Pool service companies: who answers while you're at the pool?

Usually, nobody

Who answers while you're at the pool? For most pool service companies the honest answer is nobody. The phone's on the dash or in a pocket you can't get to with wet hands, the pump is loud, and there are eleven more stops before four. The call goes to voicemail and you hear it at the next gate, if you hear it at all.

A pool service answering service fixes that by picking up as your company, working out which kind of caller this is, and asking what that kind of call needs. There are really four: the route customer, the equipment repair, the replaster quote and the green pool. Each wants different questions, and a generic "can I take a message" gets none of them right.

The weekly route customer

Most of your calls come from people you already serve, and most are small. What day are you coming this week? Did you come yesterday, because the gate was latched when I got home? We're having the patio redone, can you skip the 14th? Can you add a filter clean?

The line answers what you've written down: which days you're in which neighborhoods, what the weekly service includes, what a filter clean or a salt cell clean costs. It can't see today's route sheet, so it doesn't claim you were or weren't there. It takes the question and you answer it later in two lines.

Skips and access changes go in the note exactly as given. A new gate code, a new dog, a side yard that's now locked. You can tell it never to repeat a code to a caller, only to write it down for you. And if you add your route customers as approved contacts, they get a warmer greeting than a stranger does. Approved and VIP callers covers the setup.

The pump that's making a noise

Equipment calls need the pad described. The line asks what the caller sees and hears. Is the pump screaming, humming, or not priming? Is the heater not firing, and is there a code on the display? Water under the filter? Bubbles coming out of the returns? It asks for the brand and model off the label if they can read it, and roughly how old the equipment is.

It doesn't diagnose. It also doesn't tell anyone what to do with the equipment or the chemicals, so it won't say how much chlorine to add or whether to leave the pump running. It writes down what it's told. If your rules say water pouring out of the equipment 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 the caller through to you, so the next move is your callback.

Replaster quotes from your rate card

Here's where the phone earns its keep. Someone calls about flaking plaster and what they want is a number. You can give one over the phone, if three questions get asked first: how big is the pool, what's the surface now, and when do they want it done.

Say your card has standard white plaster at $9 a square foot and a quartz finish at $12.50. A caller with 900 square feet to cover hears $8,100 for standard and $11,250 for quartz. The line works that out from your card, only if you've allowed quoting, and says a site visit confirms the final number. If the caller asks about pebble and pebble isn't on your card, it says someone will call with a price. It doesn't improvise.

The note you get has both amounts, the timing (before June, which is what every replaster caller wants) and the request for a site visit.

The green pool before a party

It's Wednesday. There's a graduation party on Saturday, and the pool went green while they were away. For the caller this is the most urgent thing in the world. For you it's a question of how green, and whether three visits fit before the weekend.

The line asks what you'd ask. Can you see the bottom at the shallow end? Is it green, or has it gone dark? Is the pump running? When's the event? Are they on your route, or new? If you charge a flat green-to-clean price by condition, it can quote that from the card. If you'd rather look first, it says so, and tells the caller you'll ask for a photo when you call back. (Don't point them at the line's own email address for that. It keeps the text of an email, not the attachments.)

Whether a green pool counts as urgent is your rule. Plenty of owners would say no, promise a call back within two hours. The line promises only what you've told it you can keep.

It makes the calls you put off, too

There's an outbound side that pool people tend to like once they find it. Tell the line to call the distributor and ask about a heater board, and it sits through the hold music and comes back with the price and the pickup time. Tell it to call the customer on Birch and move Thursday's filter clean to Monday. It reports back in writing.

It won't pay for anything. It never gives out a card number and never agrees to a charge, so orders that need money come back to you as a decision.

A pool contractor's front desk, set up end to end

We built a full example around a pool contractor: the company name on the greeting, the rate card in the instructions, and the note that comes out of a replaster call. It's on the front desk page, and there's a recording of that kind of call on the demo page.

Start there and swap in your own prices. The instructions are a few paragraphs of plain sentences (prices per square foot, service area, hours, what to ask before quoting), and you'll probably write them faster than you'd clean a filter.

Common questions

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