A failed visit — the wrong part, the wrong skills, nobody home, an hour lost to a locked cellar — can almost always be traced back to a question nobody asked before the slot was booked. Intake is where a service business is won or lost, and it takes about ninety seconds to do properly. The problem is that those ninety seconds are usually improvised by whoever picked up the phone.
Five questions that belong on every job
Five questions belong on every job, whatever the trade. Where is it, including floor, entrance, and parking. Who will be there and can let you in. What is actually happening, described as a symptom rather than a diagnosis. When it started, and whether anything changed just before. And a photo, which answers more than the next three questions combined.
The symptom-not-diagnosis rule is the one that saves the most wasted trips. Customers describe repairs, not faults: "I need a new pump" often turns out to be air in the system, and "the boiler is broken" is sometimes a tripped breaker. Ask what they see, hear, and smell, and when. You are not doubting them — you are collecting the evidence that decides which van, which parts, and how long, and those decisions cannot be made from a conclusion someone else reached.
Trade-specific questions, and the access details people forget
Then add three or four questions specific to the work. Heating: system type, manufacturer and rough age, when it was last serviced, whether there is pressure in the system. Plumbing: where the water is coming from, whether the stopcock has been turned off, whether it is still leaking now. Electrical: what trips and how often, whether it trips with everything unplugged, how many circuits are affected. Keep the list short enough that it fits on one screen.
Access is the most expensive detail people leave out, so ask for it explicitly rather than hoping it comes up. Gate codes, key holders, lift or stairs, where a van can actually stop, and whether parking is restricted at the time you plan to arrive. In dense cities this single question is worth more than the rest of the checklist, because a technician circling for twenty minutes is a technician who arrives late to the next job too.
Delete the questions nobody reads
Now remove things. Go through your current intake and delete every question whose answer you did not read before the last ten visits. Each one costs attention that the address question needed, and long forms are abandoned by exactly the customers who are in a hurry — which, in emergency work, are the ones you most want to keep. If an answer only matters after arrival, ask it after arrival.
Attach the checklist to the job type, not to a person
Finally, attach the checklist to the type of work rather than to a person's memory. The same questions asked every time are what make a job comparable, quotable, and reviewable later; questions asked when someone remembers produce records you cannot use. Whether that lives in a paper card by the phone, a form on your site, or software that asks automatically matters far less than whether it is the same list on a Friday afternoon as on a Monday morning.
Build your checklist from your last ten failed visits
List the last ten visits that went wrong — wrong part, no access, too little time, wrong technician — and write down the one question that would have prevented each. You will usually find the same three or four questions covering most of the list, and those belong at the top of your intake.
Ask for a photo on every job where it is physically possible. It resolves model numbers, pipe layouts, fault descriptions, and access questions at once, and customers send them readily because it feels like progress rather than paperwork.
Time your own intake. If it takes more than about ninety seconds or more than one screen, something on the list is being asked out of habit rather than because a decision depends on it, and that is what pushes people in a hurry to call the next number instead.
Frequently asked question
What information should you collect before booking a service visit?
At minimum: the full address including floor, entrance and parking; who will be there to give access; the fault described as a symptom rather than a diagnosis; when it started; and a photo. Add three or four questions specific to the trade — system type and age for heating, whether the stopcock is closed for plumbing, what trips and how often for electrical — and ask about gate codes and parking explicitly, because that is the detail most often left out.