in 1998, they began looking around for another business opportunity.

"Obviously we were in the midst of what turned out to be the first Internet bubble," Rice said. "We wanted to leverage technology and leverage the Internet. We were looking for an opportunity that would have staying power, fill a true consumer need."

When they looked into the home improvement market, what they found was mass dysfunction and a market ripe for cornering with the right blend of technological savvy and old-fashioned marketing.

"We found the home improvement maintenance segment of the economy was about $225 billion a year and growing rapidly, but that consumers were very dissatisfied with their way of dealing with this," Rice said. "Traditionally, homeowners looking to hire a contractor would respond to a door hanger, or maybe call a number on a yard sign, maybe ask a neighbor for a recommendation. But there was no functioning marketplace. We felt the Internet could solve a lot of those problems."

Now, consumers who visit the Service Magic Web site (servicemagic.com) first click on the type of job they're interested in, anything from room additions to maid service to window treatments. Successive screens narrow the specifics of the particular job, including the part of town in which the homeowner lives. There are about 500 tasks from which a homeowner can choose.

"You can come to our Web site, and within two to three minutes, you submit your request," Rice said. "The way our matching technology and communications technology works, we figure out which three or four businesses would be best for the consumer, based on where they live and what they need. Then we communicate that to those businesses, via text messaging or whatever. Then we have an interactive voice response technology that allows the business to respond directly to that lead and be patched through to the consumer."

Consumers who prefer to use the telephone rather than a computer can call a toll-free number - 1-866-384-1080 - and deliver their information to a live operator.

It's up to the homeowner to choose from among the responding businesses, and Rice advises consumers to take all the usual smart steps: Meet with more than one service provider and get written estimates before awarding the job.

Service Magic customers also have access to reviews of individual contractors' customers. At Service Magic, only those who have actually used a service provider can post a review.

Consumers also can view profiles of the businesses with whom they've been matched, including promotional offers, photos of previous work, licensing and insurance information. They also have access to a "Homeowner's Resource Center" that offers a variety of tools, including calculators, estimators and planners, to help them with their home-maintenance planning and tracking.

The service providers pay from $6 to $50 per lead.

Todd Lempe, owner of Project Paint in Aurora, says becoming a part of the Service Magic network in 2003 has helped his business grow.

"Service Magic has really provided us with the specific, detailed project requests that no one else has made possible," Lempe said.

He won't reveal how many leads he gets each week from Service Magic, but he said it's been sufficient enough that he has been able to drop most of his other forms of advertising.

Shane McKay, owner of Dutchman Remodeling, joined the Service Magic network eight years ago and initially got about 10 percent of his business from Service Magic leads. Today, it's more like 80 percent.

"You still have to talk to several people in any situation to get the work," McKay said. "But you can also be a little more selective on what kind of jobs you take on. You can set it up so you just get jobs from one ZIP code or one area of town."

Josh Dirmish, 30, a production studio executive in Denver, was skeptical when a friend who runs a window-covering business told him about promoting his business through Service Magic. He thought it sounded too easy.

So when he sold his house and needed a locksmith to change the locks in late November, he thought he'd give it a try. He called the toll-free number on a Wednesday night and explained that he needed a locksmith on Friday morning.

"I started talking to the guy at Service Magic, and while I was still on the phone with him, my line started ringing," Dirmish said. "All three of the companies had called me within five minutes.

"I got their quotes, and I had somebody at my house on Friday. It really cut down on the time because they did all the work for me."

In September 2004, Service Magic was acquired by IAC/Interactive Corp., a conglomerate of businesses in industries being transformed by the Internet. Other companies in the Interactive Corp. fold include Ticketmaster, Lending Tree.com, Evite and Expedia.

Rice and Beaudoin stayed on as co-CEOs, and Rice says little has changed since joining Interactive Corp.

"We share ideas, and we share a lot of best practices across the businesses," he said.

Comments

  • January 14, 2008

    10:05 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    servicemagicsucks writes:

    yeah this would be neat if Service Magic was not a big scam

  • January 14, 2008

    9:25 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    denverite writes:

    180 complaints on the BBB? yep. high quality. there are better sites out there to find a contractor.

  • January 15, 2008

    10:25 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    LADAddy writes:

    If you need to find a contractor, you can also try ConstructionDeal.com. It's free and easy to use.

  • January 22, 2008

    6:08 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    TyKasperbauer writes:

    With a Service Professional Member Network of over 50,000, nearly 10 million Homeowner service requests processed to date and an average homeowner rating score of 4.4 out of 5.0, we’re extremely proud of our record of customer satisfaction. We make every effort to resolve any issue brought to our attention via internal or external sources, including the BBB. Our goal is to provide homeowners with the highest level of confidence when hiring professionals for home improvement/repair projects – large or small.

    Best regards,

    Tyson Kasperbauer
    Senior Vice President
    ServiceMagic, Inc.