Your front desk staff split every day between the person at the counter and the stack of callbacks, voicemails and texts that piles up behind them.
At a fitness studio, that stack builds during the class changeover. At a home care office, it builds during scheduling calls. At a childcare center, it builds at drop-off and pickup. The work looks alike in all three: the same questions, the same follow-up texts and the same callbacks, all day.
Where the hours go
In August we counted every message our agents sent across 218 boutique fitness locations and timed what that work takes a person. Each message takes at least 3 minutes: open the CRM, read the thread, pick a reply, write it and log it.
That came to 33.6 staff hours per location in one month, and 7,319 hours across all 218 locations. Most of it was follow-up: 62% of all messages went to leads who had already been contacted once.
Your staff drop follow-up first on a busy day, because no one stands at the counter waiting for it.
Take the repeat work off the desk
Look at a week of calls and texts at one location and sort them into three piles:
- Questions with one right answer. Hours, prices, class times, parking, what to bring. An agent can answer these at any hour.
- Booking and rescheduling. An agent can offer open times from your schedule and write the booking to your CRM.
- Conversations that need a person. Complaints, billing disputes, care questions and anything about a child's or client's safety.
The first two piles are the work an agent can take off the desk. The third pile is the work your staff should spend their time on.
In August, agents handled 97.5% of the 121,762 leads they contacted without staff stepping in. A person took over on 2.5%.
How to start at one location
- Pull one week of calls, texts and web leads for a single location.
- Sort them into the three piles above and count each pile.
- Multiply the first two piles by 3 minutes to get the desk time they take.
- Set handoff rules for the third pile, so the agent passes those conversations to staff right away.
- Measure again after 30 days. Count the callbacks waiting at the start of each morning shift, before and after.
Book a free assessment
In one call, we review the booking and CRM systems your locations run on, how your locations handle leads today, and what a rollout would look like, including the return you can expect.