An answering service for locksmiths that gets a lockout to you, not to voicemail
You are halfway through a rekey and the phone rings. Here is what a missed call costs a locksmith, and how each way of answering handles “I’m locked out of my house and it’s late.”
No card needed. Keep your number. One code undoes it.
The problem
A caller who is locked out is standing outside, usually at night or in a hurry, and calls until someone answers. If you don’t, the next locksmith gets the job, and many callers won’t leave a voicemail. Other calls can wait: rekeying after a move, a lock to replace, a quote for an office.
These are the calls a locksmith misses.
The calls you’re missing
- “I’m locked out of my house. How soon can someone get here?”
- “I locked my keys in the car in a parking lot.” at 11pm.
- “I just bought a house and want every lock rekeyed. What does that cost?”
- “A key snapped off in the lock. Can you fix that?”
- “What do you charge for a call-out, and do you need proof the house is mine?”
What a missed call may cost
About $729 a month in missed revenue
An estimate, using the missed-call calculator’s sum with example numbers: 5 missed calls a week, 85% who never call back, 33% of them who would have booked, 120 dollars for the average job, times 52 weeks, divided by 12 months.
Locksmithing isn’t in the calculator’s trade list, so $120 here is a placeholder for an average job, and lockout callers may never call back at all, so 85% is an example too. Use your own numbers: a lockout, a rekey and a commercial job are very different tickets. These are not your numbers and not a promise of what any service wins back. GotItDesk is $99 a month ($79 for our first 100 customers): at that average, 1 booking a month brings in revenue equal to the subscription price, before your own costs.
Your four options, side by side
| Voicemail | Answering service | GotItDesk | Front-desk hire | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Answers at night or mid-job | Records only | Depends on the plan | Yes, 24/7 | Office hours |
| Knows your call-out fee | No | If it’s in the script | From the prices you set | Yes |
| Books the visit | No | Some do | Yes: its own calendar, Google Calendar or Outlook | Yes |
| Lockouts | Waits in a mailbox | Passes it on, if scripted | Put through to the numbers you chose, or a message | Yes, in hours |
| Typical cost | Free | Per call or per minute: ask each provider | $99 a month, 1,000 minutes | Wages |
Answering-service prices vary a lot by provider and plan; check each one.
When another option is the better pick
- Voicemail is fine if most of your work is booked rekeys and commercial accounts, and a lockout call is rare.
- An answering service is the better pick if you want a person to take every call and read each address back live.
- A dispatcher is the better pick if you run several vans and need someone to send the nearest one. GotItDesk books visits and puts calls through; it doesn’t dispatch.
How GotItDesk handles the call
- Greets the callersays it’s the company’s virtual assistant
- What is locked?a house, a car, an office or a safe, and whether a key is stuck or lost
- Listens for urgencythe words you chose, such as “locked out”, go to your on-call numbers
- Gets the addressasks where the caller is before anything else is booked
- Quotes your feethe call-out fee and any price on your list
- Books or takes a messagebooks a visit for planned work, spells the name back and emails you the booking
Listen to the sample call: a recorded, scripted ceramic-coating call in the live voice. Your own business is one click away, below.
What’s particular to this trade
- A lockout is put through, not promised. Setup lets you choose the words that count as urgent. Add “locked out” and the calls that use it are put through to the numbers you chose, or taken as a message if nobody picks up. It doesn’t send a locksmith and it doesn’t promise an arrival time. If a child or an animal is locked in a car, callers should dial 911 first.
- No arrival time it wasn’t given. It has no way of knowing where your van is. If you wrote a line about timing in setup it repeats your words; otherwise it takes the address and the number to call back, and says you will be in touch.
- Your fee, not a guess. It quotes the call-out fee on your price list, and any after-hours rate you wrote down. A job it has no price for becomes a message for you, not a made-up number.
- Proof of ownership, in your words. Many locksmiths ask for ID or proof the caller lives at the address. If you have a rule, write it in setup and it repeats it, so callers know before you arrive. It can’t check anyone’s ID; that happens when you get there.
- Home, car, business. Add a service for each, with its own length. For a car it asks the make and model and where it is parked, so your booking email has what you need before you leave.
Set up in about ten minutes, and the price
Paste your website and it suggests your hours, services and prices. You choose a voice, call your new GotItDesk number to hear it answer, and only then dial one code to forward the calls you miss. It says it’s a virtual assistant in its first sentence.
The free trial is your first 10 bookings, up to 14 days or 59 minutes, no card. Then $99 a month with 1,000 minutes ($79 for our first 100 customers). No overage bills. See pricing.
What it doesn’t do yet
Connections to locksmith or field-service software, live location or dispatch, texts to callers, card payments and deposits are not live. Nothing is dispatched. Bookings go to GotItDesk’s own calendar or your Google Calendar or Outlook, and every booking and message is emailed to you. We’d rather you know now.