Friday afternoon requests
At 3pm on Friday a retail client emails the account manager: can they have an extra guard on Saturday for a promotion? At 4pm another client's facilities manager rings the control room to ask for a guard over the weekend because a contractor has left a fence panel down. At 5pm a third texts the operations manager asking for a second guard for a staff event next Thursday.
The account manager is out. The control room writes the fence request on a notepad. The operations manager replies 'should be fine' to the text. On Monday, one client complains that nobody replied, one extra guard was provided and never billed, and the Thursday event is still unconfirmed.
Why short-notice requests slip
Extra cover is good business for a guarding company, but it arrives in the least structured way possible: whoever the client knows, whichever channel is handy, often out of hours. Each request needs a price, a confirmation, a guard and an invoice line, and each step is done by a different person who may not know about the others.
| Step | Who usually does it | Where it gets lost |
|---|---|---|
| Request received | Whoever the client contacts | Notepad, text, inbox |
| Price confirmed | Account manager | Not confirmed in writing |
| Shift created | Scheduler | Not told, or told late |
| Guard found | Scheduler or control room | Ringing round |
| Invoiced | Accounts | Never told |
What lost requests cost
Unanswered requests send clients to other providers for the extra work, and sometimes for the whole contract. Unbilled extra cover is work done for nothing. Verbal confirmations without a price cause disputes later. And the scheduler finds out about extra shifts too late to staff them well, which leads to rushed cover and the problems that come with it.
A request portal that runs to the rota and invoice
- Clients request extra cover through a simple portal or form: site, dates, times, number of guards, any special requirements. Emails to a dedicated address are turned into the same request. Phone requests are logged by whoever takes them in a few seconds.
- The request is acknowledged to the client straight away, with a reference.
- A price is calculated from the client's contract rates for extra cover, including any short-notice or bank holiday rates, for the account manager or duty manager to confirm.
- The client confirms the price and the booking through a link, so there is a written confirmation.
- Confirmed requests create shifts in the rota, marked as client-requested, and eligible guards are offered them.
- The client is told who is coming, if your service includes that.
- Completed extra shifts are flagged for invoicing with the request and confirmation attached.
- Out-of-hours requests reach the duty manager, not an empty inbox.
- Requests for sites where no guards are inducted are flagged early.
- The account manager sees all requests for their clients in one list.
The same Friday, with the portal
The retail client submits their Saturday request through the portal. It is acknowledged at once, priced from their contract and confirmed by the duty manager at 3.20pm. The client clicks to confirm. The shift is in the rota and filled by 4pm. The fence request is logged by the controller, priced and confirmed by the duty manager by phone, then confirmed in writing by link. The Thursday event request is in the account manager's list for Monday. All three are billed at month end.
Over a few months, the request log also tells you something useful commercially: which clients regularly ask for extra cover, on which days and for what reasons. A client who asks for a second guard every Saturday may be better served by a change to the contract, and that is a conversation worth having at the next review rather than a string of short-notice requests your scheduler has to scramble for each week.
Is extra cover slipping through?
- Clients request extra cover by email, phone and text to different people.
- Prices are agreed verbally.
- The scheduler hears about extra shifts late.
- Extra cover is sometimes provided and never billed.
- Clients complain their requests were not answered.