A tenant calls about a ceiling stain. They are scared, they have photos, and they want someone out today. Your intake gets the address, books an estimate, and the estimator drives forty minutes to a building where nobody on the visit can approve a dollar of work.
The caller is not always the person who owns the roof. For apartments, rentals, and managed buildings, the person on the phone is often the person with the least authority over it. Your intake has to find that out in the first minute.
Ask what the caller is to the property
Before the address, ask: "Do you own the home, rent it, or manage it for someone?" Then sort the call:
- Owner-occupant. Your normal flow applies. - Tenant. They can report the leak and let you in. They usually cannot approve work or pay. - Property manager or landlord. They may approve work, or they may only relay it upward. - Owner who lives elsewhere. They approve and pay, and they may not know the building well.
Store the answer as a field, not a note. Everything downstream depends on it.
Find out who approves and who pays
These are often two different people. A manager may approve repairs up to a dollar limit and send anything larger to the owner. A management company may need a purchase order or vendor setup before it will pay a new roofer at all.
Ask these directly:
- Who decides whether the work goes ahead? - Is there a dollar amount above which someone else must sign off? - Who receives the invoice, and does it need a PO or work order number? - Do you need our W-9 or insurance certificate on file first?
If the caller does not know, that is a valid answer. Record "approver unknown" and flag it. Do not let the system fill in a guess.
Know who the building has to hear from
Landlord-tenant rules differ by state, and I am not going to summarize them for you. One example shows why the caller's role matters. Texas Property Code [section 92.052](https://texas.public.law/statutes/tex._prop._code_section_92.052) says a landlord must make a diligent effort to repair certain conditions when the tenant specifies the condition in a notice to the person or place where rent is normally paid. A tenant who calls a roofer has told the roofer, not necessarily the landlord.
You should not give tenants legal advice. It is a reason to ask: "Has your landlord or management company been told about the leak?" If not, the script should tell the caller to report it to whoever collects their rent. Have your own counsel review that script.
Settle roof access before you book
The estimator needs to get onto the roof, or at least to the attic or the unit below. A tenant can open their own door. They often cannot open a roof hatch or a locked mechanical room.
Capture:
- Is there interior access to the roof, and who holds the key or code? - Which unit has the stain, and does the tenant agree to a visit window? - Is anyone on site who can let us in if the tenant is not home?
There is a safety side too. OSHA's fall protection standard, [29 CFR 1926.501](https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/1926/1926.501), sets protection requirements for employees on low-slope roofs, steep roofs, and residential construction work at 6 feet or more above a lower level. Whether a given inspection walk falls under it is a question for your safety lead. The intake point is simpler: know the roof and the access before anyone goes.
Keep tenant contact and manager contact apart
Store both people, with a role on each. The tenant is the access contact and the symptom reporter. The manager is the authority and the billing contact.
Then write down who gets which messages. Appointment reminders go to whoever will be at the door. Estimates go to the approver. If your system texts the estimate to the tenant, you have shared a price with someone who has no say in it and may not be allowed to see it.
Also record how the manager prefers to be reached. Many work from a ticketing portal, not voicemail.
Handle multiple properties on one account
A property manager might oversee twenty buildings. Do not treat each call as a new customer. Create the management company as the account and attach each property to it, with its own address, owner of record, and access notes.
On every call from that account, confirm the building first. Similar street numbers produce wrong-address visits. Capture the unit or building letter, and the manager's work order number if they use one.
Write the rule that stops the wasted visit
Put this in writing for the intake system and your office:
- No estimate gets booked until someone with authority is named, or an owner or manager has been told the visit is happening. - If the caller is a tenant, the visit is "pending manager contact" until a manager confirms. Your office makes that call. - An exception for active water entering a structure is a business decision, not an intake default. Decide in advance who may approve an emergency tarp, who pays, and how you document that authorization. Take that question to your attorney and your insurer.
The estimator's calendar should show only visits that passed this check. The rest wait in a callback queue.
Test it with hypothetical calls
Run these before you go live. Each is invented for testing.
- A tenant says the landlord "never answers" and wants a quote. Does the system capture the manager's name and number, or stop at the address? - A manager says the owner is out of state and will approve by email. Does the record show who the owner is and how approval arrives? - A caller from a management company gives a street address without a building letter. Does the system ask? - A tenant asks you to bill them. Does the system flag it and route it to a person?
Then read ten real calls a week for a month. Each visit that ended with "we couldn't get in" or "that isn't my decision" points to a missing question.
If you want help writing intake rules for tenant and property manager calls, [book a call with Chosen AI Solutions](https://chosenai.co/book).
Sources
- Texas Property Code, section 92.052, landlord's duty to repair or remedy. [texas.public.law](https://texas.public.law/statutes/tex._prop._code_section_92.052) - OSHA, 29 CFR 1926.501, duty to have fall protection. [osha.gov](https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/1926/1926.501)