alt Hacker News>and he’s losing thousands of dollars per month because he misses hundreds of calls per week. He’s under the hood all day. The phone rings, he can’t answer, the customer hangs up and calls someone else. That’s a lost job — sometimes a $450 brake service, sometimes a $2,000 engine repair — just gone because no one picked up.
How much does it cost to have an outsourced receptionist? Even if it is 500 a month if we are really talking about thousands of dollars per month lost your ROI is still crazy.
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I have a friend who runs a trade with an outsourced reception - they employ 3 full time people and the reception is about £150/mo for 9-5 manning of calls. He does the scheduling in the evenings.
If we take OP’s post at face value, presumably his brother is already at 100% capacity otherwise he wouldn’t be missing all these calls.
Plus if he’s too slammed to answer the phone he’s too slammed to take on the missing work, most likely.
A good 'Service Writer' (the term you use for this job) isn't cheap and typically aren't outsourced. Usually because your (local) competition is going to be using them too. And also because customers aren't going to trust a person that is writing service for multiple shops.
That said, a good service writer is worth their weight in gold. Also, they are typically going to be the person you end up selling the business to when you retire. Most mechanics aren't good enough at the business side of things to actually buy, but service writers are.