Foredesk for roofing companies
Roofing enquiries arrive at the exact moment you cannot take them — when you are on a roof, in a loft, or driving between jobs. Foredesk answers for you, takes the details, and tells you straight away.
Roofing has a problem most trades do not. A good share of the work is urgent, and urgent callers do not leave a voicemail and wait. They ring the next roofer on the list. The job goes to whoever picked up, and you never learn it existed.
Four facts on a roofer’s website that quietly stop being true
Every roofing site publishes roughly the same set of things. All four of them move, and none of them announces when it has.
- Guide prices. A repair band and a reroof band running into five figures. Materials, lead and scaffolding costs move; the bands on the site do not.
- Guarantee terms. Twelve months on a repair, twenty years on a reroof, the membrane lifetime on a flat roof. Change your supplier or your policy and those numbers change with it.
- Public liability cover. A certificate with a renewal date printed on it, quoted on the site as though it were permanent.
- Areas covered. A list of towns, usually with a promise about travel charges. Roofers take on and drop patches as the diary fills and empties.
Nearly every website assistant is loaded with all four on the day it is set up and answers from that snapshot for ever. So it carries on quoting last year’s repair band, and it carries on stating cover from a certificate that lapsed in March. Neither answer looks wrong. One loses you a job, and the other is a claim you would rather not have made in writing.
How Foredesk handles it
Every answer carries a review date set by how fast that kind of fact actually moves. Guide prices come round often. Guarantee terms come round rarely. Certificates and insurances are tied to the date they genuinely expire, not to a generic cycle.
When one falls due you get a text. Reply in your own words and it is confirmed with today’s date and stays in use. Ignore it — because you are on a roof, which is most of the time — and Foredesk retires that answer. It stops saying it and hands the next enquiry to you instead. Silence is never read as approval, because being asked once too often is a nuisance and quoting an expired figure is a lost job.
What roofing customers actually ask
The questions are remarkably consistent, and they are almost all bottom-of-funnel. Do you cover my town. How fast can you come out. Are you insured, and can I see the certificate. How much for a repair. Do I need scaffolding, and is it in the price. Do I need planning permission for a new roof.
Every one of those is a buying question from somebody with a problem, asked by a person who will ring the next firm if nobody answers. They are also all answerable from material you have already written, which is why an assistant is a better fit for roofing than for most trades — provided it is still telling the truth in a year.
Where it answers
On your website
It greets every visitor the moment they land and invites them to say what they need, so the enquiry is captured while they are still on the page instead of lost to the next tab. You keep the site you already have.
On WhatsApp
Your business gets its own WhatsApp number, answering from the same material under the same rules. Customers send photographs of the problem, which is how most roofing conversations start anyway.
When you miss a call
This is the one that matters most in roofing. A call that rings out gets a text back within seconds, so the enquiry carries on in writing rather than going to the next roofer. You pick it up when you are off the roof, with the conversation already underway. Everything from one customer gathers into a single job file.
Common questions
Will it give out a price without me seeing it first?
It only says what you have told it to say. If you have given it guide bands, it gives those and explains that the firm figure follows the inspection. If you would rather it quoted nothing at all, it takes the enquiry and hands it to you instead.
What happens when my insurance certificate is renewed?
Certificates are tied to the date they actually expire rather than to a review cycle. As the date approaches you are asked to confirm the new one. If you do not, Foredesk stops making the claim rather than repeating cover it cannot stand behind.
Can it tell someone we cover their town?
Yes, and coverage is one of the facts it checks back on. Roofers add and drop patches as the diary changes, so the area you work is stored with a review date rather than written once and left.
Someone has an active leak at nine at night. What does it do?
It takes the details and flags the enquiry to you straight away rather than leaving it until the morning. It will tell them what you have said about emergency response, and it will not promise an attendance time you have not given it.
See it on your own material
Foredesk is built and run by Michael Stevenson, trading as Autaimate, from St Austell, and it already runs for roofing firms in the South West. If you would rather see it answering from your own website than sit through a demo built on somebody else’s, ask for that instead.
Or email [email protected] directly.
Based in the South West? There is more on Foredesk for Cornwall businesses and Foredesk for Devon businesses.