5 Ways Roofers can Save Time and Streamline their Business

In every business, time is money. In roofing, where homeowners want to know when you’ll be done hammering, how you manage your time is a huge reflection on your business. The more effectively you can work, the more money you can make. Here are five ways that roofers can save time and streamline their business.

1. Drone Technology

One of the most time-consuming parts of a roofer’s work is conducting the roof inspection and making measurements for large repairs or total replacements. Using a drone to capture the information you need can make this a much faster process. For residential roofers, a drone can get you video of the problem areas of the roof and make measurements for the repairs. Commercial roofers can also equip drones with

While you need to be present at the home or property for the initial consultation, drones can do the work for you at other times. You don’t need to physically go to the home to do a follow-up inspection or look into a concern. With the client’s permission, you can fly the drone out over the roof by itself, assuming it has the range to get there.

2. Virtual Receptionists

You can’t exactly take phone calls while you’re on the roof, or while you’re talking to a client, or driving to their home. Most of the time, busy roofers are unavailable to take their calls but have to pause what they’re doing and take the call, or they’ll miss out on business. You can save a lot of time by having a virtual receptionist to answer those calls for you. In fact, you may even get more business because your receptionist can answer faster.

3. Better Scheduling

There’s a lot of driving in your day. You pick up your shingles from storage, or potentially from a supplier. You might drive somewhere else for flashing, and then to one or more client’s homes. There are ways to plan your day so that you spend less time on the road.

Scheduling clients who live near each other back-to-back can help. You can also start your day with the client who is closest to your home or your supplier. A virtual receptionist can schedule your work with saving time in mind.

4. Marketing Software

These days, many roofers have a presence on social media to connect with potential clients and promote themselves with images of their finished work. It’s a wise strategy, but it does take up a lot of time. Plus, inconsistent posting is hardly better than not posting at all when it comes to developing a real following. Busy roofers can use marketing software like Hootsuite and Sprout Social to streamline the process of posting on multiple platforms and assessing if their efforts are actually working. There’s no sense in putting valuable time into it if it’s not!

5. Communication Solutions

On large roofing teams, communication becomes a big issue. You can personally only be at one job at a time, but you want to be available for your employees and give them a way to show you their progress that’s more structured than text. Substantial communication systems that work on mobile phonesare invaluable for roofing businesses. Try Slack, Trello, or Zoom.

With these time-saving methods, you’ll find you’re more productive and more profitable. For more tips on how to efficiently communicate in this area of customer service, we give more insight on how to do so through our roofing answering services.