An answering service for pest control that books the inspection while your tech is in the attic
Your technician is in a crawl space and the office line is busy. Here is what a missed call costs a pest control company, and how each way of answering handles “there are wasps going into my wall.”
No card needed. Keep your number. One code undoes it.
The problem
Someone who has just seen a rat or a wasp nest wants it dealt with today. They ring the first company that shows up on the map, and if it rings out they ring the next. Many won’t leave a voicemail. Other callers are calm: a quarterly plan, a termite inspection before a sale, a quote for an ant problem.
These are the calls a pest control company misses.
The calls you’re missing
- “There’s a wasp nest by my front door. Can someone come this week?”
- “I can hear mice in the attic at night. What do you charge?”
- “I’m selling the house. Can you do a termite inspection before the 15th?”
- “Do you do quarterly service, and what does it cover?”
- “I think I have bed bugs. Do you treat for those?”
What a missed call may cost
About $686 a month in missed revenue
An estimate, using the missed-call calculator’s sum with example numbers: 4 missed calls a week, 80% who never call back, 33% of them who would have booked, 150 dollars for the average first treatment, times 52 weeks, divided by 12 months.
Pest control isn’t in the calculator’s trade list, so $150 here is a placeholder for an average first visit. Use your own number, and remember a quarterly or monthly plan customer is worth many visits, not one. 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 when your techs are on a job | Records only | Depends on the plan | Yes, 24/7 | Office hours |
| Quotes from your price list | No | If it’s in the script | From the services and prices you set | Yes |
| Books the inspection or visit | No | Some do | Yes: its own calendar, Google Calendar or Outlook | Yes |
| Pest, address and what they’ve seen | No | Only if scripted | Asks, and puts it in the booking email | Yes |
| 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 plan customers who ring you directly and a missed call is rare.
- An answering service is the better pick if you want a person to take every call and you give each quote yourself.
- An office hire is the better pick if you run many routes and need someone to schedule, re-route and handle complaints all day.
How GotItDesk handles the call
- Greets the callersays it’s the company’s virtual assistant
- What are they seeing?ants, rodents, wasps, termites, bed bugs or something else, in the caller’s words
- Home or business?and roughly how big, if you price by size
- Gets the addressasks where the job is before booking
- Quotes your pricethe price you set for that service, or an inspection if you quote on site
- Books the visita column per technician, 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
- The pest decides the service. Add a service for each kind of job (ants, rodents, wasps and hornets, termite inspection, bed bugs), each with its own length and price. A caller who says “mice” gets the rodent visit, not a general one.
- Free inspections are a visit. If you inspect for free, add it as a service with its own length and say in your notes that it’s free. It books the time at the address, and you give the quote on site. It doesn’t quote a treatment from a description.
- Plans, in your words. Add quarterly or monthly service as a service with the price you set. It books the first visit and records how often the caller asked for, in the booking email. It doesn’t schedule the repeat visits by itself, so you set the standing slot.
- Questions about products and safety. Callers ask what you spray and whether it’s safe around pets and children. It repeats the answer you wrote in setup and takes a message for anything else. It gives no advice of its own.
- The same-day calls. For wasps, a rodent in the house or a caller who needs you now, add the words that matter to your urgent list in setup. They are put through to the numbers you chose, or taken as a message if nobody picks up. It doesn’t send a technician.
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 pest control software (PestPac, FieldRoutes, Jobber and the like), texts and appointment reminders to customers, card payments and deposits, and repeat visits scheduled automatically 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.