Estimate Follow-Up
Estimate Follow-Up Service for Contractors
You already did the hard part: the site visit, the measuring, the number. Deptly does the part nobody has time for, and follows every estimate until it becomes a yes or a no.
What is an estimate follow-up service?
An estimate follow-up service takes over after you send a quote: it confirms the estimate arrived, answers the customer's questions, checks in on the decision, and keeps a respectful cadence going until the bid becomes a yes or a no. Deptly runs it as a managed service in your company's voice, with human oversight and rules you approve, for a published $700 a month. It is a service, not software: the follow-up happens whether or not you had a free evening.
Most Estimates Die of Silence
Not to a competitor's price. To nobody calling back.
Ask contractors how they follow up on estimates and the honest answer is: once, maybe, then back on the tools. The quote gets written at the kitchen table after dinner, sent, and then the next job takes over. The customer had a question they never asked, or got a second bid, or just needed a nudge, and the work went to whoever showed up in their inbox a second time.
The tools aisle doesn't fix this. Templates still need sending. CRM reminders still need a free hour that doesn't exist. Follow-up fails in the trades for one reason: it's a job, and nobody owns it. Deptly owns it.
What Following an Estimate Actually Means
A cadence you approve, in your voice, that ends in an answer.
Day 2: the confirmation
A short call or text in your company's voice: did the estimate arrive, does anything in it need explaining. Half of dead bids die here, at a question the customer never asked out loud.
Day 5 to 7: the check-in
Where does the decision stand, is anything holding it up, has the scope changed. Objections and competitor quotes get captured and routed to you instead of ending the conversation.
Day 10 to 14: the honest nudge
Your schedule is filling; if they want the work done this season, now is the time to say so. True, not a pressure script, and it is the message that closes the fence-sitters.
The answer, either way
Every estimate ends as a yes, a no, or a documented not-now with a follow-up date. A no with a reason is worth more than silence: it tells you about your pricing, and it stops you re-quoting dead work.
What's Included
- Every outgoing estimate logged with its amount, scope, and decision date
- Follow-up calls and texts in your company's voice, on a cadence you approve
- Customer questions answered from your scope notes; anything new routed to you
- Objections and competitor-quote intel captured, not lost in a truck cab
- A weekly brief: every open bid, where it stands, what happens next
- Not-nows parked with a real date and revived when the date comes
Estimate follow-up usually runs alongside call answering as part of the same engagement: Deptly's AI receptionist catches the new calls while the follow-up works the bids you've already sent. The wider picture of lead handling is in AI lead follow-up.
Estimate Follow-Up Questions
Software gives you templates and reminders that you still have to send between jobs, which is exactly the gap that kills follow-up in the first place. Deptly is a service: the follow-up happens whether or not you had a free hour, a person oversees the AI doing it, and what you get is the answer, not another dashboard to check.
Chasing annoys people; answering doesn't. The cadence is spaced in days, every touch carries something useful (confirmation, an answer, a real schedule note), and anyone who says stop is stopped. Most homeowners read prompt follow-up as professionalism, and most contractors' real problem is the opposite one: bids that never hear a second word.
Yes. It runs on estimates for roofing, HVAC, plumbing, excavation, tree work, remodeling, and any trade that quotes first and wins later. The cadence and scripts are set per trade during onboarding, because a storm-season roof bid and a spring landscaping bid do not age the same way.
The reason gets captured and the file gets closed, which is a result: you learn whether you lost on price, timing, or trust, and you stop spending attention on dead bids. If the no is really a not-now, it's parked with a date and comes back to life when the date arrives.
Deptly publishes its pricing: $700 a month, month to month, with a $1,500 one-time setup. Estimate follow-up is usually one of the one or two jobs Deptly carries end to end for that price. Most contractors close rates on followed bids make the arithmetic short; the pricing page lays it out in full.
No. Every script and cadence is approved by you before it runs, price questions outside your approved answers route to you, and bids you'd rather leave alone are marked and left alone. The weekly brief shows you every word that mattered.
How many open bids are out there right now?
Thirty minutes, no pressure. Bring the number; we'll talk through what following them would actually recover.