Waterproofing Reviews

My wife Karen owns our basement company. She runs the office, the schedule, and me. I am the one who has spent 20 years breaking up basement floors with a jackhammer and hauling buckets of broken concrete up stairs, and it has done nothing for my phone manner. A homeowner with water coming in wants somebody calm to tell her the house is not ruined and a crew is coming. What she used to get, during storm weeks, was my voicemail, because I was in her neighbor's basement, and by the time I surfaced she had booked the big outfit with the television ads and the salesman in a polo shirt. The Tuesday night the river towns got hammered in May, a lady in the next town over called us at 9 o clock standing in two inches of water. The Voice AI Launchbarr set up answered her, got the address and the details right, and had her on the schedule for the next morning while I was still in somebody else's basement across town. She left a review later that said the girl who answered that night was the reason they waited for us instead of calling down the list. Karen read that review to me in our kitchen, bucket still in my hand. I said, "Karen, she does not even get wet and she is outselling me." I have said it three times since, which for me is a whole speech.

After a big rain I will go look at fourteen houses in three days and write fourteen numbers, and I know going in that most of those people are getting three bids and a headache. I used to accept that the ones who did not call back were just gone. Gone to the company with the sign now speech, usually. I am not a sign now man. I will measure, I will explain where the water is coming from, and I will leave my price, and that used to be the end of it because I do not have a personality that chases people around their own kitchen. The follow ups Launchbarr sends on those old quotes do the part I was never going to do. A woman in the next town over whose basement I quoted in the spring, who told me flat out she was getting other prices, got back in touch in the fall when the water came back, because we were the ones who checked in on her without pestering her. Her words. She said the big company called her four times in a week and we called like we remembered her house. We put her system in before Thanksgiving. Andre still does not chase. He just does not lose people by silence anymore, and there is a difference, and it took me about fifteen years and a computer to learn it.

I run the schedule for Tom, who can fix any basement in the valley and cannot keep a calendar if his life depended on it. His system was a paper book, a pencil, and me calling people the night before to remind them a crew was coming to tear up their floor. Now the reminders go out by themselves, and the crew sends an on the way message I do not have to nag anybody for. A homeowner one town over had her furniture moved and her cat put away before our truck turned onto her street, because the messages said when. She told me it was the first job in her house that did not start with her standing in the driveway wondering. Tom still has the paper book. He writes in it like a ritual. But it matches what the customers were told now, which, between me and these four walls, has not always been the case.

When it rains hard here, my phone used to just give up, and so did I a little. I would be down in a pit with a pump going and every call was a person I was about to lose. The AI answers them now. A man a couple towns over told me he only waited because somebody picked up who sounded like they knew what a sump was. I did the work myself the next morning, same as always. Just did not have to lose him first. Bill can live with that.

I have been waterproofing basements for twenty three years and I still answer the phone like the person on the other end caught me under a house. I am not rude on purpose. I am usually wet, or holding a sump pump, or standing in somebody's flooded basement in my socks. The night the spring storm sat on top of us, I was in a basement across the county with water coming in faster than the pump could throw it out, and my phone was up in the truck. Three people called us that night. Before Launchbarr, those three get my voicemail and book whoever answers, which is usually the big company with the commercials. The voice that answers for us now took all three calls. She got the addresses, asked where the water was coming in, asked about the pump, and put two of them on the schedule for the next morning and told the third one what to do until we got there. One of those homeowners wrote that the calmest person in her house that night was the girl on our phone. I read that review twice. I told my lead man, she does not even own boots and she kept three jobs I would have lost in my socks.

My husband Hank has fixed wet basements for sixteen years and never once asked anybody for a review. Said if the basement is dry, that is the review. The ask goes out on its own now after every job, and after the last big rain our reviews started filling up with people saying their basement stayed dry through the whole storm. Hank reads them at the kitchen table and says, fine, that is a review too.

I run a two crew waterproofing company and I give a good, honest inspection. I measure, I explain where the water is coming from, and I do not do the sign today or pay double routine the big outfits use. For years that meant I wrote careful estimates for people who liked me and then went quiet, and I was too proud to chase them. The follow ups Launchbarr sends on old estimates do the chasing with manners. A man I quoted in the spring, who told me he was getting two other prices, called back in the fall because we were the ones who checked in twice without pestering him. His words, not mine. He was about to list the house and the inspector had flagged the seepage. We did his system in two days. I still do not chase. I just do not lose people to silence anymore.

My partner runs the crews and I run everything with a keyboard, which in this business used to mean I ran nothing well. Our Google profile had a photo of somebody else's drain tile, three services we do not even offer, and hours that said we closed at five, which in a storm week is a lie we told by accident. Launchbarr rebuilt it with our real work. Real sumps, real perimeter drains, a crawl space we encapsulated last winter, every service we actually do, listed plain. Now when the rain comes sideways, the calls come off the map from people within twenty minutes of the shop. A woman told me she picked us because she scrolled our photos and saw a wall crack exactly like hers, with our repair next to it. That is the first time our own pictures ever sold a job before I opened my mouth.

I am sixty one and I used to write estimates on a clipboard in a basement and leave a carbon copy that the homeowner would lose before I got home. Then I would type it up two days later, mail it, and wonder why the company with the salesman in the clean shirt kept winning jobs I had diagnosed better. The estimate goes out from Launchbarr the same day now, by text, while the job is still fresh in the homeowner's mind. I stand in their basement, explain the hydrostatic pressure pushing water through the floor joint, tell them what I would do if it was my house, and by the time I am backing out of the driveway the whole thing is on their phone, photos and all, in words they can read twice. A lady told me she signed with us because ours was the only estimate she could actually understand, and her husband read it at work and approved it from his phone. The clean shirt company sent a folder. I sent the truth in a text. The truth won.

Dad started this company with a rotary phone and a grudge against voicemail, and I am the son who has to explain texting to him twice a year. When a call gets missed now, the customer gets a text back in about a minute saying we got their message and somebody will call. Dad said nobody wants a robot text. Then a homeowner told him she stayed with us during the big rain because that text was the only sign of life she got from any company that day. Dad now calls it the polite robot. He means it as praise.

Our old website was built by my nephew in 2014 and it had a stock photo of a smiling man in a hard hat holding a wrench. We do not own a wrench that clean and neither does he. Homeowners would land on that page and leave, and I could not blame them, because nothing on it looked like a basement we had ever stood in. The site Launchbarr built is our work and only our work. A trench drain mid install with the concrete still open. A sump pit we dug by hand because the stairs were too narrow for the machine. A man called and said, I saw the photo with the buckets of concrete coming up the stairs, that is my house, that is my problem, when can you come look. Our mess is the best salesman we have. It just needed somewhere true to stand.

I am the whole office here, and I used to spend Mondays chasing deposit checks from people whose basements we were tearing up Wednesday. The deposit link goes out with the signed estimate now. People pay on their phones and my Mondays are mine again. I chase dust now. Better class of problem.

Every waterproofing company I know lives and dies by the weather, and I was no different. Rain for three days, the phone melts. Dry for six weeks, and I am looking at two good crews and a calendar with daylight in it, wondering how long I can carry everybody before the next storm remembers us. Last winter Launchbarr ran a simple note to everybody we had ever inspected or worked for, about checking the basement before finishing it, and about the musty corner people live with for years and stop smelling. No pressure in it, just our name and an easy way to book an inspection. Fourteen people answered. Nine of them were planners, not emergencies, people finishing basements, listing houses, or tired of the smell. We booked three weeks of steady, calm, profitable work in the driest month of the year, off a list I already owned and had never once written to. One of those customers told me the note felt like we remembered her house. We did not. The system did. I am not too proud to say that is the same thing, as long as the basement ends up dry.

My wife owns this company. She built it out of a pickup and a reputation for telling people when they do NOT need a system, which in this trade is close to a religious act. I run a crew for her on my days off. What changed my mind about the whole Launchbarr setup was the booking page. Homeowners pick their own inspection time off a real calendar. A realtor booked two inspections for two different sellers on a Sunday night while we were at her kid's birthday dinner, and my wife never touched her phone. She found out Monday morning from the schedule, same as the crew did. She said that is the first Sunday in nine years the business did not sit at our table. It still ate cake. It just did not call.

I am not a computer man. I dig, I haul, I keep basements dry, and my daughter handles the rest. A message came through our website at nine at night from a lady whose sump had quit, and the system talked with her by text, asked the right questions, and had her booked for first thing. I found out at breakfast. She told me later she thought she was texting my daughter. I did not correct her. My daughter did not either.

My brother and I own this company the way brothers own things, loudly and with paperwork neither of us can find. He runs installs, I run estimates, and between us our job tracking system was a visor full of slips, a whiteboard somebody erased in April, and his memory. Every lead and every job lives on one board now. I can see what he quoted, he can see what I scheduled, and the office girl is not decoding either of us like a war correspondent. A homeowner told me we were the most organized basement company she had ever dealt with, and I nearly laughed out loud, because she was watching two brothers read the same screen for the first time in nineteen years. My brother says the board is the only partner in this company who never argues. He is not wrong.

I spent money on ads for years without knowing which ones worked. I can hear the calls now, and see which ad or page brought each one in. A homeowner on one recording asked only about our warranty. They are not buying a drain. They are buying not being fooled. I cut the rest of the ads that month.

My husband Earl fixes basements and forgets birthdays, in that order, and for years the end of a job was the end of the conversation. A thank you goes out now after every job, and a check in after the next good rain, and a lady whose basement we dried answered that check in to say her neighbor's sump had quit and she had already given him our number at church. Earl asked why nobody did that before. I told him, Earl, somebody has to ask. The machine asks now, and it is better mannered than either of us.

I have never typed a reply to a review in my life and I am not starting at fifty eight. The replies go out anyway now, and they sound like a person, thanking folks by the detail they mentioned, the dry playroom, the crew that wore shoe covers. A customer told me she read how we answered a three star review, calm and no excuses, and that is why she called us instead of the cheapest bid. I did not even know we had a three star review. The answering is handled. My hands stay in the dirt where they belong.

I am the daughter, the office, and the entire marketing department of this company, which until last year meant I posted our finished jobs when I remembered, which was twice. The posts go out on their own now, real photos of real systems. A neighbor two streets over from a job commented that she had the same water line in her laundry room, and booked an inspection from that post. Dad carried buckets past me and said, so the pictures work now. Yes, Dad. The pictures work now that somebody posts them.

I was never going to ask a customer to film a review. I jackhammer floors for a living, I do not host a television program. But the ask goes out on its own and people just do it on their phones, standing in the basement we dried. One of mine filmed after the first real storm, panned across a dry floor, and said, this used to be a pond, and now it is a playroom. His sister saw that video on our page and called us about her own house before the floor was even dry at his place. I have done nothing and received a referral with moving pictures. That is my favorite kind of marketing, the kind where the customer does the talking and I keep my hands on the jackhammer.

I dispatch for a waterproofing company and I used to dread holiday weekends, because sumps do not respect holidays and neither do the calls. The phone gets answered now, day and night, weekends included, with the details taken down right and the job waiting on the board when we come in. A man whose pump quit on a Sunday told me Tuesday that the voice that answered was the reason he did not panic call down the list. I just took the compliment for a system that lets me eat one holiday meal a year in peace.

My website used to say we do waterproofing, like that is one thing. There is a page now for each thing we actually do, sump pumps, battery backups, crawl spaces, wall cracks, with our own photos. A lady called off the sump page and said we explained the battery backup like a person, not a salesman. She booked before I finished my coffee.

I lead a crew, I do not sell anything, but I can read a schedule. We put a bunch of our past customers on a simple plan, a yearly sump check and a battery test, billed a little at a time so nobody has to think about it. The billing runs itself and the visits land on my route in a neat line instead of a panic. A customer told me last week the plan is why he sleeps through thunderstorms now. I just run the route. Even I know sleeping customers are the whole business.