Customers do not mind that the person they were dealing with has moved on. They mind telling the new one everything the old one already knew.
Part of the series Managing solar enquiries: from first contact to a signed quote.
"I told Dave all this in June"
Your salesperson goes on holiday for a fortnight, or leaves for another firm, or gets moved onto commercial work. They had eleven open enquiries. One was waiting on the customer's fuse board photos. One had been promised a revised quote with a bigger battery. One had said "not until the extension is done, ring me in March". The rest were somewhere in between.
A week later one of them rings the office. Nobody knows who they are. The office finds the enquiry and gives it to whoever is free, who rings the customer and asks about the roof, the fuse board and the budget. The customer has answered all of it once already. By the time a third person picks it up, the customer has stopped answering the phone.
Nobody in this story was careless. The salesperson kept good notes, in their own inbox and their own head, and then they were not there. The enquiry went quiet because the knowledge left with them.
The knowledge left with the person. Four ways that happens.
- The record was in an inbox. The last thing the customer said, and the last thing the firm promised, sat in an email thread on one person's phone.
- Nobody owned it after them. The enquiries stayed against the leaver's name with an understanding that "someone will pick those up". Someone did, three weeks later, when the customer rang in.
- The next step was an intention, not a date. "I'll chase the photos next week" lived in the salesperson's head. When they left, nothing fell due for anyone.
- The closed ones had no reason. The new person cannot tell "went with another firm" from "ring me in March", so they ring all of them or none.
Each of these is a filing problem, not a people problem. A firm that writes things down in one place survives a change of person. One that keeps them in inboxes starts every enquiry again.
A handover is four lines per enquiry and ten minutes per person
This is the routine. It works for a holiday, a leaver or a reassignment. The first time through it can be done on paper, one sheet per enquiry. After that it belongs on the enquiry's record.
1. Change the name the day the person changes
Every open enquiry has one owner. On the day the owner goes, each of their enquiries gets a new name, not a note saying "cover". For a holiday, the stand-in is named before the person leaves, not when the first customer rings.
2. Write the four lines
For each enquiry, the leaver writes four things.
- Who. The people on the customer's side and which one to speak to. The daughter is handling it for her mother, the tenant lets you in but the landlord pays.
- What was promised. By us and by them. "We said we would send a revised quote with a 10 kWh battery." "They said they would send the meter photos."
- What is waiting on whom. One of three things: waiting on the customer, waiting on us, or waiting on a third party such as the DNO or the scaffolder. Name it.
- The next date. When the next thing happens and what it is. "Ring on the 14th if the photos have not come." Not "chase soon".
Four lines is enough. A handover that runs to a page per enquiry does not get read.
3. Put it where the next person will look
The four lines go on the enquiry's record, not in an email to the new person and not in a spreadsheet called Handovers. When the customer rings, the new person will look at the enquiry. That is where the answer has to be.
4. Have the ten-minute conversation
The leaver and the new owner sit down with the list, enquiries with a date in the next fortnight first. For each one, the new owner reads the four lines back and asks one question: "Is there anything about this one that is not written down?" Whatever the leaver says in reply gets written down there and then. That question is the point of the meeting. It turns a head full of context into a record.
5. Do the closed ones and the tasks too
Every enquiry the leaver closed gets a one-line reason before they go. "Went elsewhere on price" and "paused until spring" are different customers and deserve different calls next year. Every task with the leaver's name on it gets a new name or a line through it. A task assigned to someone who has left is a task nobody will do.
6. Tell the customer before they find out
The new owner sends one message to each customer in the first week. Who they are, what they already know ("I have your photos and the revised quote is with you by Friday"), and the next date. A customer who hears about the change from the new person keeps talking. One who discovers it by ringing and getting a stranger has to decide whether to start again with you or with somebody else.
The handover is easy when the record was kept all along
Handovers go wrong when they happen only at the leaving. If the four lines are written after every call, on the record, the handover is reading them, not remembering them. Two things make that stick. Log the call at the time, not at the end of the week. And keep each person's list where the office can see it, so when someone is off, the office can still tell a customer who has their enquiry and what happens next.
Installa keeps the handover for you
- Stop reconstructing the story from an inbox. Every call, email, meeting and note is logged on the customer's record with who logged it and when, so the new person reads what happened rather than asking.
- Stop guessing who to ring. A customer record holds several named contacts, each with their own phone, mobile and email, so "speak to the daughter" is on the record rather than in someone's memory.
- Stop passing enquiries by word of mouth. Change who an enquiry is assigned to and it moves to their list. Filter enquiries and tasks by person to see everything the leaver had, and give each task a new name and a due date.
- Stop losing the reason. Closing an enquiry as lost records why, and who closed it, on the timeline. It can be reopened when the customer comes back in March.
- Stop hunting for the paperwork. Documents are filed against the customer, the quote or the job, where the next person will look.
- Stop wondering who changed what. The account's audit log shows each change, who made it and when, and can be filtered by person, by date and by what changed.
Who, what was promised, what is waiting on whom, and the next date, on the record and not in an inbox. That is the whole handover, and it is what the customer record is for. See how enquiry management in Installa works.