Our Referral Network Was Broken. Here's How We Fixed It.

The Before Times

We referred clients to partner agencies by fax. Fax. In 2021. Someone in our office would fill out a form, send it to a number, and hope for the best.

When clients asked what happened with their referral, we'd say "we sent it—you should follow up." Which is a polite way of saying "we have no idea."

The Experiment

We started tracking referrals manually. Just a spreadsheet: client name, date sent, agency, date of response. After three months, we had data that horrified us.

Response rate from partner agencies: 23%. Average response time for those that did respond: 11 days. Clients we had to re-refer because the first one fell through: 40%.

We weren't doing referrals. We were sending prayers into the void.

What Changed

We went to our partners with the data. "Here's what's happening. How do we fix this together?"

Some partners were embarrassed—they hadn't realized how slow they were. Some pointed out that our referrals were incomplete or hard to read. Fair enough.

Together, we built a simple shared system. Referrals went in, statuses got updated, everyone could see what happened. Nothing fancy. But now we knew.

The Results

Response rate climbed to over 80%. Response time dropped to about 4 days. Most importantly, clients stopped asking us what happened to their referrals—because we could actually tell them.

The spreadsheet that started all this still exists. We call it the "shame file." I look at it when I need motivation to keep improving.