Writing your business instructions
Eight things will be asked of you, and you already know all of them. Here is the list, in order, with what actually changes your results.
What exactly will be asked of you?
Eight things: your services and how each is handled, your service area, your hours and what happens outside them, which questions get asked and in what order, what triggers an immediate alert, what must not be said on a phone, who receives a transfer and when, and house tone.
You write nothing from scratch. A preset exists for your trade: it arrives with services, questions, an urgency rule and forbidden answers already drafted in trade language. Your job is correcting whatever does not match your business.
Allow an hour, in one or two sittings. Length comes from deciding what a receptionist may say while you are away, rather than from typing.
Why that hour pays
A well-instructed receptionist and a vague one produce very different requests. One hands you a name, a number, an address, a work type and a degree of urgency; another hands you a callback to make.
Nearly every quality gap we see traces back to three fields: question order, urgency rule, and a list of things not to say. Everything else can be corrected as you go; those three are decided beforehand.
Your services, and how each is handled
List services as customers name them, not as an accountant names them. Drain unblocking, water-heater replacement, camera inspection: those are words a caller uses.
For each one, a single decision: booked directly, requires an assessment visit, or simply becomes a message? Add a duration where it is fixed, and say whether a base price is known ahead.
Finally, mark which ones count as emergencies. An active leak and a bathroom renovation do not follow one path, even though both begin with a phone call.
Questions, and above all their order
Name and callback number come first, framed as a precaution. That rule saves more calls than any other: a caller in a basement, a tunnel or a stairwell drops, and you can still ring back.
Then three or four decisive questions. For a plumber: problem type, address with postal code, whether water is running right now, urgent or shopping. For a roofer: roof age, visible leak, access. In a clinic: reason, patient status, availability.
Resist adding ten more. Every extra question is another chance to hang up, and an on-site visit answers fine detail better than a phone ever will.
What must alert you immediately
Write a sentence describing your emergency, in your own terms. Plumbing: running water, a gas smell, or no hot water in winter. Roofing: active infiltration during rain. A garage: an immobilised vehicle blocking an entrance.
Then say who must be reached, and how: you by text and notification, an on-call technician by phone, or both. And state whether that rule holds overnight.
This is the single most valuable field in this guide. It turns software that takes messages into software that gets you out of bed when it is worth it, and only then.
What a receptionist does not say
Start with three or four forbidden answers. These repeat from one trade to another: no firm price and no ballpark where assessment happens on site, no diagnosis over a phone, no exact arrival time — a window instead —, no commitment on a warranty or a deadline.
In exchange, hand her a fallback sentence you already use yourself: an estimate comes right after an on-site assessment, or somebody on call can be reached for real emergencies.
In a clinic, add a discretion rule: what may be said aloud, what waits for an appointment, and what should stay out of a text message.
Who picks up when, by your size
Working alone: a receptionist is your safety net. She rings your mobile, and if you are on a site she takes a message and sends you a summary.
With a team: she routes. An emergency reaches whoever holds an on-call rotation, a new project reaches dispatch, everything else becomes a message. That is a real front desk rather than an improved answering machine.
Across several locations: she routes by branch or by caller territory, to whoever is on call there.
Finally, state an after-hours mode: take a message, or handle emergencies only. Both are valid answers; leaving it undecided is not.
Tone, and what you do not have to write
Tone fits in one sentence, and it matters: reassuring and quick for a plumber facing water damage, measured and discreet in a clinic, blunt for a tow operator. Formal or familiar address is a choice rather than an accident.
You write no technical prompt, no personality description, and no answer for every possible question. A trade preset already carries frequent questions, phrasings and guardrails.
You then listen to a sample before activation, and correct whatever rings false. Instructions can be changed at any time, and a change applies from a following call.
Pages showing those instructions at work
What the fields above actually produce.
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take to write your instructions?
Budget an evening for a first version, then a few minutes whenever a service or a schedule changes. A trade baseline arrives prefilled with the usual services, questions and guardrails of your industry: you correct what does not sound like you instead of starting from a blank page.
Do you have to write a word-for-word script?
No, and it would be counterproductive. What is asked of you are facts: your services and what you do with each, the order of the questions, what must alert you at once, what the receptionist must not say, and who picks up when. Tone and phrasing are not your job.
What happens if a case is forgotten?
The request is taken as it comes and passed on. A forgotten case produces a request to handle, not an invented answer. That is why we recommend reading the first days of requests: they show exactly which cases your instructions did not anticipate.
Can one instruction change without redoing everything?
Yes. Each element is edited on its own, and publication is versioned: you know which version answered which call, and you return to the previous one if the result displeases you. A changed instruction applies from the next publication, not retroactively.
How do you write a useful urgency rule?
Start from what wakes you at night. Name the situation in your customers' words rather than your own: it is leaking, no heat, the door will not close. Then say what must happen, and to whom. An urgency rule with no named recipient is worth nothing.
Do you need different instructions in English?
The facts are the same; what changes are the words your customers use. The receptionist answers in the language of the caller, without mixing the two inside one conversation. If your English-speaking customers name a service differently, add that word: it is what prevents a misunderstood question.
Who in the business should write these instructions?
The person answering the phone today, or the one calling customers back in the evening. They know the questions that keep coming and the answers that make people hang up. An owner writing alone forgets whole categories because he no longer hears them.
How do you know your instructions are good?
Call your own number and play three calls: a caller in a hurry, a request outside your area, an emergency. Listen to what your customers would hear. Those checking calls do not draw on your allowance, and they settle in ten minutes what a proofread would miss.