Answering service for landscaping and lawn care

An answering service that only answers is half of what you need

Most answering services do one thing, which is pick up. A landscaping business needs a second thing just as much, because weather moves your schedule and every moved visit is a phone call somebody has to make. So the short answer is this. A landscaping answering service should take the calls you can't get to, which in spring is most of them, and it should make calls for you when rain pushes a visit. Our line does both.

Picture a wet Wednesday. It rained all Tuesday night and it's still coming down at six in the morning. The mowing route slides a day, and your regulars know that's the deal. But Wednesday also had three estimate visits, an irrigation repair at two, and a mulch delivery to a driveway you now can't get a truck up. Every one of those needs a call, and you'll be making them from the cab while other calls come in.

Spring calls land in the same three weeks

The first warm Saturday of the year, half the town looks at its yard. On Monday morning they call. Can you do a spring cleanup? How much for weekly mowing? Do you do mulch? Can you start this week? And you're already out, because those three weeks are also when the work is.

The line answers as your company and quotes only from your rate card, and only if you allow it. Mowing is the easy one if you price by lot size. Say up to a quarter acre is $45 a cut and up to half an acre is $60. It asks the address, the rough lot size, whether there's a fence, how wide the gate is (your mower deck has to fit through it) and whether there are dogs. Anything it can't price from the card, it takes the details and says you'll come and look.

Give it your towns as well. A mowing route only pays when the stops are close together, so you might want a yes for a new lawn on a street you already cut and a callback for one twenty minutes out.

Estimate visits need more than a name and a number

Design and install calls are worth the most and arrive with the least information. "We want to do something with the backyard" is a typical opening. The line asks enough to tell you whether it's a half-hour visit or a half-day one, then offers the visit windows you've set and takes a preference. You confirm the day.

• What they want. New beds, sod, a patio, a retaining wall, a drainage problem, shrubs taken out.
• Roughly how big, and front yard or back.
• Photos. The line tells the caller where to send them, which is your own inbox if you've put it in the instructions. Its own email address keeps the text of an email, not the pictures.
• Timing. A graduation party, a house going on the market, or no hurry.
• A budget range, if they offer one. It asks once and doesn't push.
• Who else is involved. A spouse who needs to be there, an HOA that has to approve.

Irrigation repairs are their own kind of call

A head snapped off by a mower and shooting water at the street. A zone that won't shut off. A zone that won't come on. A controller that's gone blank after a storm. A wet patch that never dries out.

The line takes down which zones, what the controller says, the brand if they can read it, and whether water is running right now. If your rules say running water is urgent, it tells the caller you'll ring straight back, and the written summary reaches you as soon as the call ends. It can't put a caller through to you. It doesn't talk anyone through a repair.

Then there are the seasonal jobs, spring start-ups and fall blowouts, which all get requested in the same two weeks. The line takes the address and the preferred week, and you batch them by neighborhood.

How the outbound calls work

Back to that wet Wednesday. You call your line from the cab and tell it what's changed. Call the three estimate customers and offer Friday morning or Monday afternoon. Call the irrigation customer and offer Thursday at two. Call the mulch supplier and push the delivery to Friday.

It makes each call as its own conversation. It says who it's calling for, explains that rain has moved things, offers the times you gave it and writes down which one they picked. If nobody picks up, the note says so, and you know who still hasn't heard. It tells anyone who asks that it's an AI. Can an AI make phone calls describes what those calls are like.

This isn't a dialer. It won't blast a recorded message at your whole mowing list, and we wouldn't want it to. One call, one reason, to someone who's expecting you. And since texts from the line to other people are limited for now, a call or an email is how the news gets there.

Mowing customers mostly want to know when

Your regulars call with small things. Are you coming this week? We're away next week, can you skip? Could you cut it a bit higher in July? Put your rain rule in the instructions (if it rains on your day, we come the next dry day) and the line says exactly that, every time.

Complaints come in on the same line. The gate was left open. A sprinkler head got clipped. There's a scalped strip by the driveway. The line writes down what happened and what they'd like done, in their own words. It doesn't argue and it doesn't offer a credit. That's your call, and you'll make it better with the facts written down. The home services page has sample instructions to start from.

Count the calls from your last rain day

Open your phone's call log and find the last working day it rained. Count the calls you made before nine. Then count the ones that came in while you were making them.

That's the size of the problem in your business, and it's a better number than any we could quote you. If it's two calls, carry on as you are. If it's fifteen, read how it works before the next forecast turns.

Common questions

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