Gutters Reviews

In leaf season I am on a ladder from sunup till my knees start talking to me, and that is exactly when everybody in three counties decides their gutters cannot wait one more rain. I used to come down at dark to a phone full of missed calls and no messages, because people do not leave messages anymore, they just call the next man. I lost more fall work standing ten feet in the air than I ever lost doing bad work, and I do not do bad work. Launchbarr put a voice on my phone that answers while I am still up there. She sounds like a person, she asks how many stories the house is and whether the downspouts are clogged, and she books the cleaning before the homeowner has time to dial my competitor. A man two towns over told me, "Your office girl got me on the schedule Tuesday before you ever came down off that roof." I did not correct him. I just cleaned his gutters. My helper says I am a different person in October now. I am not yelling at a phone in the truck anymore. I am just tired, like a normal man with a ladder.

My husband Joe started this company with a gutter machine in a borrowed trailer and a habit of knocking ten dollars off every bid because he felt bad charging neighbors. I do the books, so I watched us stay busy and stay broke at the same time. Cleaning pays by the house, and if those houses do not call again next year you start every spring at zero, begging for work you already earned once. The reminders turned it around, and nobody had to sell me on them because I was the reminder. I used to spend April nights texting last year's list from my own phone. Now they go out alone, spring and fall, and people book like it is a dentist appointment they forgot. We have a route. Same streets, same houses, twice a year. He still knocks money off for the widow down the road. Some things the computer can have. That one is his.

Down here the call does not come on a nice day. It comes while it is raining sideways and water is pouring over the edge of the gutter like a waterfall and somebody's wife is standing in the yard in a poncho looking at it. If you do not answer in that moment, you do not get that job, and I am usually on a roof somewhere across town getting rained on myself. I have watched my phone light up in my pocket with both gloves wet and known exactly what that call was worth, and there was not a thing I could do about it. Our Google profile is what changed the math for me. Launchbarr cleaned it up, put our real service area on it, our cleaning and guard work, pictures of my crew instead of some stock photo of a house I have never seen. Now when it rains, we are the name that comes up in the neighborhoods we already work, and the calls come with addresses attached, not just a number I missed. A homeowner across town said she called us because our page had forty some reviews and a picture of a house two streets from hers. I cannot be in two places in a storm. Turns out I do not have to be, as long as people can find the real us when the water starts coming over the edge.

I am the foreman at our shop. Wyatt owns the place, I run the ladder crew. Summer used to be dead for us between spring cleanings and the fall rush, and guards were the job we wished for and almost never got. Now our finished installs get posted the same day. This July a lady watched us put guards on her neighbor's house from her porch, found the post that night, and booked hers before Friday. Then the house across the street called. I just climb. But I like climbing toward work that is already sold.

I used to lose cleaning jobs because people were not home when we pulled up, or forgot we were coming and locked the gate. Now they get a reminder the day before and a text when we are on our way. A lady down the road left the gate open and a note on the door with cookies. That never happened before. We just climb.

I am not a phone person and I am worse at remembering who is expecting us when. I would double book a cleaning in one town against an install two towns over and spend the morning apologizing. The reminders go out now without me touching anything, and the on our way text buys me ten quiet minutes to finish a miter. A customer told me it was the first time a gutter man ever told her when he would actually be there. I said, that makes two of us surprised.

My husband Dale does good work and then forgets the customer exists. Launchbarr sends a thank you after the job and checks in later, and people answer like he remembered on his own. A man whose gutters we cleaned sent his brother to us. Dale told him, "I treat people right." I let him have that one.

My husband Curtis cleans gutters all over this town and answers the phone about half the time, because the other half he is holding a scoop over a downspout. I used to get the angry calls at night from people he never got back to. Now when he misses a call, the person gets a text right away asking what they need, and most of them just book the cleaning by text while he is still on the ladder. One lady wrote back, "Well that was fast." Curtis finished her house Thursday and never knew she almost called somebody else.

I do not do social media. I barely do email. But our finished jobs get posted now, real houses, real guards we put on, and people around here keep seeing them. A man stopped me at the gas station and said, "You are the gutter fellow from my phone." I have never posted a thing in my life. The computer can have that job too.

I dispatch for Marla, who owns the company, and my least favorite job used to be chasing money. Cleanings are small tickets, so guys would finish, wave, and drive off, and I would mail an invoice and wait a month. Now the customer gets a payment link by text before the truck leaves the driveway, and most pay it from inside the house while the crew is still coiling the hose. Marla asked me what changed. I said, "We started asking while they can still see the clean gutters." She laughed, but she stopped asking me to make collection calls.

My partner Dwayne runs the machine and I run everything else, which for years meant I answered his phone too, mostly at supper. We put the answering voice on through Launchbarr and I braced for complaints, because our customers are older and they can smell a robot. Instead a man told Dwayne the girl in the office was real helpful about his sagging back run. She asked about his barn, his two story, and got him on the route. There is no girl in the office. There is me, and I was eating meatloaf when she did it.

I run the schedule here. January used to be a ghost town after the holidays. This year we sent a message to everybody we cleaned for in the last few years about guards and repairs, and the board filled up for two weeks. The owner asked where the work came from. I said, "Out of your own old invoices."

I answer the phones for my brother in law, who has run this company twenty years and believed a handshake was all the marketing a man needed. He also had eleven reviews. I watched him finish a guard install across town, all new miters sealed right, and the homeowner shook his hand and drove off, same as always. Now a review ask goes out on its own after every job, while the ladder marks are still on the driveway. The reviews started coming in with details, the crew was careful, the corners do not leak. A man picked us because one review mentioned a leaking corner fixed right. My brother in law reads them at the kitchen counter like they are the sports page. He will tell you he does not care about the internet. He asked me if any new ones came in. Twice.

I spent money on ads for years and could not have told you which dollar did what. Launchbarr shows me which ads and which pages actually bring the calls, and I can listen to what got said on the call. First thing I learned was half my calls were people asking if we clean gutters, and my old ad never said cleaning anywhere. I fixed the ad, not the crew. A man told me he found us under cleaning and stayed for the guards. I like knowing that before I spend, not after.

I am the partner who does the books and the estimates, and every fall we had the same hole. People we cleaned for two years ago forgot our name by the time the leaves came down again. The seasonal reminders go out in spring and fall now, from us, with our name on them, and folks book the cleaning like they were just waiting to be asked. A lady told me, "You are the only company that remembers my house has gutters." That was the computer remembering. I just take the compliment and schedule her Tuesdays.

People message our website at night asking about guards and then I would read it at six in the morning and they had already booked somebody else. Now the messages get answered right away, questions get asked back, how many stories, any trees over the roof, and half the time the cleaning is booked before I pour coffee. A lady wrote that she liked that we did not make her call anybody. I am somebody. I just was asleep, and for once that did not cost me a job.

I fought the maintenance plan idea for a year. I said nobody pays monthly for gutters, this is not a gym. My office girl kept saying our cleaning customers already paid us twice a year, just whenever they remembered, which was whenever something overflowed. Launchbarr set it up so the plan bills on its own, small amount every month, cleanings in spring and fall, and my regulars signed up faster than I did. I have a route I can count before the leaves even think about falling. The machine payment comes out of the same account and I do not do invoice math at midnight anymore. A customer told me it was the first bill he was happy to see, because his gutters just get done. I told him, "That makes one of us reformed." I was wrong about the plan and I do not say that much.

My wife Renae owns this company and runs it better than I ever would. She put her cleaning customers on a plan that bills a little every month and the spring route filled before the oak tassels dropped. I drive her second truck. She told me, "You worry about corners. I will worry about keeping you busy." She is doing it.

February is when gutter men in Kansas start checking the phone to see if it still works. This year Launchbarr ran a message to our past customers about the guard install and the spring cleaning together, and my phone worked fine. We booked a week of work out of people who already knew us, including a man I had not heard from in three years. He said, "You are the first ones who ever called me back about anything." We had not called him about anything in three years either. We just finally had a way to do it on purpose.

My husband Russell measures a house three times and writes the estimate once, on a paper pad, like the numbers might run off. He does beautiful work. His corners never leak. But by the time he got home and rewrote the bid, the homeowner had signed with whoever answered first, and I would watch him cross another name off the pad with that little sigh he thinks I cannot hear. I priced Launchbarr twice before I said yes. It is real money when your whole business is cleanings and one truck. Then I watched the first estimate go out by text while Russell was still backing out of the driveway. The lady got the price while her husband was still in the yard looking at the overflow stains. She wrote back in ten minutes, "Yours is the first one we can actually read." We got that install. And the next one, where the man told Russell, "You did not make me wait until Thursday to know what it costs." Russell still measures three times. He still uses the pencil pad in the yard. But the number leaves the truck now, and he does not do the sigh anymore. He told me, "I was losing jobs standing in their driveway doing math." He was.

I am bad at letting a bid die and worse at chasing one. I would quote a job, hear nothing, and decide the man thought I was too high, so I would leave him alone and lose to somebody who was not cheaper, just louder. Now the follow ups go out on their own until the person answers. A man answered the third one and said he had been in the hospital and was glad we had not given up on him. We did his whole house. I never would have sent that third message. I would have respected his silence right into another man's job.

My husband Chester has run gutters out of our garage and then a small shop for thirty years, all within twenty miles of this house, because he does not like driving and he does not like strangers. When our son wanted to start a second crew over in the next town, Chester said a man cannot watch two ladders. He cannot, and he does not have to. Both crews run on the same setup now, same booking, same reminders, and I can see both crews on the same screen. A customer over there told our son the office sure ran smooth. The office is me, at this table, watching two towns like it is one street. Chester still does not drive over there. He says the computer can visit. The work gets done and nobody asks it to.

I am sixty one and I keep my whole business in my head, which my daughter says is a filing system with a leak. She put the app on my phone, the whole business, every job, every customer, what they owe and when we are going back. I check it in the truck between houses instead of calling the shop and asking what I wrote down somewhere. On a route across town I pulled up the notes and saw the lady wanted the downspout moved a foot, from last spring, which I would have sworn nobody told me. She came out and said, "You remembered." I did not. But I am not going to correct a happy customer, and I am not going back to the notebook in the visor either. Well. Maybe as a backup.

I book the jobs here, and I used to book them out of a paper calendar that lived on a clipboard and got rained on. People can book their own cleaning on the calendar now, pick a morning, and it lands on the board where I can see it. A lady booked at eleven at night and wrote in the notes that the dog is friendly but loud. I put her first on the route so the crew hears the dog before the dog hears them. My clipboard is in a drawer. I do not miss the rain getting the last word.