Storm Call Surge Playbook for Restoration Companies: Before, During and After

How should a restoration company handle a storm call surge?

Handle a storm call surge in three stages. Before the storm, set up the phones: extra people or an answering layer, a storm greeting, text replies and a triage order everyone knows. During it, sort calls by danger, not by who called first: injuries and gas, then openings with water coming in, then trees on structures, then damage only. After it, give every caller an honest callback window and work the list in that order. The companies that come out of a storm with more jobs and fewer angry reviews are rarely the ones with the most trucks. They're the ones whose phones kept answering and whose callers knew what was happening.

This playbook is for owners and office managers of water, fire and storm restoration companies. It's a checklist you can work through when a freeze or a named storm shows up in the forecast. We build Botcadence, which sells an AI restoration answering service, so treat our section at the end with that in mind. Everything else works whatever answers your phones.

72 hours before: set up the phones

The storm is the worst time to change how your phones work. Do it while the forecast is still a forecast.

Phones and forwarding

• Decide who answers each line, day and night, for the next week. Write it down with a backup for every slot.
• Test the overflow path. Call your main line while it's busy and after hours from a number nobody knows. Make sure the second caller doesn't land in a full voicemail box.
• Clear the voicemail box, and switch the greeting to your storm version (below).
• If you use an answering service or an AI agent, ask how many calls it can answer at once on your account, and get the number in writing. Then decide what happens to the call after that: busy signal, voicemail or a second number.

The intake

• Print the storm script for everyone who might answer: office staff, project managers, the owner's spouse. Our storm damage intake call script is free, with a Spanish version.
• Agree the triage order (next section) and put it on one page.
• Set up a shared list, a spreadsheet or your job software, with one row per caller: name, number, address, damage, opening yes or no, water coming in yes or no, callback window given.

Crews and materials

• Count tarps, plywood, fasteners and drying equipment. Your callback promises depend on what you can actually deliver.
• Decide your callback windows for the first night and the first three days. You'll read them to callers, so pick ones you can keep.

The day of: triage the queue

When the calls start, the instinct is to take them in order. Don't. Sort them by what gets worse if you wait.

Three safety questions on every call, even when the queue is long:

• Downed power lines. Ready.gov warns that downed or underground lines can electrically charge floodwater. Tell callers to stay away from the lines and any water near them, and to report them to the power company.
• Generators. The CPSC and Ready.gov say generators must run outside, at least 20 feet from windows, doors and vents, never in a garage. Anyone with a headache, dizziness, nausea or confusion should get to fresh air and call 911.
• The roof. Tell callers to stay off it and take photos from the ground. Tarping is your crew's job.

Honest wait-time messages you can copy

When you can't answer every call, tell every caller the truth in every channel. These lines give a realistic window and a safety instruction. Change the words in [brackets].

Voicemail greeting (storm)

You've reached [Company]. We're working through a large number of storm calls. If anyone is hurt, or you smell gas, hang up and call 911. Otherwise, leave your name, number, address, and whether water is coming inside, and we'll call you back by [time or window]. You can also text this number.

Spanish voicemail line

Comunicó con [Compañía]. Estamos atendiendo muchas llamadas por la tormenta. Si alguien está herido o huele a gas, cuelgue y llame al 911. Si no, deje su nombre, número, dirección y si está entrando agua a la casa, y le regresamos la llamada antes de [hora o plazo]. También puede mandar un mensaje de texto a este número.

Text reply to a missed call

[Company] here. We missed your call because of the storm volume. Reply with your address and whether water is coming inside, and we'll put you on our list. We're calling back by [time]. If anyone is hurt or you smell gas, call 911.

Spanish text reply

Le escribe [Compañía]. No pudimos contestar por la cantidad de llamadas de la tormenta. Responda con su dirección y si está entrando agua, y lo agregamos a nuestra lista. Le llamamos antes de las [hora]. Si alguien está herido o huele a gas, llame al 911.

Website banner

Storm update: we're tarping and boarding up in [areas]. Water coming inside goes first. Call or text [number]; we're returning calls within [window].

Update the window in all three places at least once a day. A window that's wrong by a day costs more trust than a long window that's right.

Staffing the phones, and the capacity math

Most storm-week phone problems come down to simple arithmetic.

One person on one line can take about 60 ÷ your average call length in minutes calls an hour, if the calls come in evenly and nobody takes a break. With 5-minute storm intakes, that's 12 calls an hour at best. Calls don't arrive evenly, so the real number is lower, and every call that arrives while the line is busy goes to voicemail or a busy signal.

To work out what you need:

1. Estimate the peak hour. Your phone log from the last big storm tells you how many calls arrived in the busiest hour. If you don't have one, start from your normal busiest hour and assume it multiplies.
2. Divide by calls per person per hour. That's how many people or lines you need answering at the peak to avoid sending callers to voicemail.
3. Add a layer for overflow. Forward busy and unanswered calls to a second line, an answering service or an AI agent.

Ask any answering service or AI vendor two questions, and get the answers in writing:

• How many of my calls can you answer at the same time?
• What does the caller hear when you're past that number?

Live answering services share operators across clients, and in a regional storm every restoration company, roofer and plumber forwarding to the same service gets busier at once. AI products have account limits too. A vendor who says "unlimited" without giving a number hasn't answered the question.

What a storm month costs on the phones

Per-minute pricing is where storm months hurt. Our restoration answering service cost guide priced 16 services at normal volume and in a storm month with three times the calls, on the plan you'd already have. In that model, the AI plans stayed under $1,000 for the storm month, while the live per-minute plans passed $2,300, before after-call work, hold time and holiday fees at the services that bill them.

Two things to check on your own contract before the season:

• Rounding and after-call work. A service that rounds every call up to the next minute and bills the time the operator spends writing it up costs more per call than the headline rate.
• What happens when you go over. Some plans move you to a higher tier, some bill overage per minute or per call. Know which before the storm, not on the invoice.

After the storm: pricing, paperwork and reputation

Pricing. Many states have price-gouging laws that apply after a declared emergency. Florida's, for example, bans unconscionable price increases on essential goods and services once the governor declares a state of emergency, and the Florida Attorney General compares charges with the average price in the 30 days before the declaration. Check your state's rules, and make sure everyone on the phones knows not to quote storm prices. The crew lead prices the work on site.

Paperwork. Insurers will ask what was done to protect the property. Record the time of each call, what the caller reported and when the tarp or board-up went on. A shared list from the first day makes this easy.

Reputation. The reviews that follow a storm are mostly about communication. Callers who were told "we'll call you by 6 pm tomorrow" and got that call are rarely the angry ones. Callers who heard voicemail three times are.

Debrief within two weeks:

• How many calls came in, by day and by hour?
• How many reached voicemail or a busy signal?
• How many became jobs, and how many went to a competitor?
• What would you change in the script, the greeting and the staffing?

How Botcadence fits a storm plan

Botcadence's restoration answering service is an answering layer you can turn on for overflow and after hours:

• It answers forwarded calls up to your account's concurrent-call limit. Calls past that limit aren't answered by the agent, so plan where they go.
• It runs the storm intake in English or Spanish: the safety questions, openings, water coming in, trees, road access and insurance.
• It gives your callback window, in the words you set for the current storm.
• It escalates the urgent ones. For openings with water coming in, it starts your on-call escalation, which texts and calls your crew leads until someone replies.
• It bills from your monthly minutes, in a 15-second first step and then 30-second steps, on the Voice AI plan at $299 a month with 1,500 minutes; see pricing.

See the AI receptionist for restoration page for what it writes into your systems, and the after-hours answering service page for the forwarding modes. To set up forwarding, our call forwarding guide has the carrier codes.