The call you missed at 7pm went to whoever answered first.
A furnace quits on a Sunday night in January. She calls three companies off her phone. Two go to voicemail. The third picks up, and that's who's in her basement Monday morning, and every winter after.
You're not losing those jobs on price or on skill. You're losing them on who picked up.
Three things costing you money right now
The after-hours call that went to voicemail.
Emergency work is where the margin is, and it comes in when nobody's at the desk. A caller with water on the floor doesn't leave a message. She calls the next name.
The tech calling the office for the job details.
Address, gate code, what the customer said on the phone, what was done last visit. Every tech, every job, ten minutes on the phone with somebody who had to look it up. Multiply that by the day.
The estimate that didn't close and nobody circled back on.
The water heater quote she said she'd think about. The service agreement you mentioned at the door. Nobody in the office has time to chase it, so it goes to whoever calls her next spring.
What we put in
An agent that answers at 7pm.
Every call, every hour. It knows your service area, what counts as an emergency, and what the next open slot is. It books the visit, texts the customer a confirmation, and tells the on-call tech who's coming.
Job details that go to the truck.
The tech opens the job on his phone. Address, history, what the caller said, what parts came up last time. Nobody calls the office to ask.
Follow-up on every estimate.
The quote she's thinking about gets a check-in. The service agreement gets offered again in writing. The customer from two years ago hears from you before the season turns.
One place to see the day.
Who's where, what's booked, what's waiting on a part, what's done and unpaid.
What it gives back
A three-tech shop usually has one person in the office spending about fifteen hours a week on dispatch calls, reading job details to techs, and typing the same call into the schedule and the invoice.
That's not fewer people. It's the same person answering the phone the way a customer deserves, because she's not on hold with a tech reading him an address.
Preset to a typical shop. Change them to yours.
What it costs
Home service companies with more than one tech land here.
Operator
$749 a month
$8,500 to build
An owner-operator with one truck fits here.
Starter
$399 a month
$4,500 to build
Tax is added on top, not buried inside. If your operation doesn’t fit either one, we’ll quote it honestly and show you the math.
Let's talk
Twenty minutes on the phone. Tell me how the place runs and where your day goes, and I'll tell you honestly whether there's anything here. Reed Johnson, (218) 290-0656.