Same address, third visit this year
A customer rings: the leak is back. The office books it as a new repair. A roofer goes out, finds the lead flashing around the chimney has lifted, fixes it, and nobody charges. Three months later it happens again. The roofer who went is different each time, and none of them saw what the others did.
The customer is losing patience. They are not wrong to.
Why call-backs are hard to see
Repeat leaks are rarely the same fault twice. Sometimes the first repair did not reach the real cause, sometimes a different part of an old roof has failed, and sometimes it is condensation. Working out which needs the history, and the history is not in front of the person on the roof.
- Calls are logged as new jobs rather than linked to earlier work.
- The previous repair's notes and photos are not available on site.
- The cause found on each visit is not recorded in a consistent way.
- Nobody tracks call-backs by gang or repair type.
- Unpaid return visits are not counted anywhere.
What repeat visits cost
Every free return visit is a half day or more of labour and travel. The larger cost is reputation: a customer on their third visit writes the review. And without a pattern, you cannot tell whether a particular repair method, material or gang is behind it, so it keeps happening.
Call-backs also distort your view of the business. A repair job that looked profitable on the invoice can end up costing money once the second and third visits are counted, but because those visits were never linked back, it still looks like a good job on paper.
The call-back tracking we build
- When a call comes in, the address is matched against past jobs, and any work within a period you set is shown to the office straight away.
- The call is linked to the original job and marked as a possible call-back rather than a new repair.
- The roofer attending sees the previous work on their phone: what was done, by whom, with photos.
- On the visit, they record what they found from a short list you define, such as same fault, related fault, unrelated fault, not a roof issue, with photos.
- Chargeable or not is decided by the office using your own terms, and recorded.
- Reports show call-backs by repair type, material, gang and time since the original job.
- Patterns are raised to the manager, such as a repair type that often comes back, so it can be looked at.
| Recorded on each call-back | Helps you |
|---|---|
| Link to original job | See the full history of that roof |
| Cause found | Tell real call-backs from new faults |
| Photos | Settle questions with the customer |
| Chargeable or not | Count unpaid visits |
| Gang and repair type | Spot patterns over time |
Deciding whether a visit is chargeable stays with you and your terms of business.
What you gain
The roofer on the ladder knows what the last one did. Customers hear that you remember their roof. Unpaid visits are counted, so you know what they cost. And the patterns tell you where to change a method, a material or a bit of training.
Is this happening to you?
- Repeat leaks are booked as new jobs.
- Roofers arrive without knowing what was done before.
- You do not know how many free return visits you make.
- The same types of repair seem to come back.