Ian R: All right, welcome back to inspector toolbelt. Today we have with us, Paula Pinnix. From America’s Call Center. How are you, Paula?

Paula Pinnix: Oh, I’m doing great today. Thanks so much for inviting me today, Ian. I really appreciate it.

Ian R: Yeah, we’ve wanted to have you guys on the show for quite some time now. I mean, I’ve worked with you guys for many years. This is a question that comes up a lot, you know, should I use a call center. There’s kind of a stigma attached to call centers with a lot of people. We’ll kind of get into that in a little bit but tell us about yourself, Paula.

Paula Pinnix: Well, I have been with ACC this year will be my 10th year. I started off as a specialist on the phones, scheduling home inspections. So when it comes to knowing what we do here at ACC, you know, I absolutely understand the service that we provide for our inspectors because I did it for so many years. I spent two years as a specialist on the phone scheduling home inspections. Then I was offered a manager position. So I was a team manager for several years and had my own team of folks on the phones that I managed. While I was a team manager, I had the great pleasure of attending a couple of home inspector conferences, I really enjoyed meeting the inspectors and talking to them, because I truly feel that ACC is a service that really provides a lot of benefits and value for home inspectors. So it’s something I really believe in. So, you know, going to the conferences, talking to inspectors, it felt really natural, it felt really good. So over time, I kind of morphed into the sales role. After a while, I just kind of became the sales manager permanently and had someone else replace me on the team. So that’s kind of been my journey here at ACC. 10 years, I haven’t left. I love working here. I love working with people. I love working with inspectors. It’s really been a great joy.

Ian R: That’s fantastic. Even though you’re called America’s Call Center, you’re very home inspectors specific. That’s what you do.

Paula Pinnix: That is correct.

Ian R: That’s what I’ve always appreciated about working with you guys. So anybody listening to the show right now, you know that I have a definite opinion on the answer to this question, should you hire a call center? I’ve always said emphatically, yes. I’ve never seen a reason to not have a call center. The only regret I’ve ever had was not doing it sooner. There are a lot of reasons why, but we all have to kind of make our own decisions as to whether we should hire a call center. So Paula is going to help us today to discuss this subject. Instead of asking the question, should we hire a call center? Let’s address why hiring a call center is worth it? I’m going to answer my own question. Yes, you should hire a call center.

Paula Pinnix: You know, I 100% agree with you, Ian but you know, I am biased. You know, and I think another good question that, you know, inspectors should always be asking themselves is how much is your time worth? You know, as a home inspector, and as a business owner? You know, do you ever sit back and think how much an hour of your time is actually worth? If you haven’t, I think that’s really good. You know, that’s something that we’ve asked in large groups of inspectors and we get varying answers. I’ve had guys say, you know, $150 to, you know, $750. So it makes sense. If you feel that an hour of your time as a home inspector is worth $250, shouldn’t you go out and do the things it’s going to be to Net you that $250 per hour, the meaning gets you more home inspections, versus spending hours every day or hours a week being a secretary?

Ian R: Yeah, and I think a lot of that, though, kind of comes down to the stigma that happens with a call center. So before I was introduced to you guys, we actually talked with another call center. It was local, worked with real estate agents I knew in the area. They kind of had a broad range of businesses that they worked with. And you know what it was pretty much the stereotypical call center, a bunch of people sitting in booths that didn’t know what was going on, and just taking orders. I mean, I could have done that faster and cheaper. So there’s a stigma that’s attached to it. When we’re talking about a call center, we’re really talking about, I call you guys a remote office because that’s what it is. You guys follow up on things you close leads you track things, it’s a lot more than, hey, this is so and so. Order something or don’t.

Paula Pinnix: Exactly, you know, because we do act as our inspectors’ office. So we take that time to learn about each individual inspector’s business, how do you like to have things done, you know, like you specifically and you know, we want to know, what is your process? You know, one of the things I always say to inspectors when I’m talking to them is I think what we’re really good at and I think what sets us apart is technically what all of our inspectors do is the same that end result is the same it’s a home inspection, right? You all want to get that home inspection scheduled, but the particular paths that every inspector takes to get to that end result, that booked home inspection can be very different. Here at ACC, that’s what we really take, the time to learn is, what is the particular path that you want to take to get to that end result. That’s what we’re going to do, we’re going to follow that path to a tee.

Ian R: Let’s talk about that in general. So now that we’re past, the whole hurdle of this isn’t what we would typically think of as a call center. One of the personal hurdles that I had to get over was losing control, so to speak, I needed to know each client, I wanted to get to know them, their needs, what was going on? Do I want them on my schedule? I had a big service area. And what if I have, you know, an inspection over here and over there, there were too many variables in my mind to say, I can hand this over to someone else. There were some other hurdles. For instance, I worried about being busy enough to validate hiring a call center, how busy do you think a home inspector needs to be before he or she should hire a call center.

Paula Pinnix: I feel that there are a lot of different opinions on this, obviously, you know, I would suggest that it can be beneficial to get started with us from the very beginning because if you are a brand new inspector, what should you be spending the majority of your time doing? You should be out there marketing yourself, building those agent relationships, letting these agents know, you’re out here, who you are, what you’re about. If you’re tied to a phone, you may not be able to give that marketing your all. So there’s value in starting up with us from the very beginning because if you’re out there, you’re spending time and money on marketing, you don’t want the first time that agent or broker calls your company, you don’t want them to get voicemail because you’re unavailable or you didn’t make it to the phone fast enough. You want them to get someone on the other end of the line that is professional, knowledgeable, and ultimately can sell you in your home inspection company. That’s exactly what we do. Then there’s the other camp that feels like once you hit you know, 150 to 200 inspections, you shouldn’t be answering your phones. Basically, I feel at that point, that you’re probably missing opportunities here and there. If I’m being completely honest with you, when you use our service, if we capture one phone call that might have otherwise gone to voicemail and that person moved on to that next inspector, more than likely, we paid almost the entire invoice that you would pay the ACC. So anything beyond that is going to be straight revenue for that inspector in their pocket.

Ian R: Yeah. I guess I had to come to realize what that meant for me when I was a newer inspector. I remember the first week that I had you guys fully on board when I had a call center answering my phones. It was magical. I loved it. Well, I remember the day I woke up and there were scheduled inspections that I didn’t have to schedule. I showed up. You guys answered a bunch of phone messages and answered basic questions that I normally would have had to answer. I stopped and had a leisurely lunch, you know, put some finishing touches on my report. I was early for my next inspection and I went home and there was like maybe one message that I had to return. I’m like, oh my goodness, Why would I ever answer my phone.

Paula Pinnix: I really love to hear that Ian, because, again, I’m biased, but I’m a big believer. Not only does ACC add value to your business and help you be a better business owner but we also give you that great work personal life balance. To where you know, you can go out to dinner with your family and not worry that you’re missing opportunities or excuse yourself from the dinner table because you’re gonna go take a phone call and schedule an inspection. Leave that to us. You know, I always like to say, Where are the professionals, you as a home inspector consider yourself a professional as well, right? So you know, you wouldn’t tell somebody, oh, have Jim Bob, the contractor comes out and does your home inspection. You know, you would tell that client you should use a professional right? You know, and it’s the same thing for you guys when it comes to deciding how you want to have your company represented and how you want your phones answered. You want to use professionals and that’s exactly what ACC is because we only work with home inspectors.

Ian R: Yeah. And I guess that’s a key dimension. If you’re going to hire a call center, make sure you hire one that is home inspector specific. And things are getting hyper-specific in general anyways. So always hire one that’s industry-specific to us. And Paul, you kind of touched on a little bit, but I call it the crawlspace factor. So say we’re a new inspector, and we get our first inspection. We charged $500 for it. While we’re in that crawlspace we miss a phone call, or while we’re doing a presentation for an agent. It’s happened to me that no matter how good we are about answering their phones or getting back to a message, there’s a crawlspace factor. I’m not answering my phone while a raccoon is attacking me. So maybe that was a $750 inspection that we missed. Now that $500 inspection cost us 250 because we missed the $750 inspection, or actually cost us 750, depending on how you perceive it. It’s costing us money not to get to our phones quickly. A hot lead is a hot lead. If somebody’s calling us, we can close it right there. If we have to call back, somebody else has already likely closed that deal. I would lose half of the messages or more but I would close 80 to 90% of live phone calls.

Paula Pinnix: Exactly.

Ian R: If it goes to voicemail, it’s a 50/50 chance that lead is dead, if not more of a chance.

Paula Pinnix: Yep. And you know, that’s one thing I think really sets us apart as well as all of our calls during the live hours of operation. They are answered by a member of your team, do you have that same group of people that’s always answering and scheduling for you, because we do want to create that kind of very personal office feel for you. So those agents that use you all the time when they call in to schedule, they’re talking to the same people over and over again, because I know we all get a mental image when we hear call center, don’t we? You know, what do we generally see? We see a big room, a whole bunch of cubicles, and a sea of people and everybody’s just picking up whatever phone call that comes into their desk. That’s not how ACC operates. We work in small team sizes and that team only works with a certain set of companies. So the goal is that team builds relationships with you as the inspector and the owner. We really work to understand how you want to have your business run. So when we’re representing your company, when we’re answering the phones, we are doing those things exactly the way you would do them or the way you would want them done if you were the one on the phones.

Ian R: Yeah. Just to that point, we actually have five-star reviews that actually mentioned members of the team specifically for you know, how they were handled from beginning to end and the follow-up and things like that. So just the argument, again, for call centers in general. First of all, they will close more leads, they’ll follow up on more leads, and they’ll be able to answer your phone right away. It all gives you a professional appearance. I know a lot of inspectors that started off right away with a call center. So they like you said Paula can just start out their business and do what they need to do. But a lot of times we think of closed rates of the phone calls. There’s a perceived closed rate versus the actual closed rate of phone calls. So I challenged the home inspector one time I said, What’s your close rate? Oh, I closed nine out of 10 phone calls. Okay, let’s start writing this down and actually had him write it down. He was funny. He’s like, Oh, man. He was disappointed. I’m like, and we didn’t even count the phone calls that called but didn’t leave a number or didn’t leave a massage rather. It was just a number and we didn’t know who they were, this was people that he actually either missed or didn’t close the phone call. Our perceived close rate may be very different than our actual close rate. So if we as home inspectors take the time to write down how many phone calls that I get, how many did I miss? They didn’t leave a message or called back and nobody answered? How many phone calls did I have to answer in a hurry? Or while I was in my truck? We may be actually missing leads not because of something we don’t realize if some if I’m calling a contractor to work on my house, and he’s kind of slamming his truck door. Oh, yeah, I can hear you hang on. I’m switching the Bluetooth ads that already painted a picture for me. All right, I’m not important, right. So exactly. There’s a lot of reasons to hire a call center. So take a moment and actually evaluate our close rates because I think that’s what a lot of home inspectors worry about, oh, they’re gonna people aren’t gonna hire me because I’m using a call center. I don’t think anybody even realizes it’s a call center.

Paula Pinnix: No. I do have a couple of funny stories there. I used to have a transaction coordinator in Colorado when I was a specialist on the phones. She was consistently inviting me out to happy hour. When she ran into the home inspector a few months later, because I would always come up with some excuse. It was usually in a joking way. It’s like, oh, well, you know, so and so keeps me chained to this desk, you know, answering the phones, like I don’t have time to get away for happy hour. So she had run into that inspection owner a couple of months later and apparently gave him the what for of why he won’t let me leave the office to go have a drink with her at lunch or happy hour. Then he basically let her know. Well, the reason is she’s never going to come out and have a drink with you because she’s in you know, Kansas City. She did not believe him and she called me the next day and was Paula, are you In Kansas City I’m about to have a heart attack. I was like, I don’t know what to say. Then I talked to the inspector because I immediately called him after that. I was like, what’s going on? I was like if she says anything to you, I was like, I was really thrown off. So I was like, I was stuttering and sputtering. He’s like, Oh, no, I told her you were in Kansas City. I was like, Oh, thank you, God, I was like, you’ve got to tell me when you do these things, I have not had a heart attack. That’s the amount of care and everything that we put into every phone call and every interaction with all of your callers. So no one ever gets that feel that, oh, I’m calling a call center. These people don’t care about me, you know, they don’t care about my needs, you know, when I have to say, so everybody assumes we are local there to our inspectors, because of the level of service and the level of care that we put forth on every single phone call.

Ian R: Yeah. You know, as you were speaking, another advantage of a call center in general, that I have always appreciated. This is going to come off wrong to maybe some of you listening in but it creates a level of unavailability. So I’m very available to my clients and sometimes when they talk to the owner, now they have questions, oh, Ian’s phone number is just this, then they call. A lot of times, it was just strange calls like, “oh, Ian, you said something on the inspection. What was that? It’s in the report, but I just rather hear from you directly.” You know, it’s like, okay, well, I got 30 of those phone calls today. A lot of times, when they call and they say, Oh, I have to talk to Ian’s secretary. Then I’ll leave a message, I’ll just look at the report. It cut down on a lot of, for lack of a better term nuisance calls. Where they could have just looked at the report, they could have just figured it out half of the time. It was just I was Google searching things for people. Then only the real concerns would come through. I have a funny story, too. Just real quick there. I actually had a death threat one time that you guys handled for me, that was pretty crazy. So a seller got mad, I found a leak in a shower and mold in his basement. He called and I remember one of the girls from the team calling saying, hey, so this guy described in detail how he’s going to kill you and so the police got involved. Oh, it’s totally awkward but you guys handled it beautifully. The police got involved in there like, well, he left a voicemail, but he didn’t talk to you directly. So we can’t go after him unless he threatens you directly. I’m like, really? Okay, I’ll call them. They’re like, what? The cop was like, You shouldn’t call them. I’m like, is he going to murder me less or more. He’s like, I really don’t know how to handle this. It’s okay, buddy. So I called the guy and he calmed down, I actually felt bad for him. He also had a violent police record, apparently, too. Like, if he wanted to kill him, he’s gonna kill me. He’s a friend now though. Like, he thanked me for the phone call. I talked him through some stuff. You guys were right there supporting it. You know, it gave me that little bit of detachment. So I didn’t immediately get a phone call. I felt bad for the girls taking the calls. You know, it created a moment there where I could collect my stats

Paula Pinnix: like a MasterCard moment, right? That’s priceless. Like, can you put a price on us intercepting death threats for you?

Ian R: You guys are my heroes.

Paula Pinnix: You know, that’s one of the things that I don’t think a lot of inspectors think about is we do insulate you to a point like, we’re that first line of defense. I found from being on the phones and being a specialist for years, that many complaints call like they’re not really valid. Like that person just wants to vent to someone. They want someone to listen to them. They want empathy, they want someone to sympathize with them. I would spend, I wouldn’t say hours but you know, I spent a lot of time on phone calls, just listening to someone rant about things that I knew from my experience had absolutely nothing to do with my inspector, but this was coming from an emotional place. I just let them vent. Apologize, let them know, you know, I’m so sorry that this happened. I’m so sorry that you feel this way that actually can a lot of times deescalate the situation and get that person into a better place to where they are thinking a bit more rationally and you know, aren’t throwing out ridiculous threats. So, I don’t think a lot of inspectors realize the value of that, you know, even if we listened to five people rant for 10 to 15 minutes, that’s an hour or more that you didn’t have to waste listening to someone rant about something that you have nothing to do with.

Ian R: Yeah, and the emotional toll because we did a podcast on inspector burnout. If you’re handling all of those calls from emotional people that burns you out. I mean, there’s only so much listening you can do. I’ll be perfectly honest, I’m not warm and fuzzy when it comes to that kind of stuff. You guys have always done a great job with that. So that also brings me to another point. A lot of guys say I’d rather hire a secretary versus a call center. What do you think the advantages of a call center are to a secretary? I have a definitive opinion but what are your thoughts?

Paula Pinnix: Well, I mean, you know, I don’t want to talk bad about hiring in house but you also have to remember, if you bring in in house staff, who are also inviting all of those staffing headaches that come along with having employees, I mean, life happens. You know, you’re going to hire someone, they’re gonna get sick, if they have kids, their kids are gonna get sick. Inevitably, people call in, they’re going to want to take vacation time. Now, what are you going to do when your secretary or your office manager calls in, and it’s Monday, it’s the Monday after Memorial Day, one of the busiest Mondays of the year. You know, now the phones are landing back in your lap, you may have already had marketing events scheduled for that day or something. So now, what do you do, You’re tied to the phone, do you cancel your marketing events, you know. Of course, those aren’t worries that you’re ever going to have using ACC, you know, we’re always going to be there, we’re never going to call you on a busy Monday and be like, I had a really long weekend, I’m just not feeling it today, those aren’t going to be issues that you’re going to encounter with us. I don’t know how it is across the country but I know we’ve had struggles, with hiring folks, just getting people that are wanting to apply and work. When you’re hiring in-house staff, one, you have to find the person, you’re inevitably going to have to train them unless you magically find someone that knows all about the industry. So you’re gonna have to train them on the home inspection industry, all your ancillary services, and why those callers need them. Then now, two months later, they’re on the phones doing great. Now that person gets married, they’re moving to be with their husband, now you’re back to square one, the hiring training process all over again. I’ve talked to a lot of inspectors and signed up a lot of inspectors who, you know, their third secretary or third office manager has quit on them, and they finally have reached the end of their rope and they want to break the vicious cycle and stop with the in house staff. So they moved to a call center, I think that in of itself is of huge value, especially if you’ve ever done the hiring and training, you know, I’ve talked to folks and they’re just like, God, it’s such a nightmare, finding the person, getting them through the training, you know, only to lose them, you know, six months or a year later. So skip all that just come to ACC.

Ian R: Yeah, and you know, we always miss the team members on the ACC side when they move away. To be perfectly honest, the new team member comes in, and we don’t have to worry about oh, we’re gonna have to get this person trained for the next two months, because there are still 34567 other people there answering the phone calls. So the rotation isn’t as critical. There’s a home inspector that I know, he cracks me up, he goes, I will never hire a call center, I will only have a secretary I wanted to be in house 100%. He went through as you said, there weren’t three, it was two secretaries in the year. Each time he hired a secretary, it brought everything to a grinding halt. Then the secretary left, only gave two weeks’ notice took him two months to find a new person, he’s answering the phones for a multi-inspector firm, stressing himself out up late missing calls. Then finally, I’m like, so you want to think about a call center now. You know, it’s a lot of work, and you don’t have to do that you will get the benefit of it. Without having to worry about hiring. That’s a big deal.

Paula Pinnix: You know, if you have an office manager, all talk to high inspector companies that maybe they have someone. It’s like, okay, you know, why don’t you take this person, you know, use us for the phones and maybe have your office manager do other things within the company that’s going to be of more value. So maybe that person could morph into a great marketing person. So you could utilize that person in other capacities in your company. So I’m not saying that you should never have in-house staff. I’m just saying you should utilize them, you know, to the best of your ability. Then kind of contract out those things that you can to professional folks that know what they’re doing.

Ian R: Yeah. I’m not saying to hire in-house either. It just makes logistic sense. Like I always thought oh, well, maybe I’d use my wife to answer the phones.

Paula Pinnix: Like you want to stay married.

Ian R: Yeah, exactly but like you have kids, so kids need to get brought to the doctors. Now she’s not answering the phones. Other things could come up and happen in life where if one person is answering the phone, that crawlspace factor comes back into play. What if she’s on one line and you get two other leads call in at the same time? Yeah, she can’t answer all three phone calls, whereas the call center 10.

Paula Pinnix: Exactly, you know, because you have a whole team that’s there for you to answer those phone calls. You know, ultimately, our goal is to take all these opportunities, whether it’s a phone call, email, or text message that comes in for your company, our goal was to convert those opportunities into booked inspections for you. As well, as you know, upselling. You know, I’m sure that you’ve experienced this. All of our teams were very effective at upselling for our inspectors. So not only are we focused on trying to book you all the inspections that we can, but we’re also very focused on making sure that we’re maximizing the revenue that you’re going to make for that inspection as well.

Ian R: Yeah. I think a couple of things that people worry about are our call centers making mistakes. I actually had a friend of mine, and he said, Oh, man, they made a mistake. They charged this person the wrong amount. I’m like, Okay, did they fix it? Yeah, but I had to call the person and he was kind of upset. I’m like, you’ve never done that. So what I did was I tried to get him to understand. I’m like, you make those mistakes too, you just forgive yourself easily, like, oh, I had to call them back, because they made it then you had to call them back. Okay, mistakes happen. Then think about all the times you’ve made mistakes where you’ve lost the lead, you didn’t get the inspection, your close rate was, you know, 48%, and there’s as 92%. No matter what kind of mistakes happen, it’s well worth it in the end, and 99.9% of them can be easily fixed. Oh, okay. I’ll just call them. Like we had an agent one time. It was the wrong email but it wasn’t. It wasn’t ACC’s fault. The agent had two email addresses and one on one website, one on another. Okay. So we called them and we fixed it and they said, Thank you, like, Okay. You move on.

Paula Pinnix: You know, and I would love to sit here and say that we never make a mistake but that would be an outright lie because we’re human. In the majority of these cases, we’re dealing with another human. So now you have two margins of error, because humans interact with other humans, right. At the end of the day, we want to be perfect. Like, we don’t want to make mistakes. So we always work if we do make a mistake to fix any errors. You know, another funny story, when I was a manager, I had a company that I worked with, they were all firefighters. We did the majority of their scheduling but every now and then somebody would call one of the guys directly, and it would never fail. They would misquote their inspection fees by 100 $150. So they would call back in, and the person would say, well, so and so said it was going to be this amount. When I put the property specs in, it would be, you know, more money. So then I’d call the inspector, and he’d be like, oh, yeah, he’s like, oh, I messed up, he’s like, but we’re gonna have to honor it. He’s like, I’m gonna honor it because that’s what I did. I would tell these guys always have stopped giving pricing in the field, tell them to call the office like, you are literally losing yourself money every time you do this because you’re never quoting the accurate price. Have them call us, we’ll look the property up, make sure that we’ve got the accurate property information, and we will make sure that we’re giving them accurate pricing. You know, same factor there. Yes, there may be a time where we make a mistake but absolutely if you let us know, and, you know, I hope this is something that you’ve experienced, you know, we will absolutely do whatever we need to do to make sure that we correct that error because we don’t want there to be errors.

Ian R: Oh, yeah. There are few and far between. I just hear home inspectors say that a lot. Oh, well, they made a mistake. I’m like they made a mistake. Okay. How many do you make that? Give yourself four Oh, I miss quoted this house. So I’m just going to go in there and inspect for that price anyways. Whereas if you call into a call center, you guys are sitting right there. You’re looking at all the MLS and Zillow and just verifying, oh, there is a finished basement in this that’ll be an extra $50. Or you know what, there is a barn? Would you like us to inspect that? Oh, did you know we did sewer scopes up selling? Whereas me and my truck? What’s that? Okay. Yeah, I don’t know, like, 350, 800 somewhere in that range? Yeah, sure.

Paula Pinnix: Well, and, you know, I, I’ve also found that the majority of folks like they don’t ever mention, you know, that 2500 square foot barn that’s on the back of the property, like that’s not in their mind to think about that. At the end of the day, they absolutely expect that you’re going to be taking a look at it. Right. So those are also things that the teams are doing. You know, we’re not just looking at the house itself, we’re looking at the entirety of the listing to see if there are various property anomalies that those inspectors should be getting paid additional monies for.

Ian R: Yeah. So there are lots of reasons to hire a call center. I think the biggest one that hangs on to my mind, is just the feeling of waking up and going out and doing inspections. You know, as I said, it’s just I had lunch, and I could go home and I played with my daughter.

Paula Pinnix: Didn’t have to return 20 calls at the end of the day when you thought your workday was over.

Ian R: You know, what’s funny is I remember another Inspector, he brought up an objection, he goes, Well, what happens if like, my mom calls or my cousin, I’m like, Okay, give them to your new number. First of all, if you’re gonna switch numbers over, you know, they’ll take a message, my mom to this day still calls the wrong phone number. Oh, I don’t know. It just won’t work on that overtime.

Paula Pinnix: Another funny story, like I, had an inspection company and without fail, every Saturday, his mom would call and ask where he was. I don’t think she knew we were a call center. When I would say, you know, I’m sorry, you know, so and so isn’t in right now. She’d be going, where is he at? I’d be like, I don’t know where he’s at. You know, so then I’d send a message. Then over time after it happened every Saturday for about a month, I was like, I think this guy just hired us to screen calls from his mom.

Ian R: Yeah, so see, there’s an extra benefit. No, I’m just kidding. I love my mom.

Paula Pinnix: We’ve done it with ex-wives too.

Ian R: Oh, boy. Okay, we’ll hold off on those stories for them. So there are a lot of different benefits, there’s the emotional burnout factor of somebody else can handle some of the nitty-gritty. There’s the benefit of, I call it marketing because nothing makes you look more professional than someone answering your phones, following up on leads up to three times and making connections and talking with agents on your behalf. There’s also the factor of, you can just go out and do what you need to do, you can inspect, you don’t have to worry about your phone buzzing in your pocket while you’re hanging upside down in the attic. To be honest with you, our rates went up because the average inspection fee went up because you guys are upselling to be perfectly doing better than we can because we’re not sitting there. Here’s a list of my services, quiet in an office looking at their house saying. Yep, there’s that barn. Oh, you know what, there are two barns out there, we should inspect both of those. How about a sewer scope? Does it look like an older house?

Paula Pinnix: Well, and you know, I find that you know if you’re an inspector and you’re answering your own phone, and you’re on a roof, and you pick up that phone, well, first of all, that’s dangerous for you. Like if you fall off a roof, you can injure yourself pretty badly. Then you know, you’re not going to be able to work. So there’s a multitude of reasons you shouldn’t be answering your own calls while you’re doing an inspection. But if you do, generally, you’re focused on getting that bare-bones information and getting off that phone back to what you were doing. So you know, a lot of inspectors, answer their own phones, they don’t upsell themselves effectively, because they’re not spending the time on that call, but they should educate the caller on what those services are, and why they may need them. Whereas we have that time to make sure that that caller is fully educated on what those services are, and why they may need them so they can make educated decisions for themselves. That education piece, I think is vital to us being effective at upselling. Those ancillary services.

Ian R: Yeah. It’s funny because I’ve actually posted the phone script that I used before I use the call center. As you’re talking, you’re right. I don’t bring my script up on a roof with me. I don’t have it 100% memorized, I’m focusing on the chimney, or, you know, how the flashing is around the roof. I’m not thinking, okay, what was point number four? Or what was the other ancillary service that I was going to offer in this situation? So I only have it in my truck, or when I’m in my office, whereas you guys are ready to go with that all the time.

Paula Pinnix: Yeah. When you’re in the middle of doing something else, like, yeah, you want to get back to what you were doing, whether it’s that inspection process, maybe you’re doing a review with a client like you’re not taking those extra moments to make sure that that caller is fully educated about the sewer scope, because that home was built in 1960 or something. Whereas you know, your team, they’re going to be educating that caller, looking at the services that you’re providing based on their need-based off the property. And really, we see that as a service to the client too, because, you know, someone is buying a house that was built in 1960. I feel like they absolutely should have a sewer scope inspection done like, that is for their benefit. If we’re not educating them properly, and they have fewer issues down the road, then I feel like we didn’t serve them properly. We didn’t do that client justice. So that’s why I feel that education about those services is so vital.

Ian R: Yeah. Even like septic inspections, we do septic inspections. Oh, it says here on Zillow it’s on a private sewer? Would you like a septic inspection? Oh, you guys do that? Oh, perfect, that’s gonna save me another phone call. You know, there’s another $400 inspection that, you know what I’m not gonna see the MLS there, I’m gonna go okay, your home inspection is this much and then I get there and somebody else is doing the septic inspection.

Paula Pinnix: You would be shocked like, I feel like a vast percentage of people have no idea about sewer, water, you talk to a lot of these folks and you’ll say, you know is the home on city water is it on well, I don’t know, like I turned the faucet on and water came out like, you know, it seemed good to me. So, you know, it really is helpful that we’re able to look these listings up, read through the property descriptions, and be able to offer those services that the client would potentially need. That really is a CYA for our inspectors too because let’s say that person does say that they don’t want you to know, a septic or sewer line inspection. Six months down the road now they’re having issues with that system, and they want to come back and blame you, Mr. Inspector. Guess what? We offered you the service, we told you why you may need it. So they can’t really hold you liable for not telling them about any sewage or septic problems. So I also think it’s a good CYA for our inspectors, nobody can come back and blame you. Well, why didn’t you tell me, Mr. Inspector that there was a problem? Well why didn’t you have the inspection done, we educated you on the service, yet you declined it. So we wouldn’t have known about any problems because you opted out of having the service done.

Ian R: Yeah. I do love that. There’s a lot of recording that happens. Like you write down, this is what we offered them, this is what they refused. This is what they did order. Here’s our call tracking for the month. Here’s how many people called and how many we closed. And, you know, that’s beautiful stuff. So there are really a ton of reasons to hire a call center. Again, if you listen to Inspector Toolbelt Talk a lot, you’ll know that that’s my opinion. If you have a different one, we’d love to do a podcast in theory or opinion but I am 100% for a call center. Paula, thank you so much for being on. We love you guys over there at ACC you do an amazing job. Thank you for helping us with this subject today.

Paula Pinnix: Well, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it, Ian. Like I said if I could clone you and have 500 more inspectors to work with just like you, I absolutely would.

Ian R: Well, that would be a terrible world to live in if there were 500 of me but thank you again for being on Paula. Hopefully, we’ll have you, on the future show.

Paula Pinnix: Yeah, you know, definitely let me know. We’re always happy to get the opportunity to talk to your amazing following for your podcast. So well, more than happy to come back. Should you have the need for us.

Ian R: Awesome. Thanks. We’ll look forward to that.

Paula Pinnix: All right, you take care and have a great rest of your week and everybody out there enjoy. If you ever have any questions about ACC, you know, I’m pretty easy to find. You can go to the website, just submit a website form and I personally will give you a call to answer any questions that you have. I’m all over Facebook, you can reach out to me on Facebook. I’m fairly easy to find. if you’d like to learn more, don’t hesitate to reach out to me anytime. Okay,

Ian R: Great. We’ll put links in the transcript. Thanks, Paula. Have a good one.

Paula Pinnix: All right. Thanks, Ian. You guys have a great day. Bye.

Outro: On behalf of myself, Ian, and the entire ITB team, thank you for listening to this episode of inspector toolbelt talk. We also love hearing your feedback, so please drop us a line at info@inspectortoolbelt.com.

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