Count The Calls To Staff The Front Desk

Friday night, one person on the desk. Calls stack up and one in three goes unanswered. The next Tuesday you put two on — and the phone barely rings.

⚠️ Desk staffing should come from the call count, not a feeling.

The short version

• Count incoming calls by day and by venue
• Work out what share became bookings
• Set how many calls one person handles in an hour — from your own numbers
• Put people where the calls are
• Pick up missed calls with a call-back rule

Count by day and venue

date / venue / incoming calls

⇒ Four weeks side by side shows the weekly pattern. Each venue has its own.

Share that became bookings

bookings that day ÷ client calls that day

⇒ Low-conversion days are busy phones that don't turn into bookings — look at what callers ask and how the desk answers.

⚠️ Count calls from entertainers and drivers separately. Mixed in, they drag the share down.

Calls per person

In your busiest hour, how many calls did one person take?

⇒ Your own number beats any rule of thumb — call length varies by business.

Put people where the calls are

Busy days …Fri, Sat, before holidays
Busy hours …different at each venue

⇒ Same total wage bill, more calls answered.

Missed calls

From the call log, find numbers that became neither a booking nor a call-back
⇒ call them back once the rush passes

⚠️ Withheld numbers can't be returned. Return the ones you can.

The numbers to keep

One   client calls by day and venue
Two   share that became bookings
Three calls handled per person in the busiest hour
Four  call-backs made

A sheet for the office

────────────────────────────────────
  Desk staffing

  Count: client calls by day and venue
  Divide: bookings ÷ calls
  Set: calls per person per hour (your own number)
  Shift people: to the busy days and hours
  Pick up: missed calls, called back
────────────────────────────────────

Common objections

"We know which nights are busy"

⇒ What you know and what you count often differ.

"One person copes"

⚠️ Count the calls nobody answered on the nights they "coped."

"We can't get hourly numbers"

⇒ Start daily. Hourly can be tallied by hand on the busy nights only.

This week

One   pull four weeks of calls by day and venue
Two   separate non-client calls
Three work out the booking share
Four  count calls in your busiest hour
Five  write a call-back rule

Doing it by hand, or on a screen

By hand …a tally sheet next to the phone
On screen …calls logged and graphed by day and month

⇒ tasteck logs CTI calls in a call log (time, number, whether the caller is a client, entertainer, driver or staff member, the client's name, venue, and who answered), and graphs call counts by day or month, across all venues or per venue.

⚠️ There's no hourly graph and no answered/missed flag. Work out hours from the call times in the log, and missed calls from numbers that didn't become bookings. You need a CTI phone service on the phone side.

Wrapping up

• Count calls by day and venue
• Work out the booking share
• Calls per person from your own numbers
• Staff where the calls are
• Call back what you missed

Staff the desk by the calls, and the same wage bill answers more of them.