, 2 min read
Burst pipes and lockouts: handling urgent calls when you're on a job
For plumbers, electricians and locksmiths, the most valuable calls arrive while your hands are full. How to sort the emergencies from the routine and never lose either.
If you run a trade, your phone rings most when you can least answer it: under a sink, on a roof, halfway through a fuse board. And the calls that come in then are often the most valuable ones. Someone has water coming through the ceiling. Someone is locked out with a child inside. They aren't going to wait for a callback.
At the same time, plenty of calls aren't urgent at all: a quote for next month, a question about a boiler service, "do you cover my area?"
The problem is telling them apart without stopping work every time the phone goes.
Two kinds of call, two kinds of answer
Urgent calls need to reach you, now, with the details: what's wrong, where, how to call back. The customer needs to hear that someone will get back to them quickly, and when.
Routine calls need an answer and a booking: your area, your call-out charge, your next free slot. These don't need you at all, as long as whoever answers knows your business.
What to set up
- Decide what counts as urgent. Water leaks, no heating in winter, a lockout, a burning smell. Write it down.
- Decide how you want to hear about it. A text or WhatsApp to your own phone, with a summary, is usually best on a job.
- Write down the routine answers. Areas you cover, call-out fees, how quotes work, typical lead times.
- Be honest about timing. "We'll call you back within the hour" is better than a promise you can't keep.
How RingPost handles it
RingPost answers every call in a natural voice. For routine calls it answers from your information and books into your calendar. When a call matches what you've marked as urgent, it takes the details, tells the caller what happens next, and alerts you straight away with a summary, so you can decide whether to down tools.
If you'd rather keep your own number, forward only the calls you miss, or every call, and RingPost picks them up. Either way, the emergency reaches you and the routine work still gets booked.
See RingPost for plumbers, electricians and locksmiths.
Written by the RingPost team.