A Debrief Page to Fill In Straight After You Hear a Demo Call

A demo call fades fast. Ten minutes later you remember that it "sounded fine", and that's about all. By the next day you can't say whether it used your firm's name, asked for a postcode, or what it did with the out-of-area caller.

A debrief page fixes that. You write down what you heard, in plain words, before you replay anything or talk to anyone. Later you can set it beside your own wording and see where the two differ.

If you haven't yet planned your test calls, this guide on what to listen for in a demo call covers the setup. This article is about what to do straight afterwards.

How to use the page

Keep a notes app or a sheet of paper next to you while you ring. Fill in the page within a few minutes of hanging up, from memory first. Only then listen back, if a recording is available, and correct anything you got wrong.

Write what it said, not what you felt. "Sounded professional" is no use to you later. "Said 'thanks for calling' and never gave our name" is.

The page itself

Copy this and fill it in for each call you make.

Call details

• Which test job did I use (e.g. a leaking stopcock, a dead socket circuit, a roof quote)?
• Which postcode did I give: inside my patch or outside it?
• Was it set up as my company or a generic sample?

The opening

• Exact words it used to greet me:
• Did it say my trading name? Clearly? Y / N
• Did it make clear it was an assistant rather than a person? Y / N
• Pace: too fast, too slow, about right?

The questions

• List the questions in the order it asked them:
• Did it ask what the problem was, the postcode, and how and when to reach me?
• When I gave a vague answer, what did it do?
• What did it do with the out-of-area postcode?

Prices and limits

• Did it quote anything? What exactly?
• Was that a figure I had told it to give?
• When I asked something it couldn't know, did it take a message or guess?

The urgent call

• What did I say to signal an emergency?
• How did it respond? Did it treat the call differently from a routine one?
• Would I be comfortable with a real customer in that situation hearing this?

Gut check

• One thing that made me trust it:
• One thing that made me wince:

Compare it with your own wording

The page has a second job. Next to your notes, write down how you would handle each point if you picked up the phone yourself. Then look for gaps.

• Your greeting. If you always say the name a certain way, such as dropping "Ltd" or saying "and Son", the demo should match it.
• Your service area. Check that the wording you'd use to turn down a faraway job is the wording it used, or close to it.
• What you'll quote. If you'd never give a price over the phone beyond a call-out charge, make sure the demo didn't stray into figures you wouldn't stand behind.
• What counts as urgent. Your own definition of an emergency may be narrower or wider than the demo's. Write yours down in a sentence.

Anywhere your wording and the demo's differ, mark it as one of three things: fine as it is, needs changing before going live, or a question to put to the provider.

Turn the notes into a short change list

Once you've filled in the page for a few calls, pull out the repeats. A problem that showed up on every call matters more than a one-off. Boil it down to a list of no more than five items, each phrased as an action:

1. Give the exact spelling and pronunciation of the trading name.
2. Add the list of postcodes we don't cover.
3. Confirm the only price it may quote.
4. Write out what an emergency means for us.
5. Decide who gets the message and how quickly.

Send that list to the provider before you sign anything, and ask them to show you the changes on another call. Fill in a fresh page for that second call too. It's the quickest way to tell whether your changes actually took.

Keep the pages

Don't bin them once you've decided. After going live, they're a baseline. If a customer later says the call felt off, you can pull out the page and check whether it's something you saw in the demo or something new. A few minutes of writing now saves a lot of guesswork later.