Incomplete Instructions, Sent Straight Back
No more jobs raised with "TBC" in the contact field. No more engineer travelling to an address nobody can get into. The missing detail chased at the front door, in seconds, by the person who has the answer.
Who it's for
Anyone taking instructions from clients, managing agents, councils or portals, where the detail you need is not always on them.
What it saves you
The aborted visit, and the fortnight of back and forth that follows finding a gap on the day instead of on arrival.
Set up time
Most businesses are live within days.
The instruction that was never going to work
An instruction lands with no phone number on it.
Nobody stops, because raising jobs is the job. The gap becomes somebody else's problem later, usually the engineer's. He ends up outside a locked communal door with no number to ring, and a customer who is not expecting him. The visit is aborted. The office chases the client. The client chases the tenant. Four days later the number arrives, the job is rebooked, and the whole thing has cost a slot in the diary and a little of the client's patience.
The same story runs with a half-written address, missing access arrangements, a site with no contact named, or a reference that matches nothing. Every one of them was obvious at the moment the instruction arrived, and invisible by the time it mattered.
Going back to the sender feels like friction, which is why people do not. But the moment the instruction arrives is the cheapest time you will ever have to ask. The sender still has the file open. Nobody has been dispatched. Nothing has been promised to a tenant.
What an aborted visit actually costs
Again, worth running these on your own figures.
An aborted attendance costs you the visit itself, meaning engineer time, vehicle, fuel, and a slot that cannot be resold at short notice. Add the office time to work out what went wrong, chase the missing detail and rebook. Then, if you are working to an SLA, there is the response clock, which in most contracts keeps running even though the information was incomplete.
Now compare that with the cost of asking straight away. One automated reply, sent in seconds, that nobody in your office has to write.
One automated reply costs you nothing. One aborted visit costs you an engineer's afternoon and a slot in the diary.
What the automation does
When an instruction arrives, Build Concierge:
- Reads it and pulls out the fields you have said you need. Contact name, phone number, full address, access details, reference, whatever your team genuinely cannot work without.
- Checks each one is present and usable. An entry that is not a real phone number does not pass.
- Creates the job as normal when everything is there.
- Holds it when something is missing. No job is created, so nothing enters the diary half-formed.
- Replies to whoever sent it, naming exactly what is absent and asking for it, and tells your team it is waiting.
It asks the person who can answer
Your client's coordinator can answer in thirty seconds what will take your office three phone calls a week later.
What you get
- Every job on your system workable from the moment it lands.
- Engineers arriving with a number that rings and an address that resolves.
- The chase happening automatically, in seconds, rather than costing someone twenty minutes on the day.
- Fewer aborted attendances, and a genuinely shorter time to attend.
- A clear picture of which clients send incomplete instructions and how often, which is either a training conversation or a commercial one.
Ways to run it
Hold and reply.
The default. Nothing is created, and the sender is asked for the missing field.
Create and flag
For clients where you would rather have the job on the system regardless, it is raised but marked incomplete and chased separately.
Different fields per client
A domestic repair needs a mobile number. A commercial site needs access arrangements and a named site contact. A void property may need neither. The required list can differ by contract.
Escalate if nobody answers
If the detail has not come back after a set time, your team is told, so a person can pick up the phone before it becomes a problem.
What you need
- A list of the fields you genuinely cannot work without
- Instructions arriving somewhere Build Concierge can read them. An inbox, a portal feed, a form
- A view on whether to hold the job or raise and flag it
Getting set up
We agree the must haves
One conversation, per client where requirements differ. Make the list too long and you will bounce work you could have done. Too short and nothing changes.
We help you build it, and we write the reply with you
The message going back to your client is in your words and your tone. It should read like a colleague asking a quick question, not a system rejecting a submission. Getting that tone right is the part that decides whether clients mind.
We run it in report-only mode first
For a week it tells you what it would have held, so you can see the volume and tune the list before anything is actually stopped.
Common Questions
Handled well, it has the opposite effect. They are told immediately, while the job is fresh and the information is to hand, instead of hearing a fortnight later that their job never happened. The tone of the reply decides this, which is why we write it with you.
Then it comes off the required list for that client and you handle it the way you do now. The automation enforces your rules. It does not invent any.
Yes. A phone number can be validated for format, and a postcode for whether it resolves to a real address.
No. It sits on a list your team can see, and it escalates if nothing comes back.
Most people say that before they measure it. The report-only week settles it either way, and costs you nothing.
It would be, if every client used your form. This works on whatever they actually send, whether that is an email, a PDF or a portal notification. A required field only helps on the forms you control, and most instructions do not arrive that way.
Ready to send it back before it becomes a job?
Get in touch with the Build Concierge team and we’ll set it up around the way you work.
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