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A practical home-service call intake guide.
Use this guide to decide what each call should capture before staff follow up, dispatch, or route an urgent request.
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Staff stays in control of the next step.
Cleiro captures and organizes the call; your team owns the customer follow-up, scheduling, and technical decisions.
Lead qualification
Core intake fields.
Important call details should be visible as structured fields instead of buried in voicemail.
Caller identity
Name, callback number, relationship to property, existing-customer status
Required
Service address
Street, city, ZIP, property type, access notes, service-area fit
Required
Service type
Repair, estimate, maintenance, emergency, recurring service, or existing job
Required
Urgency and availability
Active issue, preferred window, after-hours status, callback timing
Required
Next owner
Office callback, dispatcher review, urgent escalation, estimate queue, or technician follow-up
Required
Intake flow.
A useful script gets enough information for the next human action without overpromising.
Confirm the service need
Understand whether the caller needs repair, estimate, maintenance, emergency help, or existing-customer support.
Capture location and access
Record the property address, property type, and any details staff need before follow-up.
Check urgency and timing
Separate urgent calls from routine requests and capture preferred availability.
Confirm escalation boundaries
Flag safety-sensitive or urgent conditions for staff review without diagnosing the problem.
Assign the next step
Route the summary to the person or queue responsible for follow-up.
Quality check
Bad intake versus useful intake.
A caller saying “I need service” is not enough for a useful callback. The goal is to capture the details that help staff decide priority, owner, and next action.
Bad intake
Name and phone number only, no service address, no issue type, no urgency, and no clear owner.
Useful intake
Caller, callback, service address, issue type, urgency, preferred timing, customer status, and next owner.
Staff review
The team can see whether the call belongs in dispatch review, estimate follow-up, urgent escalation, or a routine callback queue.
Trade examples
Different trades need different intake details.
A useful call-intake process keeps the shared core fields consistent while changing the service-specific questions for each trade.
Plumbing
Leak, clog, water-heater, sewer, active water, shutoff status, address, and after-hours urgency.
HVAC
No cooling, no heat, system type, property type, service-plan status, maintenance, replacement, and availability.
Electrical
Panel concern, outage, EV charger inquiry, commercial or residential context, and safety-sensitive escalation route.
Roofing
Storm damage, active leak, inspection request, property type, photos if approved, and follow-up window.
Landscaping
Service area, property size, estimate request, recurring-service need, seasonal timing, and preferred callback.
Restoration
Water, fire, mold, storm damage, location, triage context, after-hours status, and escalation owner.
Dispatch intake
After-hours and safety-sensitive calls need ownership.
The guide should not turn every call into an emergency. It should help staff see which requests need urgent review, which can wait, and who owns the next step.
Urgent review
Active damage, safety concern, no heat/no cooling urgency, restoration triage
Staff review
Morning callback
Estimate request, routine maintenance, non-urgent service, existing-customer follow-up
Queued
Quality review
Check whether summaries contain the fields staff actually need
Ongoing
Turn your intake checklist into a call flow.
Book a demo and map the guide to the calls your business receives most often: missed calls, after-hours demand, overflow, estimates, and urgent requests.
Book a demo