The phone ringing in the cab every twenty minutes
It is the middle of first cut. You are on the forager, or driving a tractor, or in the yard fixing something. The phone rings: a customer asking when you will get to him. Then another. Then the first one again, because the weather forecast has changed. Each call is reasonable. The customer's grass is ready, his cows need the silage, and he has to plan his own staff and his clamp.
But answering takes time, attention and patience you do not have in peak season. Some calls go unanswered, which makes the customer more anxious and more likely to ring again, or to ring another contractor.
Why customers keep ringing
Customers ring because they do not know. The information exists, on your job board, whiteboard or in your head, but they cannot see it.
| What the customer wants to know | How they find out now |
|---|---|
| Is my job booked? | Ring you |
| Roughly when will you come? | Ring you |
| Has it moved because of weather or a breakdown? | Ring you, or find out when you do not turn up |
| Are you on the way? | Ring you |
| Is it finished? | Walk the field, or ring you |
When the plan changes, which in peak season is often, the calls multiply. Every customer affected has to be told, and usually it is the customer who rings first.
What the calls cost
Every call takes you away from the work, and in a cab it takes attention off the job. Missed calls leave customers frustrated. Customers who feel ignored are the ones who shop around next year.
There is a safety side to it as well, in plain terms: a phone ringing constantly in the cab of a forager or on the road with a trailer is a distraction nobody needs. How your operators handle phones is your own policy, but fewer calls makes any policy easier to keep.
It also costs the office, if you have one, which spends the day passing messages. And customers who are told different things by different people get more anxious, not less.
Automatic updates from your job board
What we build is a customer update service driven by your job board, so customers hear about changes without anyone making a call.
- When a job is booked, the customer gets a short text or WhatsApp confirming it, with the operation and fields.
- When the job is scheduled for a day, the customer is told. When it moves, because of weather, a breakdown or another job running late, they are told with the new expected day, and a short reason if you want to give one.
- On the day, when the operator sets off, the customer can be told you are on the way.
- When the job is finished, the customer is told, with a summary of fields done, which also helps with their records.
- Each customer has a simple page, through a link, showing their jobs, their status and the expected day. It shows only their jobs, not other customers'.
- You choose which messages go to which customers, and you can hold messages back when the plan is uncertain. Customers can reply, and replies land in your request list.
The same updates help your own team. Operators see which customers have been told what, so nobody arrives at a farm expecting to start while the farmer thinks the job is tomorrow. And when a customer does ring, whoever answers can see exactly what that customer was last told.
Messages are sent through a service such as Twilio or the WhatsApp Business Platform, from a business number, so your personal phone is not the channel.
A wet week in first cut, with customers told
It rains on Monday. You move three customers' silage back two days on the job board. Each gets a message with the new expected day. Nobody rings to ask. On Wednesday, the forager sets off for the first of them, and the customer gets a message that you are on the way. By Thursday evening, two jobs are finished and the customers have their summaries.
You still get calls, from customers who like to talk, but far fewer, and most of them are about next week's plans rather than today's.
Is your phone ringing all day in peak season?
- Customers ring several times a day to ask when you are coming.
- You miss calls in the cab and customers ring again.
- Customers find out a job has moved only when you do not arrive.
- The office spends the day passing messages.
- Customers have said they did not know where they stood.