How Often Do Companies Have Call-Ins or Demand Service Appointments?
In the March 2023 Snapshot Survey, we asked contractors about their challenges with call ins and demand service apppointments. Here’s one survey question and its results from the summary report, which is available in it’s entirety by Contractor University members here.
What Percentage of Appointments Throughout the Year Are Call-In/Demand Service Agreements?
Knowing how many service appointments are call-in requests allows contractors to estimate their workload and adjust their schedules appropriately, as call-in appointments are typically unscheduled and require an urgent response. According to the contractors who took our survey, 35% noted that the majority of their service calendar was filled with call-in requests, and an additional 21% said that 41-50 percent of their appointments were call-in service appointments. Companies with a high percentage of demand service appointments may face a workload imbalance, requiring contractors to allocate more resources to handle the unscheduled requests.
With proper structures and policies in place, such as a service agreement program that can schedule maintenance before breakdowns occur and eliminate a good number of demand service calls, contractors can better forecast when they may need to have more technicians and equipment available to respond to customer requests throughout the year.
Here’s what an home services contractor from South Carolina said in the survey:
“We treat call-in service requests as top priority and move them to the front of the list, customer or not. We give them a discount on their service call and the repair if they join our maintenance program that day. All we ask is that they stay committed to maintaining their unit through our program. Our customers love the flexibility of our program and not being locked into paying for an agreement up front.”
