Question handling
Asking for a price on work nobody has looked at yet
This is the price question that cannot be answered from a page, and treating it as though it can is how businesses end up bound to numbers they never agreed. The useful behaviour is not silence. It is naming what has to be known first, gathering it, and getting the enquiry to the person who can price it with the details already attached.
What they are really asking
Roughly what am I looking at, and what do you need from me before you can tell me properly.
- can i get a quote
- how much would it cost for a job like mine
- can you give me a rough idea
- do you charge for a quote
- how long does a quote take
- do you need to visit first
- is the quote fixed or could it go up
- can you price this from photos
- how long is the quote valid for
- whats the difference between your quote and your estimate
The material that answers it
An assistant is only as good as the document behind it, and for this question the document usually exists but is written in the wrong shape. What each one has to contain to be answerable:
| The scoping questions your estimator always asks | Size, access, condition, timescale, location, quantity, what is already there. Write the real list, the one the estimator asks on every call. Indexed, it becomes the material the assistant uses to run the front half of that call for you. |
|---|---|
| Your quoting process, with timings | Whether a visit or survey is needed, whether photographs are enough for some jobs, how long a quote takes to come back, whether it is free, and how long it stays valid. Every one of these is asked and almost none of them are published. |
| Published ranges for common jobs | Labelled clearly as ranges, with the variables that move a job up or down the range. This is what lets the assistant answer the affordability question without producing a figure that reads as a quotation. |
| How your quote is worded and what it covers | What is included, what is provisional, what triggers a variation, and how changes during the work are priced. Customers are really asking whether the number can move, and the honest answer belongs in the material. |
| What you cannot quote for at all | Work you do not take, areas you do not cover, jobs below a minimum value. Saying no early is a genuine service, and it saves a visit that was never going to convert. |
How to handle it
Name the variables before you go anywhere near a number
The credible opening is not a price and it is not a refusal. It is the short list of things that decide the price for this kind of work, in your own words: how big, how old, how accessible, how urgent.
This reads as expertise rather than evasion, and it does the thing you actually want, which is to move the customer from asking a question into supplying information.
Be precise about quote versus estimate
In some markets these two words carry different weight, with a quote treated as a fixed offer that becomes binding on acceptance and an estimate treated as a considered best guess that can move. Where that distinction applies it is worth stating explicitly rather than letting a customer assume.
Whichever you issue, index the word you actually use and what it means in your terms. A business that says estimate in its documents and quote in its chat replies has created an argument for later.
Run the scoping questions and collect the answers
The assistant can walk through what your estimator needs, then take the enquiry: a name, an email and a message that already contains the description. That is a materially better lead than a form submission saying please call me about a price.
Keep the number of questions honest. Three or four that genuinely change the price beat a questionnaire that reads as a barrier.
Give the range, and refuse the total
If you publish a range for this kind of work, quote it, label it as a range, and say the exact figure follows the survey or the call. If you do not publish one, say what happens next instead of improvising.
The refusal that works is specific: it explains that a number given without seeing the job would be a guess and would not be one anybody at the business would stand behind. Vague apology reads as unhelpfulness; naming why reads as care.
When it stops being an answer
Anything needing a survey, a site visit or a specification
Once the job requires eyes on it, the assistant's role is to book the eyes, not to substitute for them. Collect the details, hand over, and be clear about how long a response takes so the customer is not left refreshing an inbox.
Tenders, contracts and anything with a document attached
Formal procurement has its own requirements, deadlines and formats, and a chat reply is not part of that process. These go straight to a person, and the assistant should not attempt to summarise what you can offer against somebody's specification.
A customer who will not move off wanting a firm number
Some people will push, and the pressure is where mistakes get made. Configure the assistant to hold the line and offer the fastest route to somebody who can price it, including a callback if you offer one. The failure here is not an unhappy customer, it is a number that should never have existed.
How this one goes wrong
The figure that anchored the job
A customer describes a job loosely, the assistant produces something that sounds like a price, and by the time a real estimate exists that first figure has become the reference point for the whole negotiation. Everything above it now looks like a markup.
Even when it is corrected quickly, the damage is to trust rather than to margin, and it lands on the estimator who did nothing wrong. Publishing ranges rather than examples, keeping the assistant away from arithmetic, and handing over on any question about one specific job are what stop it happening.
The same question, trade by trade
The pattern above holds everywhere. The wording, the escalation line and the material behind it do not, so there is a page per trade.
- For a dental clinicA dental estimate is a document issued after an examination, not a figure from a chat window. How to explain the way one is produced.
- For a veterinary clinicA written estimate is a range with a consent form behind it. How to explain the contact number the practice rings when the plan changes.
- For a physiotherapy clinicCase managers, solicitors and employers want a rehab cost in writing. What can be estimated before an assessment.
- For a opticianPeople ask for glasses in writing so they can price them elsewhere. Why itemising and handing over the prescription wins more.
- For a law firmA costs estimate is a document with duties attached, not a number. What the assistant explains about how one is produced, and where it stops.
- For a accounting firmCatch up years, records in a carrier bag and income from abroad all break the published package. How the assistant gives a range and stops.
- For a insurance brokerPremiums come out of underwriting, not out of a price list. What the assistant collects instead, and how it keeps an indication from becoming a quote.
- For a mortgage brokerThe broker fee, the lender's product fee, the valuation fee and the conveyancing arrive from different places, and only one of them is ours.
- For a estate agencyCommission is a percentage of a price nobody has set yet, so the fee only becomes a sum after a valuer has stood in the hall.
- For a recruitment agencyA recruitment quote is arithmetic on a salary nobody has settled yet. What may be said about contingent, exclusive and retained work.
- For a marketing agencyBespoke work has no price until somebody scopes it. How the assistant gives a published starting point without naming a number for the brief.
- For a furniture retailerA quote needs the grade, the dimensions and the handedness, and it expires when a cloth does. The assistant gathers and never prices.
- For a bike shopThe deciding facts sit behind parts that have to come off first. What an estimate can bound, the inspection charge, the uneconomic repair.
- For a holiday rentalTen nights over a bank holiday can touch two rate bands and a minimum stay rule, which is why a figure needs dates before it means anything.
- For a salon or spaWhat is already on the hair decides the work, and nobody can see it in a message. Offer a consultation and photographs instead of a number.
- For a private schoolA per family figure turns on year groups, boarding, the coach and a means tested award. The bursar builds it from evidence, not arithmetic.
- For a driving schoolWhat will it cost to get me through has no answer from a rate card. Why a figure needs an assessment drive and a date first.
- For a plumbing and heating firmA survey settles the flue, the gas pipe from the meter and whether the cylinder stays. Until then a from price is the only honest number.
- For a electrical contractorSome electrical work is a fixed price product and some cannot be priced until a floor comes up. The reply has to say which one it is.
- For a removals companyTwo three bedroom houses can differ by half a van and a flight of stairs. Volume and access are the price, and neither is in a message.
- For a car dealershipA valuation turns on condition, mileage and history, and none of them survive a chat window. The appraisal is the quote.
Questions
- Is there any point putting an assistant in front of quote requests?
- Yes, and it is one of the better uses. It answers the questions that stop somebody enquiring at all, whether you cover their area, whether the quote is free, how long it takes, then collects a described job instead of a bare name and number.
- Can it work out a price from a description if we give it enough examples?
- It should not, and you should configure it not to. It matches text against your documents rather than reasoning about a job, so a described job will land on whichever example reads most similar, which is not the same as being similar.
- How do we handle quote validity?
- Publish it and index it. How long a quote stands is asked constantly, it is a fact about your process, and answering it removes a chase message. It also protects you when material costs move.
- What if we genuinely do price everything on the phone?
- Then say so in the material and let the assistant say it early. A clear explanation of why, plus the fastest route to a call, beats an evasive reply that makes it look like you are hiding the price.
Keep reading
- Handling refund requestsA refund question is really about eligibility and timing. What to index, what the reply may promise, and where it has to reach a person.
- Handling cancellationsCancellation content is hard to find on purpose. What it costs to answer plainly, how notice periods work, and what happens to data on the way out.
- Handling pricing questionsPublished price versus the price for this buyer. Bands, ranges and from pricing, and why a firm number for unscoped work is the damaging failure.
- Every question typeHandling patterns for the questions every support inbox gets.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.