GarageDoorBossPro Blog — Scheduling & Dispatch

Same-Day Broken Spring Calls: Fitting Them Into a Full Garage Door Schedule

The broken spring call is the bread and butter of a garage door repair company. It usually comes in early, the homeowner usually heard a bang, and the door usually will not lift. They want someone today. A shop that can say yes to that call, without blowing up the rest of the day, wins the job and often the tune-up plan that follows.

The Call Comes In

Squeezing an urgent stop into an existing route is touched on in Setting Garage Door Route Order by Hand When the Day Needs a Tweak. Here is the full flow for the most common same-day call there is.

While the customer is on the phone, the office looks up the client or adds a new one. If the house is already in GarageDoorBossPro, the doors and hardware saved on it come with it: door size, material, opener, and the springs that were last replaced. A torsion spring job on a 16x7 insulated steel door is a different load-out from one on a 9x7 single, and knowing that before the van rolls saves a trip back to the shop.

One thing worth saying plainly on the phone: springs and cables are for trained techs. The office's job is to get a tech there, not to talk the homeowner into trying anything with the door.

Picking the Van

The question is not just “who is free” but “who is free, close and carrying the right parts.” Three places on screen answer it:

• The dispatch board, filtered by van, shows how full each route is today.
• Crew GPS on the office map shows where every van is right now.
• The van split: if one van is on repairs and emergency spring calls, that is usually the answer unless it is buried.

For more on using the map, see Crew GPS on the Office Map: Finding the Closest Garage Door Van.

Adding It to Today

The spring call becomes a job on today's date, on the chosen van, with the service from your service list, such as a torsion spring replacement or extension spring replacement, priced the way you price it. If the customer has a card on file, it can be charged when the tech completes the job; if they are new, the invoice is created when the job is completed and they can pay it online.

Then comes order. Usually the spring call goes right after whatever the tech is doing now. Move it up by hand, or re-run the auto-route if the call happens to sit right on the van's path anyway.

What the Tech Sees

The new stop appears on the tech's phone in its new place. The card shows the address with a navigation button, the service, the equipment on the house and any notes the office added, like “Car inside, customer needs to leave by 10” or “Bay 2, right-hand door.” When the tech taps to head over, the homeowner gets the on-the-way text automatically, and the arrived text when the tech gets there.

On the job, the tech can run the door safety inspection checklist while the door is open on the bench, which often turns up rollers, cables or an opener that also need attention. Those become recommendations the office can follow up on.

When the tech taps Complete, the office sees it right away on the board. The invoice is created, the card on file can be charged, and any change the tech made to the equipment, such as new springs on the door, flows back to the house. The next time that customer calls, the office already knows what was done and when.

Everyone Else on the Route

Every stop that moved down the list belongs to a customer who was expecting the tech sooner. The good news is that their texts follow the real route. A customer with the “when I'm next” alert turned on hears about it when the tech is actually heading their way, not at the time originally guessed. Customers who use the customer app can see their place on the route live.

If a pushed-back stop is not going to happen today at all, move it to tomorrow on the board and send a quick text from the office. Two-way texting means the reply comes straight back to the office instead of to a tech's personal phone.

Planning for the Calls You Know Are Coming

Same-day spring calls are not predictable one by one, but they are predictable as a pattern. Shops that handle them well tend to leave the repair van's day a little loose, push tune-ups toward the install van, and lean on the Waiting List map to fill slow days rather than overbooking busy ones. Cold mornings bring more of these calls, which is its own topic later in this series.

For how same-day calls fit with routing, the van split and customer texts, go back to the garage door scheduling software page.