TowingBossPro Blog — Roadside Assistance

Roadside Call Intake: The Questions to Ask Before a Truck Rolls

Most bad roadside calls go wrong in the first ninety seconds. The driver goes to the wrong side of the highway. The tire call has no spare. The lockout turns out to be a car with the keys in the trunk and a push-button start. None of that is the driver's fault. It is an intake problem, and it is fixable with a short list of questions asked the same way every time.

This article is the checklist. Print it, tape it to the desk, and build your call record around it.

Roadside Assistance Software: The Complete Guide for Towing Companies Running Service Calls laid out the five jobs roadside software has to do. Intake is the first, and it decides how the other four go. A complete call means the dispatcher can assign it with confidence, the driver can find the vehicle, the customer gets an accurate ETA, and the invoice names the right car.

In TowingBossPro, intake goes straight into the call record: the pickup address, the drop-off address if there is one, the vehicle details and notes for the driver. Whatever the person on the phone writes down is what the driver sees in the app.

Question One: Exactly Where Are You?

"On 35 near the outlet mall" is not a location. Push for specifics. Which direction of travel? Which side of the road? Nearest exit, mile marker or cross road? In a parking lot, which row and which end of the building? If they are in a parking garage, which level?

If they truly do not know, ask them to text a location pin. Two-way texting keeps that message on the call instead of on someone's personal phone. Put the refined details in the driver notes, because the map pin alone will not tell the driver the car is on the far side of a concrete divider.

Question Two: What Is the Vehicle?

Year, make, model and color, at minimum. Plate if they have it handy. The VIN matters more for tows and impounds than for a jump, but it costs nothing to capture when the customer is reading off a registration anyway.

Color matters more than people think. At night on a crowded lot, "silver Camry" turns a five-minute search into a thirty-second one. And the year and model tell the driver things they need: where the battery sits, whether the spare is under the floor or under the truck bed, whether the car needs a specific lug key.

Question Three: What Exactly Is Wrong?

Make the customer describe it, then translate it into the right roadside type:

• Will not start: does it click, crank slowly, or do nothing? Lights on or dead?
• Locked out: where are the keys, and is anyone or any animal inside?
• Flat tire: which tire, is there a usable spare, and is the lug lock key in the car?
• Out of fuel: gas or diesel? Did it run out or did it stall?
• Stuck: in what, how deep, and how far from solid ground?

A child or pet locked in a hot car changes priority. If there is any emergency, the customer should call emergency services first. Note it on the call either way.

Question Four: Is Anyone in Danger Right Now?

Ask whether the customer is in a safe spot. On a shoulder, tell them to stay in the vehicle with their seatbelt on or move well away from traffic, whichever your company and local guidance recommends. Note whether the vehicle is in a travel lane. Rules for what to do vary by area, so set your own script with your local requirements in mind and stick to it.

This is also the moment to set the expectation: "I am getting a driver assigned now, and you will get a text when they are on the way."

Question Five: Name, Phone and Payment

Get a name and a mobile number that can receive texts, because that number is how the on-the-way text, the arrival text and the invoice reach them. If they have called before, the customer record and repeat locations will pull up their history. Tell them up front how payment works, so there is no surprise on scene. If they are a commercial account, put the call under that account so the invoice lands in the right place.

Then save the call. It drops onto the waiting list map, ready to assign.

Make the Checklist the Default

The point is consistency. Every dispatcher, every shift, the same questions in the same order. New hires learn it in an afternoon, and drivers stop calling the office to ask what color the car is. When the call record has a place for every answer, the checklist enforces itself.

The next article covers what happens after intake, on the waiting list map. To see how the call record fits with dispatch, texting and payment, visit the roadside assistance software overview.