The six things you should get from every caller (before they hang up)

You answered the call. Good. But if you hang up without the right details, you've only half-won — now you're playing phone tag to find out whether they're even in your service area, or what kind of unit they have, or whether anyone will be home Thursday.

Most trades owners handle intake by instinct, which works fine on a good day and falls apart when you're taking a call from a roof. A short, fixed list fixes that. Here's the one that covers almost every home-services call.

1. Name and callback number

Obvious, and still the most commonly missed. Caller ID isn't enough — people call from a work phone, a spouse's phone, or a number that goes straight to a full voicemail box. Ask for the best number to reach them, and confirm it back digit by digit.

If you get nothing else from a call, get this. Everything else can be sorted out on a callback. Without a number, a dropped call is a dead lead.

2. Service address — not just the city

"I'm in Riverside" isn't an address. You need the street address for two reasons: to confirm it's actually in your service area, and because a surprising number of jobs go sideways when the tech arrives at the billing address instead of the property with the problem.

Rental properties are the classic trap — the person calling is the landlord, the problem is at a house across town, and nobody wrote down which one. Ask: "and is that the address where the work needs to happen?"

3. What's actually wrong (in their words)

Don't diagnose on the phone — just capture what they said. "Water coming from under the sink." "AC is blowing warm." "Half the outlets in the kitchen are dead."

The temptation is to interpret it into trade language, but the caller's exact wording carries information you'll lose if you translate too early. "It's making a grinding noise when it starts" tells your tech more than "compressor issue" written by someone who wasn't there.

4. How urgent is it, really

There's a real difference between "there's water actively coming through the ceiling" and "the downstairs toilet runs a bit." Both are legitimate calls. Only one of them should reorder your day.

A simple question does it: *"Is this something that needs someone today, or can it wait for the next available slot?"* Most people are honest. The ones who say "today" usually mean it, and the ones who say "whenever works" have just given you scheduling flexibility you didn't have to negotiate for.

This is also the question that separates a genuine emergency call from an ordinary one — worth getting right, because misjudging it in either direction costs you.

5. Access and availability

Who will be there, and when can they be there? A booked slot with nobody home is worse than no booking — you've burned a truck roll and an hour.

• Will someone over 18 be at the property during the visit?
• Any gate codes, dogs, parking issues, or building access to know about?
• Are there days or times that definitely don't work?

Thirty seconds of this on the phone saves the "I'm outside and nobody's answering" call later.

6. How they found you

This one isn't about the job — it's about your business. "How did you hear about us?" is the cheapest marketing analytics you will ever run.

Over a few months, the answers tell you whether your Google listing, your truck wrap, your yard signs, or word of mouth is actually driving work. Most owners are surprised. The channel they spend the most on is often not the channel that answers this question most often.

Why the list matters more than the script

You don't need to read these in order like a call center. What matters is that all six get captured every time, whether the call comes at 9am when you're at the shop or 7pm when you're driving home. Consistency is the whole point — a booking with five of six is a callback waiting to happen.

Which is also the argument against handling intake purely by memory. On a good day you'll get all six. On a day when you're under a house with one bar of signal, you'll get a name and a vague description of a noise.

Where June fits

June answers your line and asks for the details on every call, in the same order, whether it's 9am or 2am. She captures who's calling and what they said, and books the job — so what reaches you is a job you can show up to, not a name and a voicemail you have to chase.

The list above is worth keeping in front of you whoever is answering. Worth adding your own, too — equipment brand, whether they've called before, home warranty details.

Related: does an answering service actually book appointments? and what a good after-hours protocol looks like.