01Operations Checklist
Storm Surge Intake Checklist for Roofing Companies
A storm surge intake checklist gives a roofing company one repeatable way to answer, qualify, triage, route, log, and follow up on every call produced by a storm event. The point is that the process does not change when volume triples, because the process is written down instead of remembered.
A printable intake checklist roofing companies can use to handle post-storm call surges: pre-storm prep, intake questions, triage tiers, routing rules, CRM fields, and follow-up cadence.
How to Use This Checklist
Print it, keep a copy at every phone, and work it top to bottom on every storm call.
Storm weeks do not break roofing companies because the work is hard. They break roofing companies because the intake process that works fine at twenty calls a week quietly fails at two hundred. Calls get answered out of order, questions get skipped, records get written on whatever paper was nearby, and by the following Monday nobody can tell which leads were real.
This checklist is written to be used as-is. Each section is a list your team can work through without training, in the order the call actually happens: what you set up before the storm, what you ask on the call, how you sort the caller, where the call goes, what gets written down, and what happens after. Adapt the wording to your market and your crew names, then keep it fixed for the whole storm window so the records stay comparable.
Nothing here depends on buying software. It is the same process an AI receptionist for roofing companies would be configured to run, written out so a human team can run it first and decide later whether the volume justifies automating it.
1. Pre-Storm Preparation
Everything in this section has to be decided before the phone starts ringing, because none of it can be decided well during a surge.
Coverage plan
Write down who answers the phone in each block: business hours, evenings, overnight, and weekends. A storm that lands at 4pm produces most of its calls after 6pm, so the evening block is the one that needs a named owner rather than a voicemail greeting.
Call capacity
Decide in advance how many simultaneous calls your phone system can hold and what happens to caller five when four lines are busy. If the answer is voicemail, that is the leak the checklist is meant to close.
Script and field list
Print the intake question list and keep a copy at every phone. During a surge nobody improvises well, and improvised intake produces records the estimator cannot use the next morning.
On-call roster
Name the crew member on call for active interior leaks and emergency tarping for each night of the storm window, with a direct number that rings a phone rather than a queue.
Service area map
Mark which zip codes you will service during the surge and which you will decline. Deciding this while the phone is ringing wastes crew hours driving outside the profitable radius.
Calendar blocks
Pre-open estimate slots for the two weeks following the storm window. Booking into slots that already exist is far faster than negotiating a time on every call.
2. Intake Questions to Ask on Every Call
Ask these in the same order every time. Consistent order produces records an estimator can read without calling the homeowner back.
Ownership status
Ask whether the caller owns the property or rents it. A renter cannot authorize work. If the caller rents, capture the owner or property manager contact and end the call politely rather than scheduling an estimate nobody can approve.
Payment path
Ask whether they plan to file an insurance claim or pay out of pocket. If insurance, ask whether a claim has been filed yet and whether an adjuster has been assigned. These two answers change the entire follow-up sequence.
Damage type
Ask what they are seeing: missing or lifted shingles, hail bruising, wind damage, a tree or limb strike, water inside the home, or damage they have only been told about by a neighbor or a door knocker.
Damage scope and urgency
Ask whether water is currently entering the building, whether any part of the structure is exposed, and whether the caller can see damage from the ground. Active water intrusion is the single question that decides the triage tier.
Property address and access
Capture the full service address including unit number, plus any gate code, dog, or access note. Confirm it is the same as the billing address if you take a deposit.
Roof age and history
Ask approximately how old the roof is, whether it has been replaced or repaired before, and whether a prior claim was filed on it. Age and claim history shape both the estimate and the insurance conversation.
Property type
Ask whether the property is residential, multifamily, or commercial. Commercial and multifamily calls often need a different estimator, a different scheduling window, and a different approval chain.
Contact preferences
Capture the best callback number, whether that number accepts text messages, and an email address for documentation. Storm callers are frequently away from home and unreachable at a landline.
3. Triage Tiers
Assign a tier before the caller hangs up. The tier decides the response target and the routing, so it is not a note, it is a required field.
Tier 1: emergency
Active water entering the building, exposed decking, structural damage, or a tree resting on the roof. Response target is same day. Route immediately to the on-call crew for tarping or temporary protection, then schedule the full estimate separately.
Tier 2: priority
Confirmed visible storm damage with no active leak, an insurance claim already filed, or an adjuster appointment already scheduled. Response target is a booked estimate inside 48 hours so your inspection lands before or alongside the adjuster.
Tier 3: standard
Suspected damage the homeowner has not confirmed, a neighbor referral, or a general inspection request. Book into normal estimate slots. These convert well but do not need to displace a Tier 2 appointment.
Tier 4: out of scope
Renters without owner authority, addresses outside the service area, work types you do not perform, and callers shopping a claim you cannot support. Capture the record, give a clear referral where you can, and close the loop rather than leaving an open task.
4. Routing Rules
Write these rules down once so the routing decision is not remade by whoever happens to pick up the phone at 8pm.
Emergency routing rule
If the caller reports water entering the building or exposed structure, the call transfers to the on-call number before any other question is asked. Everything else on the checklist can be collected after the crew is moving.
Estimator assignment rule
Assign by zip code or territory, not by who is free. Territory assignment keeps drive time down during the exact week when drive time is your scarcest resource.
Insurance path rule
Insurance calls route to whoever handles claim documentation in your shop. That person needs the carrier name, claim number if one exists, adjuster name and appointment date, and the date of loss captured on the first call.
Commercial routing rule
Commercial and multifamily inquiries go to a named commercial estimator with a separate calendar. Mixing them into the residential queue during a surge is how large opportunities get a next-week appointment.
Overflow rule
Define what happens when every line is busy. A callback promise with a stated window and an owner is acceptable. An unattended voicemail box during a surge is not, because the caller is already dialing the next company.
Existing customer rule
Callers with an open job or a warranty question go to service, not to sales. Routing them through the new-lead queue during a surge is the fastest way to lose a repeat customer.
The routing rules are where most storm plans quietly fall apart. A rule that lives in one manager's head stops working the moment that manager is on a roof or asleep. Written rules also make the surge measurable afterward, because you can compare what should have happened against what the records show actually happened. The same routing logic is what we map first on an AI automation build for roofing contractors, before any script or integration work starts.
5. CRM Logging Fields
These are the fields that should be populated on every storm record, whether your team uses JobNimbus, AccuLynx, a general CRM, or a spreadsheet.
Lead identity fields
First and last name, phone, whether the phone accepts text, email, service address, and billing address if different. These are the fields that make or break a follow-up sequence two weeks later.
Qualification fields
Ownership status, property type, payment path, carrier name, claim number, adjuster name, adjuster appointment date, date of loss, roof age, and prior claim history.
Triage fields
Triage tier, damage type, active leak yes or no, response target date, and the storm event tag. The storm event tag is what lets you measure a surge afterward instead of guessing at it.
Routing fields
Assigned estimator, territory, appointment date and time, and whether an emergency dispatch was created. If your CRM supports a job type or workflow field, set it on the first call rather than at the estimate.
Source fields
Lead source, referring neighbor or customer, and the campaign or channel that produced the call. Storm weeks distort source reporting badly if this is left blank.
Next action fields
Next action, next action date, and owner. Every record leaving the phone should have all three filled in. A record with no owner and no date is a lost lead with extra steps.
The storm event tag deserves special attention. Give every storm a short name, apply it to every record produced in that window, and you gain the ability to answer questions that are otherwise unanswerable: how many calls the event produced, what share converted, which zip codes were worth the drive, and whether your after-hours coverage paid for itself. Without the tag, storm leads dissolve into general lead flow within a month.
6. Follow-Up Cadence
Most storm revenue is lost after the call, not during it. A written cadence is the difference between a lead list and a pile of names.
Booked estimates
Text confirmation immediately, reminder the day before, and a reminder the morning of. Storm-week homeowners are juggling adjusters, insurers, and other contractors, and the appointment that gets confirmed is the one that gets kept.
Unbooked leads
A call and text the same day, a second call the next day at a different hour, an email with inspection information on day three, and a final call on day seven. Then move the record to a long-term list rather than deleting it.
Insurance leads awaiting an adjuster
Set the next action date to the adjuster appointment and contact the homeowner the day before to offer to be present. This is the highest-leverage follow-up touch in the entire storm cycle.
Estimates delivered without a decision
Follow up at three days, ten days, and thirty days. Ask what is unresolved rather than asking whether they are ready, because the honest answer during storm season is usually a pending claim decision.
Declined and out of scope
Send one message that closes the loop with a referral if you have one. A clean decline protects your reputation in a neighborhood you will be working in for months.
Post-surge review
Two weeks after the storm window closes, pull every record with the storm event tag and count answered calls, booked estimates, closed jobs, and records with no owner. That count is the input for the next storm plan.
Printing and Adapting This Checklist
Use the browser print function to produce a page your team can keep at the phone.
This page is intentionally plain so it prints cleanly. Print it, mark up the sections that do not match how your shop runs, and rewrite those in your own words. A checklist your team argues with is more useful than a checklist your team ignores, as long as the argument finishes before the next storm.
Two companion resources go with this one. The roofing missed call calculator turns your own call numbers into an estimate of what unanswered calls cost, and the roofing AI receptionist call flow template converts this checklist into a call flow specification any voice vendor can build against.
Get the Intake Process Reviewed
Epiphany Dynamics runs a free 30-minute AI audit that reviews your current answer rate, your storm-season call pattern, and your CRM setup, then names the workflows worth automating first.
Epiphany Dynamics builds intake, routing, and follow-up systems for roofing and field service companies, including AI voice assistants that run this exact checklist on inbound calls and write the results back to the CRM. The audit is the fastest way to find out which part of your storm process is actually leaking.