Agents & knowledge

What your agent asks a caller

A message that says "someone called about a leak" is not a job. An agent seeded for a trade is instructed to come off the phone with enough to actually send somebody, and it does that by letting the caller tell it their way and then filling the gaps.

What it comes away with:

• Their name, and the address the work is at — read back to them once, because a wrong house number is a wasted van.
• What's wrong, in their own words — not translated into trade terms. "There's water coming through the kitchen ceiling" is more useful to the person turning up than "suspected pipe failure".
• How urgent it is, and when somebody is home — the two together are what makes a slot bookable.
• Anything about getting in — gate code, dog, parking, whether they rent and the landlord is the one who decides.
• Whether they've called you before — an existing customer ringing about work already done is a different call, and it's worth finding out early.
• A mobile number, read back digit by digit.

If the call can't be settled, it doesn't just end: the agent takes the name, the number and one line about the problem, and says when somebody will ring them back. And anyone who asks to speak to a person is told they'll get one — the agent takes the message and says so rather than talking them out of it.

All of this is in the instructions of any agent created for a company with services selected. You can edit it — if there's something you always need to know that isn't on the list, add it in the agent's instructions and it will ask.