Wall Coating Business – Case Study
Background
Based in Scotland, our new client are a family run business that specialise in roof and wall coatings. With over 25 years of experience, they supply a wide range of coatings, exterior wall restoration, and render repair services for private and commercial properties throughout Scotland and the North of England. Up until October 2020, all of their telephone answering and reception duties were carried out in-house by their long established receptionist.
All of their wall coatings are professionally applied via pressure spray by their skilled technicians. They use a resin coating that is up to 20 times thicker than normal paint and has been designed to provide long-lasting weather resistance allowing them to provide a 15 year guarantee on all coating work that they carry out.
Roof coatings involve thoroughly cleaning down the roof with a power spray to make sure all dirt, moss and mould are removed first. Any broken tiles are replaced before the primer coat and then final coating are applied, roof coatings come with a 10 year guarantee.
The unexpected retirement of their receptionist
Our new client had seen steady growth in the second half of 2020 but had been hindered by the unexpected early retirement of their long established receptionist.
They had looked at a straight replacement but following the Covid lockdown they had forced to allocate a lot of tasks and duties elsewhere in the company and a full-time receptionist was no longer seen as being cost effective.
Many of the day-to-day administrational tasks were now being done by the director’s wife on a part-time basis who is now able to work from home and fits the work into times that suit her. However, call answering cover was sporadic with calls going through to the mobiles of technicians who were frequently at work and having to hope that their voicemails would catch the client’s details – if they left any.
Searching for a call answering solution finds Connect
Despite the restrictions that a lot of the country was again facing, it did not fully explain the drop off in new enquiries our client was experiencing until it they realised that the drop matched the time their receptionist retired.
They started looking at some stats provided by their telephone provider and saw that their telephone enquiries were still relatively high despite their interests and new work declining.
The Director’s wife came across our website having searched Google for the term “virtual receptionist” and introduced the idea of outsourcing their call answering to Connect. The concept was new and although it took a little toing and froing to explain how it could work for their business, our offer of a no obligation, free trial was enough to convince them that they should give our service a try.
A simple service to avoid voicemail hang-ups
Going back to basics, the main reason our client contacted us was that they were pretty sure they were missing new business as a result of calls not being answered.
They wanted a simple phone answering service where calls were answered quickly and professionally with contact details taken so that a call-back could take place when convenient for both parties.
Calls are politely and professionally answered in our client’s business name. Our operators take some basic details before explaining that the technician in their area is currently out on an appointment but will get back to them shortly, we collect:
- Caller’s name
- Best number to call back on
- House number and postcode of where the work needed to be carried out
- Brief description of enquiry
Details are then emailed to our client on close of call allowing them to call the prospective client back when they are free to do so.
By the end of their free trial they had already seen an increase in bookings and new work with the only change being the implementation of our call answering service. Having answered 61 calls and sent 48 messages during the course of their 30 day free trial, they were very pleased to sign up to our Connect 50 tariff on a monthly rolling contract.
Page Last Updated: March 8th, 2023