Finding/ Transitioning to an Office Assistant

Sean, do you mean a for real person sitting at a desk in a physical location, or some app for a hardware device?

Obviously asked by an old school, retired age elder :).
 
If your phone rings and you miss calls, hire someone. Soon.

You can rent office space in an existing office building for $300-600 a month. You don't need all that much space. If you're missing calls, just the fact that your phone gets answered more often, will pay base wages and rent and take much off of your plate
 
We have a part time office person. She is great. Really good on the phone and works with our schedule and payroll processing, and keeping me up to date on the ins and outs. Couldn't do it without that position honestly. She makes 14/hr right now with medical benefits. Very very obviously worth the expense.

JP:D
 
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  • #6
How does 14 plus medical compare to field crew compensation?

What do you do to train her to be good as an arborist's receptionist?

Maybe a got way is that if they can't tell her what they need, they need a consult, not an estimate.
 
Tell them what you need, provide the tools for them to do the job and be Laurent while they figure out the basics of your industry and person. Expand their duties as they become able.
 
Do it. You won't regret it. My business took off the moment I hired someone to answer the phones. Before I knew it she's running payroll, getting permits, talking to every client, doing invoices, estimates, reports, running Monday meetings. If I don't keep up, she'll replace me!!


love
nick
 
hahah, Nick...sounds like you hired my daughter. When she worked for us she took a LOAD off me...figured out better ways to do things, track things, organize...the right person that isn't afraid to work is a huge asset.
 
Do it. You won't regret it. My business took off the moment I hired someone to answer the phones. Before I knew it she's running payroll, getting permits, talking to every client, doing invoices, estimates, reports, running Monday meetings. If I don't keep up, she'll replace me!!


love
nick
Haha, yep, mine keeps me busier than I'd keep myself. That's a good thing by the way...
 
Exactly.

For what it's worth, our first office manager worked from home. I asked her to be honest about her hours, but I never checked it. I think she was being fair, sometimes 8 hours, sometimes 4 or 6- but it was always worth it.

We got her an iPad and a company cell phone and she just took over everything from there. You'll need a central database of some sort. We use jobber. Have you checked it out yet?

With her and jobber, I never had to know more than a day in advance what was coming up.


love
nick
 
Hiring a office assistant has been a huge help here as well. It turns out that my wife was the best applicant available. The position is tougher than it may seem on the outside. The assistant has to be able to talk to people, be professional, and at least know a little bit about the company. Not to mention scheduling, entering information into the books, keeping track of accounts receivables, etc.. Lots of little things. With an assistant now I no longer have to make two hours of phone calls at the end of the day. As a result I feel like we have better clients. With the phone being answered and with talking to more people we now have greater opportunity and we can filter out most of the tire kickers and poor opportunities. My quality of life has improved.

As Nick said, you will need some sort of crm to manage the customers. We use Arborgold and I feel like I could not go without it now. Many have mentioned how great Jobber is as well.

It may be a lot of initial work with hiring and finding the right person, but I think it will greatly benefit you Sean.
 
Don't know about Jobber...but I do know about Google Calendar. A great asset...it will do a lot for you if you take the time to use it.
 
Yep, give the crew viewing privileges and they can see job details, Secretary adds bids on it at the office, shows up on your phone...
 
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  • #19
I use Google Calendar now, and keep customer data base in Google Drive.
 
An answering service works great. They make it sound like a secretary is in an office answering the phone and they can filter the calls.
 
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