JunkBossPro Blog — Online Booking & Leads

Junk Removal Booking Software: The Complete Guide to Getting, Answering and Booking Jobs

Junk removal is a lead business. Very few customers need you every week. Most need you once: the garage finally gets cleaned out, the old couch finally goes, the house finally sells. That means the company that wins is the one that catches the request, answers it first and gets it on a truck before the customer calls the next name on the list.

This guide walks through the whole booking side of a junk removal company, from the moment someone fills out a form on your website to the moment the job shows up on the crew's phone in route order.

What Booking Software Has to Do for a Junk Removal Company

The full overview of the lead side lives on the JunkBossPro junk removal booking software page. In short, booking software for this trade has four jobs:

• Catch the request. From your website, your Google listing, your ads and your past customers, into one place.
• Get the right details. What's going, roughly how much, where it is, how hard it is to reach and when the customer is around.
• Answer fast. A text back while the customer is still thinking about it.
• Book it smart. Put the job on the truck and the day where it fits, not just the next open slot.

Spreadsheets and paper can do some of this, and generic field-service software can do some more. The gap is usually in the middle: requests arrive in an email inbox, get copied by hand into a client list, and then sit until someone remembers them.

Step One: A Request Form on Your Own Website

JunkBossPro gives you a request form to put on your own website. When a homeowner fills it out, the submission lands in Form Responses inside JunkBossPro, not in somebody's personal email. Nothing depends on one person checking one inbox.

The form always asks for name, email and phone, and you switch on the other fields you want: Service Address, Preferred Contact Method, How Did You Hear About Us?, Service(s) Interested In, Best Time to Reach, Property Details and Message / Details. Then the text on your page tells customers what to write in the two open boxes:

• Message / Details: what's going, in plain words (“old sectional, a treadmill and about ten boxes”), plus a rough guess at the size: a single item, a few items, a quarter, half or full truck
• Property Details: access, such as curbside, garage, basement, upstairs or behind a gate
• Service Address for the map, and Best Time to Reach for your reply
• Photos by text afterward, if the job is hard to describe

Each of those answers saves a phone call. The customer's load guess won't be exact, and it doesn't need to be. It tells you whether you are pricing a mattress or a whole basement, which is enough to send a sensible first reply. Which fields to switch on, and what to ask for, are covered in What to Ask on a Junk Removal Request Form: Items, Load Guess, Address, Access and Best Time.

Step Two: The Sign-Up Form for Customers Who Are Ready

Some customers don't want a conversation. They know what they want gone, they know your prices from your website, and they just want it booked. For them there is a sign-up form that captures a card on file.

A sign-up lands in Form Responses like a request, and one click converts it into a client record with the name, phone, email and address already filled in. The card is on file, so when the crew taps Complete on the job, the card can be charged and the invoice sent without anyone chasing a payment.

Step Three: Answer Fast by Text

Most people who fill out a junk removal form are also filling out somebody else's. The first reply that gives them a clear next step has a real edge. JunkBossPro includes two-way texting from the office, so you can answer a new request within minutes:

• “Hi Dana, thanks for the request. A couch, treadmill and boxes in the garage usually runs as a quarter to half load. We have Thursday morning open. Want me to send a price?”
• “Got your mattress pickup. Is it upstairs or ground floor? I can have a truck there tomorrow afternoon.”

Replies come back into the same conversation in the office, so whoever is on the phone today can see what was said yesterday. Every plan includes a monthly text allowance: 500, 1,000 or 2,000 texts sent and received on Start, Pro and Crew, in the US and Canada.

Step Four: Estimates From Your Own Service List

JunkBossPro does not put an instant price calculator on your website. Junk is too varied for that: a “couch” can be a loveseat or a sleeper sofa coming up a basement stairway. Instead you price the job yourself from your own service list.

You set up the services you sell: single item, quarter, half, three-quarter and full truck loads, mattresses, appliances, hot tubs, pianos, sheds, estate and garage cleanouts, apartment trash-outs, same-day service, whatever your company offers. An estimate is built from those lines. The customer approves it online, and the approved estimate becomes the scheduled job. Follow-up emails go out on open estimates, and estimate templates save time on the jobs you quote every week.

For big cleanouts, you may want to see the job first. An on-site estimate visit is just a job on the schedule, so it goes on a truck and a day like anything else.

Step Five: The Waiting List Is Your Booking Queue

Here is where junk removal booking differs from most trades. You don't just want the next open slot. You want the slot where the truck is already nearby and has room left.

The Waiting List shows every request that isn't booked yet on a live map and a list: single items, cleanouts, on-site estimate visits. When you plan tomorrow, you can see that a recliner pickup is a mile from a booked garage cleanout and drop it onto the same truck. You can put big cleanouts on the truck that runs big jobs and keep single items on the other.

Once jobs are booked, the dispatch board shows them by day and by truck. You can auto-route Closest First or Furthest First from the yard, set the order by hand, and the crew's phone shows the same order.

Step Six: The Customer App Keeps Them Coming Back

Every customer gets the customer app. They can request service again, sign up for services and pricing, see their visit day, watch the truck on a live map (“You're stop 12 of 20 — the crew is 5 stops away”), update their card, pay invoices, rate the job and refer someone.

They also choose their alerts: the night before, when they're next, and when the crew arrives. A customer who knows the truck is coming is a customer who has the garage door open.

Partners, Repeats and the Seasonal Rush

Three more sources of bookings are worth planning for:

• Repeat customers. The person who had you clear the garage will need you again when the basement fills up. They are already a client with a card on file.
• Realtors and property managers. They need trash-outs at listings, closings and move-outs. One client can hold many addresses, and a partner set to Monthly billing gets one statement each month with every address on its own line.
• Seasons. Spring cleaning, moving season and the weeks after the holidays all bring bursts of requests. The forms, texting and Waiting List are how you handle a busy week without losing leads.

Putting It Together

A request comes in from your website. You text back in minutes, price it from your service list, and the customer approves online. The job sits on the Waiting List until you drop it onto the truck that will be nearby. The customer gets the night-before alert, the crew sees the load and items on their phone, and the card on file is charged when the job is done.

The rest of this series covers each step in detail, starting with The Website Request Form: Getting Junk Removal Jobs From Your Own Site. To see all of it on one page, visit the JunkBossPro junk removal booking software overview, or click around the live demo company at my.junkbosspro.com/demo.html.