JunkBossPro Blog — Online Booking & Leads

What to Ask on a Junk Removal Request Form: Items, Load Guess, Address, Access and Best Time

A request that says “need junk removed, call me” is a phone call, a callback, a voicemail and another callback before you know whether it's a mattress or a whole basement. A request that tells you what's going, roughly how much, where it is, how hard it is to reach and when the customer is around can get a useful reply in one text. Getting that second kind of request comes down to which fields you switch on and what you ask customers to write in them.

The Form Is Your First Phone Call

Putting the form on your own site, and making sure submissions land in one shared list, is covered in The Website Request Form: Getting Junk Removal Jobs From Your Own Site. This guide is about what goes on it.

JunkBossPro's request form always asks for name, email and phone. On top of that it has a set of fields you can switch on or off: Service Address, Preferred Contact Method, How Did You Hear About Us?, Service(s) Interested In, Best Time to Reach, Property Details, and Message / Details. You don't write your own questions. You choose which of these to show, and then use the text on your web page, right above the form, to tell customers what to put in the two open boxes.

Which Fields to Switch On

For most junk removal companies, the right set looks like this:

• Service Address: on. It puts the request on the Waiting List map.
• Service(s) Interested In: on.
• Property Details: on. This is where access goes.
• Message / Details: on. This is where the items and the load guess go.
• Best Time to Reach: on. So your first text or call lands when they can answer.
• Preferred Contact Method: on.
• How Did You Hear About Us?: your call. Useful for tracking marketing, covered below.

Short forms get finished. If a field doesn't help you price or book the job, leave it off.

Items and a Load Guess: the Message / Details Box

The most important information is what's going. Put a line on your page above the form that tells customers exactly what to write in Message / Details:

• “In the Details box, tell us what you want gone and roughly how much. For example: old couch, two mattresses, a treadmill and about ten boxes, maybe a quarter of a truck.”

Customers describe junk in their own words, and that is fine. “Washer and dryer in the garage” tells you nearly everything about a job. Asking for a rough size, like a few items, a pickup bed, a quarter, half or full truck, helps too. The guess will be off. It doesn't matter. It tells you whether you are pricing a single item or a cleanout, and that decides whether your first reply is a price, a range, or an offer of an on-site estimate. Tell them a guess is fine and “not sure” is fine too, so nobody quits the form over it.

Access: the Property Details Box

Access changes the price and the crew size more than almost anything else. A sofa at the curb and a sofa in a third-floor walk-up are not the same job. Ask customers to use Property Details for where the items are and how to get to them:

• “In Property Details, tell us where the items are: curb, driveway, garage, basement, upstairs, or behind a gate. Mention stairs, elevators, gate codes or dogs.”

Answers like “narrow stairway,” “gate code at the community entrance” or “dog in the yard” belong on the address once the request becomes a client, so the crew sees them on their phone.

For anything hard to describe, invite photos by text: “Easier to show us? Text a couple of photos after you submit.” Your reply comes from the office with two-way texting, so the conversation stays with the request.

The Address and the Best Time

Ask for the full street address in Service Address, not just a city. If you work a defined service area, say so above the form.

Best Time to Reach tells you when to text or call. For when the work itself needs to happen, ask in your page text for the details box to include it: “Moving out on a certain date? Put it in the details.” Deadline requests, like a move-out or a closing, are your most time-sensitive leads, and a fast, clear answer usually wins them. Also ask whether items can be left out, since a curbside job can slot into a route any time.

Lead Source, and What to Leave Off

How Did You Hear About Us? is handy if you want to know which marketing works. If you switch it on, tag the client with the source when you convert the request. That is covered in Tagging Junk Removal Leads by Source: Knowing Which Marketing Books Jobs.

Leave out anything you can learn later, like a budget or a list of every item in the house. If a job is hard to price from the description, ask by text or book an on-site estimate visit.

From the Answers to a Booked Job

With the right fields on and clear instructions for the two open boxes, you can usually send a first reply with a price range and an open day. The request sits in Form Responses, then on the Waiting List map until it is booked. For how the form fits with texting, estimates and the Waiting List, visit the JunkBossPro junk removal booking software page.