An electrician is halfway up a ladder with both hands occupied. His telephone rings in the van.
By the time he gets to it the call has ended and no message has been left. He calls back forty minutes later and it goes unanswered, because the person has already spoken to somebody else and arranged a visit.
That happens three or four times a week. None of it appears anywhere. He knows he is busy and he does not know that he is losing a job a week to a telephone he could not reach.
The first failure: the work and the answering are the same person
There is no arrangement in which somebody can be fitting a consumer unit and having a conversation about a quotation at the same time.
The second failure: voicemail no longer works
People do not leave messages. A voicemail greeting is a way of ending a call politely rather than a way of capturing an enquiry.
The third failure: the call back is too late
Forty minutes is frequently long enough for somebody to have arranged the work elsewhere, particularly for anything urgent.
The fourth failure: the missed call leaves no information
A number and nothing else. No idea what they wanted, whether it was urgent, or whether it is worth interrupting a job to return.
The fifth failure: the website form is no better
It goes to an email address checked in the evening, which is the same delay by a different route.
The sixth failure: the evening catch up is exhausting
Replying to the day's enquiries after finishing work, which is the pattern described in small business owners answering messages after hours.
The seventh failure: the urgent and the routine are indistinguishable
A burst pipe and a quotation request arrive identically, and neither can be identified without answering.
The eighth failure: the qualifying happens on a call
So every return call is a full conversation, including the ones that turn out to be outside the working area or the wrong trade entirely.
The ninth failure: the quotation details are gathered twice
Once on the call and again on site, because nothing was captured in a form that could be built on.
The tenth failure: the loss is invisible
Nobody records a job they did not know existed, which is the accounting problem in what missed enquiries cost your business.
The eleventh failure: the customer thinks the business is finished
An unanswered number and an unreturned call reads as a business that has closed, which is worse than being busy.
The twelfth failure: the fix is assumed to be a person
Hiring somebody to answer is the obvious answer and it is disproportionate for a one person business with a few enquiries a day.
The thirteenth failure: the good customers are the ones who give up
Somebody organised enough to be arranging work in advance is also organised enough to have a shortlist and move down it. The customers who wait and call back repeatedly are frequently the ones with the most complicated jobs and the least willingness to pay.
The fix: something answers while your hands are full
An assistant that replies immediately, establishes what the job is, confirms it is in the working area, distinguishes an emergency from a quotation request and takes the visit request for you to confirm means the ladder does not have to be climbed down. The same problem is set out in answering enquiries when you are the only person and service requests that arrive while you are on a job. Start at try, see features, and the sector view sits under small business.