Roofing
Stay on the roof. The call that pays for the month is already on your record.
- RING
- ANSWER
- QUALIFY
- HOLD
- FILE
- 9:47 PMWater through the ceiling. Your phone rings while you're on a roof.
- 9:47 PMVoicemail. They hang up without leaving a name.
- 9:48 PMThey call the next roofer on Google.
- 9:49 PMThe next roofer gets the inspection and the claim.
- 7:00 AMYou find a missed call with no name on it.
- 9:47 PMWater through the ceiling. Shift picks up on the first ring.
- 9:47 PMHeard in full: a leak right now, or an inspection?
- 9:48 PMAddress, roof age, storm date and claim status, written down.
- 9:49 PMThe inspection is held for 7 AM, yours to confirm.
- 7:00 AMYou wake up to the job, the claim and the caller's whole history.
Thank you for calling [your company], this is our electronic reception. This call is recorded. How may I help?
- the call, in your company's name
- the recording disclosed in the first sentence
- leak now or inspection
- owner or tenant, condo or strata
- roof type, storeys, pitch, age band
- where the water comes in
- when it started, storm date and time
- interior damage so far
- weather at the house now
- can a crew reach the roof tonight
- hail size seen, wind direction
- granules in gutters, dented vents or siding
- prior claims or repairs on this roof
- gate code, dogs, parking, power on site
Never asked for: policy number, deductible amount, claim number, payment method, date of birth, government identifier.
the average wind and hail claim: $14,747 (Insurance Information Institute, ISO 2019-2023, US). A fictional caller; the stages are the machine’s own.
- TODAY
- Answers in your company's name · Knows your service area and who calls back · Reads the urgency in the caller's own words · Never quotes a price or diagnoses · Says the call is recorded
- SET UP WITH YOU
- Which calls it takes: after hours, when you're busy, or all · Your callback promise and your timezone · A female or a male voice · Who takes a handed-off call · Your trade's words and your town's names · Your emergencies and the jobs you don't take
THE HOUR THE HAIL FALLS.
In the US, 54 in 100 hail reports fall between 5 p.m. and 6 a.m., when no small shop staffs the phone.
WHY IT MATTERS Most hail lands after the office closes, and Calgary's big hailstorms of 2020 and 2024 both struck in the evening.
Method
The same 70,179 US hail entries as TEN YEARS OF HAIL below, turned to the clock: NOAA SPC's Storm Data file carries the hour each entry fell, normalized to Central Standard Time (its format specification), so Mountain and Eastern reports sit an hour off their local clock. Across is the hour of day in five bands (midnight to 6 a.m., 6 to noon, noon to 5, 5 to 9 p.m., 9 to midnight), up is the entries in the band, and deep is the month. One point per twenty entries (forty on a phone). The ten years by single hour peak at 5 p.m.: 54 of 100 entries fell between 5 p.m. and 6 a.m., counted from the hourly totals, and 6 to 8 a.m. sit inside the morning band and are not counted. An entry is a report, never a roof. WITH SHIFT lights the three bands after five and before six, answered in the roofer's name and written down, not booked; the side panel prints the roof work those calls are for from the 2023 American Housing Survey (8.3 million roofs replaced in two years, $93.5 billion, a $10,000 median, 23% paid mainly by an insurance settlement) and the share of first calls a roofer picks up today. The placement inside a column is seeded, not data. No Canadian primary counts hail by the hour; Canada's own record of its two big Calgary hailstorms, Environment and Climate Change Canada's weather-story write-ups, puts 13 June 2020 at around 7 p.m. MDT and 5 August 2024 in the evening. With Shift every call it takes is lit in the accent, its full capture; 20 in 100 of them, the calculator's own close rate for roofing (a modelling assumption), are lit green: the calls that become booked jobs. With Shift is the line's design: every call it receives is answered. Measured on 26 demonstration calls; answer time and calls at once not yet measured; a line forwarded on no answer rings yours first; some callers hang up on any electronic greeting.
Every figure's source, to check it yourself: NOAA SPC, 2015-2024ECCC, 2020ECCC, 2024Census/HUD AHS 2023Expertise.com, 2020-21
TEN YEARS OF HAIL.
Across the US, May brings a quarter of a year's hail, the top month in seven of the last ten years.
WHY IT MATTERS A storm month brings a season of calls in a few weeks, more than a front desk can answer.
Method
NOAA SPC's Storm Data file lists every hail entry since 1955 with its size; the entries of one inch or larger from 2015 to 2024 were counted by year and month (70,179 in all, about 7,018 a year), one point per 20 entries (40 on a phone). Across is the month, up is the entries in it, and deep is the year, 2024 in front. Final Storm Data entries are a different series from SPC's preliminary local storm reports and are never mixed with them. WITH SHIFT holds each year to an office staffed for its own average month: what arrives above that line is lit, and its share of the ten years is computed from the same entries. The placement inside a column is seeded, not data. With Shift every call it takes is lit in the accent, its full capture; 20 in 100 of them, the calculator's own close rate for roofing (a modelling assumption), are lit green: the calls that become booked jobs. With Shift is the line's design: every call it receives is answered. Measured on 26 demonstration calls; answer time and calls at once not yet measured; a line forwarded on no answer rings yours first; some callers hang up on any electronic greeting.
Every figure's source, to check it yourself: NOAA SPC, 2015-2024
WHERE YOUR REVENUE IS LEAKING.
We are so much the victims of abstraction that with the Earth in flames we can barely rouse ourselves to wander across the room and look at the thermostat.Terence McKenna