After hail, Penny’s roofing answering service offers inspection slots on the route days you set.

A storm lead becomes a Jobber Request or a Housecall Pro customer and unscheduled job, with the address, visible damage, storm date and carrier attached. HubSpot can hold the lead for your sales team. Your office confirms field-service scheduling; Google Calendar or Outlook can book an inspector’s available appointment during the call. Pro supplies text confirmations and photo-by-text; Zapier and signed webhooks export the intake.

Penny starts at $29 a month on Starter with annual billing, with Pro at $99 adding the on-call schedule, text confirmations, and photo-by-text for the driveway shots. Paid plans include monthly minutes; usage above the allowance is billed at the plan’s per-minute rate. The answering service cost guide compares plans, included minutes, and usage charges.

That the coverage answer comes from the adjuster, and that she will note it as a storm claim with the storm date so the inspector brings the documentation the adjuster will want. She can explain what ACV and RCV mean in plain terms if the caller asks, and she captures the carrier and whether a claim is open. She does not interpret a policy, predict an approval, or tell anyone whether to file.

She says that is not something the company does, takes the caller’s name and number, and flags the call for you. She does not argue the point or explain the law; the pack she works from treats a deductible waiver as fraud in many states, and the flag is so you can decide how to handle the caller. The same flag goes on anyone who says they already inspected your roof without being invited, or who pushes to sign today.

Yes, and she sorts them before she offers a slot. A caller with shingle pieces in the yard and a dry ceiling is an inspection, and she books it into the block your inspector is already spending in that subdivision. A caller with water dripping through the drywall is a tarping call, and she asks about electrical, gives the safety step, alerts your on-call lead, and books the crew’s first available slot. A caller who says “inspection” and then mentions the ceiling is sagging gets treated as the leak.

Every booking carries the service address, and you tell her which mornings your inspector is working which side of town. When a storm call comes in from Heron Crossing, she offers the slots in the Heron Crossing block, not the next open slot on the calendar, so the truck works one street at a time instead of crossing town between driveways. On a quiet week she books the next open slot like any other call.

The service address, the caller’s name and callback number, what they can see from the ground in their own words, whether there is water inside and which room, the storm date, the carrier, whether a claim is open, and the adjuster date if one is set. Roof age, stories, and material when the caller knows them. All of it lands on the job in your CRM and in the transcript, so the inspector arrives knowing what the homeowner already saw.

She captures the install year if the caller knows it, what they are seeing now, and whether it is leaking, then books the visit and marks the ticket as a workmanship warranty question for your office. She does not tell the caller whether the issue is covered under your workmanship warranty or the manufacturer’s, because that takes an inspector on the roof, and she explains that the two warranties cover different things if the caller asks which one applies.

If you tell her to. A call about a TPO or EPDM membrane on a commercial building can route to whoever handles low-slope work, or to you, instead of the residential inspection board. She still captures the address, the building contact, what is leaking and where, and whether it is active, and she flags the ticket as commercial so the right estimator picks it up.

An active leak follows your safety and on-call rules. Water near electrical equipment or a sagging ceiling gets a keep-clear instruction and the on-call lead; injury or immediate danger takes the emergency-services step first. Penny never asks callers to climb the roof or tarp at height. See Emergency Rules for the escalation workflow.