How to Respond to Emergency Call Outs

Emergency call outs are daunting for everyone involved. No-one wants their house flooded or to find a leak in their ceiling. Likewise, companies can struggle to get plumbers, electricians or technicians out on time to situations that need to be handled quickly.

Often clients will pay more money for emergency call out cover, so it’s vital that the service your company provides is efficient and professional. Here’s how to respond to emergency call outs in the best way:

Manage Expectations

If someone needs a plumber, it’s usually an emergency. It’s so important to manage expectations when it comes to emergency call outs. A lot of clients calling up may be desperate and panicking. Make sure you reassure the individual on the phone and explain how long it will take for a plumber or electrician to make it to their location.

Don’t make any unrealistic estimates or promises you cannot keep. Your client will feel disappointed by your service and your company’s reputation will be affected.

Keep an Eye on Competition

Many businesses that deal with home and business maintenance and repairs quote two hours as their fastest response time, but this could change depending on the size of the geographical area your company works with. 

Make sure you’re keeping an eye on your competition and what they’re doing to achieve such quick response times. If you check out their social media pages, you may find negative reviews that dispute such fantastic claims! Don’t be quick to promote fast emergency call outs, if you know they can’t be achieved 100% of the time.

Remember to Explain Costs and Repairs

Along with providing reassurance, your staff should be fully trained to identify the problem and carry out a fix immediately, or at least a recommendation. Give your clients a rough estimated range of how much the repairs will be and stick to it. Ensure the client understands how much the repair is going to cost, or you could end up in a rather expensive dispute.

Telematics and Emergency Call Outs

Telematics is one of the best things to have when responding to emergency call outs. The plumbing and heating industry are renowned for having to deal with customers ringing up with burst water pipes, leaking taps and flooded floors. Similarly, business owners may be struggling with the heating not working properly in the office, so a professional is needed at short notice. This isn’t ideal and can be hard for companies to manage. Emergency callouts come with the territory in the industry, so it’s important your company provides a rapid response. Without tracking technology, you have no easy way to check the location and availability of your engineers. The only option is to phone all your engineers and not only hope one of them answers, but also that they’re not busy at another job for the rest of the day or too far away to make the call. However, telematics helps to make the ordeal a lot easier for everyone involved. The employee responsible for dealing with the troubled client in the office can use telematics to see the location of every driver working anytime and anywhere. Thus, they can make a quick decision of who to send, by seeing the distance of all the drivers from the designated location.