Forty missed calls and a full voicemail
The first warm weekend of March, and everybody wants a new patio. The phone rings while you are compacting sub-base. The website form fills up with messages saying just call me. Someone sends a Facebook message with a photo of a garden and no postcode. A directory lead arrives by email. By Friday you have more enquiries than you can reply to, and no idea which are serious.
Some of them you ring back. Some you never get to. A few are for work you do not even do, like tree felling or artificial grass, but you only find that out twenty minutes into the call.
Why spring always swamps you
Landscaping demand is concentrated into a few months, and the people who handle enquiries in a small firm are the same people doing the work. The channels have multiplied, each with its own inbox. And every enquiry needs the same handful of questions answered before anyone can decide whether to visit.
- Enquiries arrive through five or six channels, each checked at different times.
- The first reply depends on who has a minute, often in the evening.
- Basic details, like postcode, rough budget, timescale and type of work, are missing.
- Work you do not do, or areas you do not cover, take as long to handle as good leads.
- Site visits are booked by phone tag.
What the unanswered enquiries cost
A homeowner planning a garden will usually contact several firms at once and go with whoever gets back sensibly first. Enquiries answered days later have often gone. Good leads get buried under poor ones. And the owner's evenings are spent on the phone rather than pricing the work already visited, which slows the quotes as well.
The enquiry desk we build
- Every channel feeds one list: website form, email, Facebook and Instagram messages, directory leads, and missed calls with a transcribed voicemail through Twilio.
- Each new enquiry gets a quick reply in your wording that asks the questions you always need: postcode, type of work, rough size, photos of the garden, timescale, and a budget range if you want it.
- An AI step reads what comes back and sorts each enquiry: in your area or not, work you do or not, enough detail to visit or not. Anything uncertain goes to a person.
- Suitable enquiries are offered site visit slots from your real diary, which the customer can pick from. Unsuitable ones get a polite reply, pointing elsewhere if you have a partner you refer to.
- The owner sees one list with enquiries sorted by stage: new, waiting for details, visit booked, quoted.
- Visits and outcomes are recorded, so you can see which channels bring work you actually win.
| Enquiry | What happens |
|---|---|
| Patio, in your area, photos sent | Offered a site visit slot |
| Just call me, no details | Asked for postcode, photos and type of work |
| Tree felling, which you do not do | Polite reply, referral if you have one |
| Outside your area | Polite reply |
| Unclear | Passed to a person to decide |
The replies read like you, because they are written with you. Customers are not told they are talking to a person when they are not.
A spring that feels manageable
Every enquiry gets a sensible reply quickly, even when nobody is in the office. By the time you look at the list, the details are in, the photos are attached, and the good leads have visits booked. The evening phone marathon shrinks to a check of the list. And at the end of spring, you know which channels produced jobs, not just calls.
Signs your enquiries need a desk
- You reply to enquiries in the evenings or at weekends.
- Customers have said they went with someone who got back sooner.
- Enquiries arrive in several inboxes and messengers.
- You spend time on calls about work you do not do.
- You cannot say which channel your best jobs come from.