How should a stairlift or mobility company handle an inquiry from a family member in another state?
The person asking is often a worried family member, not the user, so the reply should be quick, clear, and written for someone who cannot see the home. A daughter writing from three states away is trying to make a decision for a parent she cannot visit this week. She wants to know what happens next and how a visit can work without her there, and a company that answers that the same day gives her a reason to trust it.
Who is usually on the other end of a stairlift inquiry?
In an accessibility and mobility company, the web forms and emails often come from a son or daughter who does not live near the parent. The family member usually does the research at night after work, from a kitchen table hundreds of miles away. By the time the form reaches you, they have usually looked at several companies and are waiting to see which one answers.
The person who will use the stairlift or the ramp may never have filled out anything. Sometimes a sibling who lives closer is involved, and sometimes a neighbor or a friend from church is the one who can open the door. Your office may hear from two or three of these people about the same house, each with part of the picture and none of them standing in the stairwell.
What does a family member far away need from the first reply?
She needs to know that a real person read her message. A reply with a name on it, a plain description of what happens next, and an honest word about who needs to be at the house for the visit tells her she can follow the job from a distance.
She also needs a company that understands she cannot answer every question about the home. She may not know how many steps there are or whether the stairs turn at the landing, and asking her to guess before anyone will talk to her makes the process feel harder than it is. The companies that do this well treat the first reply as the start of a conversation with a worried person, and they make the next step feel easy for someone who is managing it by phone.
Why do these inquiries slip through the cracks?
They slip because they arrive in pieces and in different places. The daughter fills out the web form, her brother calls the office line, and a care professional who knows the family sends an email to someone on your team. Each message may land in a different inbox, and nobody can see that all three are about the same house. If the person who took the phone call is out on an install the next day, the family may hear nothing at all.
LiveWell Mobility, an accessibility and mobility company in Texas that we work with, had inquiries spread across six inboxes. Pulling every one of them into one list and integrating that list with their Housecall Pro account let them go back and work the inquiries that had slipped through. With everything in one place, someone in the office can spot that the daughter, the brother, and the referral source are all asking about the same parent, and one person can answer all of them.
How do you keep the whole family on the same page?
Start with a record that holds more than one name. The inquiry should show who reached out, who lives in the home, where the home is, and who can be there when someone comes to look at the stairs. When the office books the visit or sends a quote, everyone on your side should be able to see which family member is making the decision and how they prefer to be reached.
Quotes in this trade often go to the family member while the parent stays in the house, and the decision can take a while as siblings talk it over. That quote deserves the same follow-up as any other, with a check back until someone gives you an answer. Families who were kept in the loop tend to tell friends in the same situation who to call.
What a fix looks like
The daughter who writes at ten at night has an email from a named person on your team by the middle of the next morning, with a time for the visit and a note that the neighbor with the key can let your technician in. When her brother calls that afternoon, whoever answers can see what his sister was already told and does not start over. After the visit the quote goes to the daughter, and the office checks back with her while the siblings talk it over. The owner can open the list on any day and see which families are still deciding and who in the office is talking to each one.
The Home Service Guild Marketing Operations System sends an alert on each new inquiry, a morning list of the ones still waiting, and a reminder on every open quote.
Questions owners also ask
What if the family member wants a price before anyone has seen the home?
Tell them plainly what you can and cannot price without a visit, and offer the next step in the same message. A family member far away would rather hear what the price depends on and how to get a firm number than wait in silence while you gather more details.
Should the person who lives in the home be part of the conversation?
It is their home, so it helps to find out early whether they want to be on the call and at the visit. The family member who reached out can usually tell you, and writing that down in the inquiry record saves an awkward moment at the door.
What about inquiries that come from a care professional instead of the family?
Treat them with the same speed and write down who sent them, because that referral source will hear from the family about how it went. Where these referrals fit among the other places this trade gets work is covered in where accessibility and mobility companies get their leads.
