Playbook, removals company
Two bookings, and only one of them can be made today
Somebody typing that they want to book a removal usually means two things at once and has not separated them. There is the survey, which is twenty minutes on a video call or an hour at the house, and it can happen next week. Then there is the day the van comes, which hangs on a completion date that neither the customer nor the firm controls. The reply that works splits those two apart before it does anything else.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for appointment booking holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The only thing a customer can genuinely book at this stage is the survey, since the move date depends on an exchange that has not happened, and treating one request as one booking is where the confusion starts.
- A video survey changes what the word booking means here: what it needs is a charged phone, twenty minutes and a willingness to open the loft hatch, not a weekday afternoon spent waiting in for somebody.
- Firms hold dates provisionally against an expected completion and release them at a point set out in their own terms, so a date that feels booked to the customer is often pencilled, and the difference has to be said out loud.
- The last working Friday of a month is the most contested day in this trade, so a lead time answer is never one number: a Tuesday in February and the end of June behave nothing like each other.
How it arrives
- can i book a video survey this week
- how far ahead do we need to pencil a date
- do we have to be at home for the survey
- can you hold a date before we exchange
- what do you need to see on a video survey
- is it too late to book for the end of the month
What has to be indexed for this to work
| The survey options, and what each one asks of the customer | In person and on video, how long each takes, whether either costs anything, and the practical list for the video one: a charged phone, signal in the loft, cupboards and the garage opened. Customers turn down a survey they picture as an afternoon off work. |
|---|---|
| How a date is held before exchange | Whether you pencil dates at all, what a provisional date commits either side to, at what point it becomes a booking and what releases it. This is the paragraph that stops a customer believing they have a van when what they have is a note. |
| Lead times written as a pattern rather than a promise | Month ends, Fridays, the summer, the week either side of a school term. Written this way the assistant can answer a lead time question honestly without ever going near a diary it cannot see. |
| What a surveyor needs before the call | Both postcodes, property type at each end, floor and lift, the parking situation, whether anything is going into storage and whether packing is wanted. Gathered in the chat so the survey call starts at the useful part. |
The reply
There are two separate things here. The survey can be arranged quickly and is usually a video call of about twenty minutes, where you walk round with your phone and open the cupboards and the loft, and it is what produces a price [1]. The move day itself waits on your completion, so a date is pencilled and becomes a firm booking at the point our terms set out [2]. I have no view of the diary and cannot hold anything myself. Leave your name, an email, both postcodes and which floor you are on, and a surveyor will call to fix the survey.
It answers the question the visitor did not know they were asking, which is which of the two bookings is actually on the table today. The video survey is described as an activity rather than as a service, because the objection has always been to a stranger walking round the house on a weekday, and that objection dissolves the moment somebody pictures a phone call instead.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor names a day and wants it held, asks whether a particular date is free, or already has a completion date and wants the move confirmed against it.
I have no view of the diary and cannot hold a day, so anything I said about a date would be a guess. Leave your name, an email, both postcodes and the date you are working towards, and the office will call you with what is genuinely free.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never say a date is available or has been held, because the diary is a crew and a vehicle and neither of them is visible from here.
- Never describe a pencilled date as booked, since a customer who believes they have a van stops ringing round and finds out in the week of the move.
- Never promise a survey within a stated number of days, which is a surveyor's calendar rather than a published fact.
- Never suggest a move can be booked without a survey because the customer is in a hurry, since the whole price rests on the volume the survey produces.
Questions
- Can it book the survey into our diary?
- No. It cannot write into anything at all. It takes a name, an email, both postcodes and the access details, and that reaches you as an enquiry, so the surveyor's first call is a confirmation rather than a discovery session.
- Should we publish our lead times?
- Publish the pattern, not a promise. Saying that month ends and Fridays go first, and that a midweek day in winter is usually straightforward, stays true all year and tells a flexible customer exactly which question to ask next.
- Most of our enquiries have no completion date yet. Is the page still worth it?
- That is precisely the case it is for. Somebody eight weeks from exchange wants to know what they can usefully do now, and the honest answer, get the survey done and the price agreed while the chain sorts itself out, is worth being told at ten at night.
Keep reading
- Everything for a removals companyPrice depends on volume and access, so a survey comes first. Insurance limits are what customers misunderstand most, so say them plainly.
- Handling appointment booking in generalIt cannot write into a calendar. The job is removing every reason not to book, then handing over with the details already gathered.
- The shape of the bill, before anybody talks about the figureA day rate with a crew of three, or a fixed price for the job. Then materials, dismantling, a permit and waiting time sit outside both.
- What the deposit buys, and why the charge climbsA deposit takes a van and a crew off the calendar for your day. What it costs to release them climbs as the move gets closer.
- Payment before the tailgate opens, and the lines that arrive laterThe balance is normally cleared before the van is unloaded. Anything counted on the day, waiting time or extra materials, invoices later.
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