A Scorecard to Fill In While You Listen to a Demo Call

A demo call is easy to judge badly. The voice sounds smooth, you nod along, and you hang up thinking "that was quite good." A week later you can't say what it got right or wrong.

A scorecard fixes that. Write it out before you ring, keep it beside you, and mark each line as you hear it. Use three marks: Yes, Partly or No. Add a note for anything odd.

Before the call: three setup lines

Decide these first, so the test is fair.

• Job chosen. Pick something your firm really does, such as a leaking stopcock, a dead socket circuit or a roof quote.
• Two postcodes ready. One inside your patch, one well outside it.
• Set up as your business. Ask for the demo to run as your company, not a generic sample. A made-up business tells you little about yours.

If a provider can only show you a sample firm, write that down. It's a mark against, not a neutral detail.

Section one: the greeting

Ring and listen to the first few seconds, then ring again.

• Says your trading name clearly
• Says the name the same way both times (check awkward ones, like an ampersand or a surname)
• Is upfront that it's an assistant, rather than pretending to be a person
• Speaks at a natural pace, with no rushing or garbling

If the greeting is generic ("thanks for calling, how can I help?") with nothing attached, mark it No. That's the moment a customer decides whether they've reached you.

Section two: the questions it asks

Play a realistic caller. Describe the problem loosely at first.

• Asks what the problem is
• Asks for the postcode
• Asks for a contact number and a time that suits the caller
• Follows up sensibly when you say something vague like "it's just not working"
• Doesn't interrogate or repeat itself

Count how many of these you'd need yourself to quote or book. If it misses something you'd always ask, note it. You may be able to have it changed, so ask.

Section three: the boundaries

This is where you try to catch it out.

• Out-of-area postcode. Does it say politely that you don't cover it, rather than booking a job you'll have to cancel?
• Price question. Does it only quote what you've told it to, such as a call-out charge? If it invents a figure for a full job it hasn't seen, mark it No.
• A question it can't answer. Ask something odd about your insurance, a specific part or a niche job. The right response is to take a message, not to guess.

Any confident guess here counts as a serious mark against, because a customer will treat it as your word.

Section four: the emergency test

Ring again as someone with a real emergency: no heating in winter, water coming through a ceiling, a burning smell from a consumer unit.

• Recognises that the call is urgent
• Treats it differently from a routine quote request
• Gives the caller a clear sense of what happens next
• Doesn't hold an urgent caller through a long list of routine questions

Before you ring, decide what you want to happen with an urgent call, for example whether you want to be alerted straight away. Then check what you hear against that. For anything involving gas, electrical danger or flooding, the caller's safety matters more than your booking, so a sensible service shouldn't leave them without direction.

Section five: how it sounds as a whole

Leave this until the end, so it doesn't colour the rest.

• Would you be happy for your best customer to hear this?
• Would a stranger feel looked after, or processed?
• Would you trust it with a call while you're up a ladder?

Reading your results

Add up the Nos first. A single No on pricing or out-of-area handling matters more than several Partlys on tone. Those are the errors that cost you real jobs or real awkwardness.

Then look at patterns. A run of Partlys in the questions section suggests a script that needs tuning. A No on the greeting or on admitting it's an assistant is harder to forgive.

Finally, ring a second time on a different day, with a different caller. If the scores change a lot between calls, that tells you something too.

For a fuller walk-through of the listening side, see what to listen for in an AI receptionist demo call. It also makes the point that a free demo, run as your own company, is the kind of test worth asking for from any provider.

Print the scorecard, or copy it into your notes app. Scoring what you hear takes a few minutes and makes the decision much easier to defend to yourself.