PlumbingBossPro Blog — Dispatch & Scheduling

Scheduling Plumbing Service Calls: From the Phone Ringing to a Spot on the Board

A service call starts long before a tech pulls into the driveway. It starts when the phone rings and someone in the office decides what to ask, what to promise and where to put the job. Get that conversation right and the visit usually goes fine. Get it wrong and the tech shows up with the wrong parts, at the wrong time, to the wrong problem.

Start With the Board

Every service call ends up on the board described in The Plumbing Dispatch Board: Every Van, Every Day and Every Call on One Screen. This article covers how it gets there: the questions, the decisions and the handoff to the tech.

In PlumbingBossPro, a service call is a job on a property, scheduled on a day and assigned to a van. That is all the board needs. The rest is what you learn on the phone.

Questions Worth Asking on Every Call

The office is the first diagnostic step. A few questions save the tech a lot of guessing:

• What is happening, in the customer's words? “Water under the sink” and “sink drains slowly” are different calls.
• Where in the house? Kitchen, hall bath, basement, crawlspace, garage.
• Is water actively leaking? If yes, can they shut it off at the fixture or the main?
• Is it one fixture or several? One slow drain is a fixture problem. Every drain backing up is a main line problem.
• For hot water problems: is it no hot water, not enough, or strange noises? Gas or electric?
• Access: gate codes, dogs, a tenant who needs notice, where to park.
• When can someone be home? And who is the contact if it is a rental.

Write the answers on the job. The tech reads them on the job card before knocking.

Repeat Customers Are Faster

When the customer has been on your books before, booking is quicker. Each property in PlumbingBossPro keeps its equipment list: water heater, softener, sump pump, sewer cleanout, main shut-off, and more, each with brand, model, size, fuel, year installed, location and access notes.

For a “no hot water” call, that means the office can see the water heater on file and pick it from the house when creating the job. The tech then sees something like “Water Heater - Tank (Gas) · 50 gal · installed 2014 · Garage” on the card. A tech who knows the heater is twelve years old walks in thinking about replacement, not just a thermocouple.

New customers start from scratch, which is fine. Whatever the tech learns on the first visit can be saved back to the house for next time.

Picking the Day and the Van

Once you know the problem, decide where it goes:

• Which van does this kind of work? A clog goes to the repair and drain van. A water heater replacement goes to the water heater van.
• How long will it take? A faucet cartridge and a full water heater swap do not fit the same gap.
• How urgent is it? Active leaks and no water go today if you can. A dripping faucet can wait for a day the van is nearby.
• Where is it? If the van is already in that neighborhood on Wednesday, Wednesday is the cheap day to go.

Filter the board by that van and look at the candidate days before offering one. Then offer a day you are confident about. If you need help deciding how to fit long jobs in, see Scheduling Long Plumbing Jobs: Water Heater Swaps and Repipes Next to Short Service Calls.

Requests That Do Not Come by Phone

Not every call is a call. Customers can request service from the customer app, and new customers can use the request form on your website. Those requests land in Form Responses in the office, where you review them, ask any follow-up questions by text, and put the job on the board.

Larger work usually starts as an estimate. When the customer approves the estimate online, it becomes the scheduled job, with the line items and any equipment details from the estimate carried along.

The Handoff to the Tech

Once the job is on a day and a van, the tech sees it on their phone in route order. The job card shows the address with a navigation button, the problem in the customer's words, the equipment from the house, access notes and past notes from earlier visits.

The customer gets the alerts they chose: a reminder the night before, a text when they're next, and a text when the tech arrives. That covers most of the “when are you coming?” calls before they happen.

A Booking Checklist

1. Find or add the customer and the property.
2. Ask the problem questions and write the answers on the job.
3. Pick the equipment from the house if it applies.
4. Choose the van that does that kind of work.
5. Check that van's days on the board, then offer one.
6. Confirm access notes and the contact for the day.

Six steps, a couple of minutes, and the tech walks in knowing what to expect. For how service calls fit into the rest of dispatch, from routing to customer texts, visit the PlumbingBossPro plumbing dispatch software page.