A Call-Out Charge Wording Card for Whoever Answers Your Phone

When you work alone, someone or something else will sometimes answer for you: a partner, a friend covering a busy day, a call-handling service, a voicemail greeting, an auto-reply on your contact form. Each of them will be asked, early on, "How much to come out?"

If you haven't given them an answer, they will improvise. One says "it depends", another blurts a figure that later gets quoted back to you as the price of the whole job. A card of agreed wording fixes that. Here is how to build one.

Step 1: Settle the facts the card rests on

Before writing any wording, decide what your call-out charge covers. Write down your answers to these:

• Does it cover travel only, or travel plus an initial period of diagnosis?
• Is any of it deducted if the customer goes ahead with the repair?
• Are parts always extra?
• Does the charge change out of hours, at weekends or on bank holidays?
• Does it differ by area, if you cover a wide patch?

Nobody needs to recite all of this to every caller. But whoever answers should be able to find the answers instantly, so they never guess mid-conversation.

Step 2: Fill in the card

Copy this into a note, a laminated sheet by the phone, or the instructions you give a call-handling service. Replace the bracketed parts with your own details.

The call-out charge line "The call-out charge covers getting an engineer to you and looking at the problem. Any repair and parts are quoted once we've seen it."

The figure "The call-out charge for [the slot being offered] is [your figure]."

Give one clear figure, not a range and not "around". If your charge varies by time of day, quote the one that applies to the slot you are offering.

What's included "That includes [travel / travel and initial diagnosis]. [Parts and further labour are extra.]"

Order of the call

1. Ask what the problem is and the caller's postcode.
2. Check the address is inside your area.
3. Give the call-out charge as a clear figure.
4. Say what it covers and what it doesn't.
5. Offer a slot straight away.

Checking the postcode first means no one quotes for a job you can't take. Offering a slot straight after the price moves the call from comparing to booking.

Step 3: Add a "do not say" list

The other half of the card is what the person answering must hold back until you've seen the job:

• A fixed price for the repair. Unless it is a job you do identically every time, wait until you've diagnosed it.
• A diagnosis. Leave it to the engineer who sees the fault.

Put a polite fallback line on the card for when a caller pushes: "I can't price the repair until the engineer has seen it, but I can give you the call-out charge and get you booked in."

Step 4: Adapt it for each channel

The same wording works in different places with small changes.

• A person covering the phone: Give them the card as written, plus your answers to the Step 1 questions.
• A call-handling service: Paste the card into your instructions and ask them to read the call-out line word for word.
• Voicemail greeting: Don't quote a figure if it varies by slot. Say you'll call back with the call-out charge and a time, and that repairs are priced after a visit.
• Auto-reply or contact form: Use the call-out charge line, then ask for the problem and postcode so you can follow up with the figure.

The voicemail and auto-reply versions are adaptations of the phone wording, so check them against how you actually handle messages.

Step 5: Test it and keep it current

Read the card aloud as if you were a worried caller with a dead boiler. If any line sounds evasive, rewrite it. Then ask whoever covers for you what callers pushed back on, and adjust the wording.

Whenever your charge or what it includes changes, update the card the same day so it never contradicts what you tell customers directly.

Where to go next

The card's phone wording draws on the same ideas as a separate piece on what to say about your call-out charge before you've seen the job, which covers keeping the call-out charge apart from the repair price, deciding what the charge includes, and what to hold back until after the visit.

A good card is short enough to read at a glance and specific enough that nobody has to improvise. If you can hand it to a stranger and trust the call that follows, it has done its job.