Enquiries with photos: how trade businesses spend less time chasing details

A customer calls: "It's dripping under our sink." Every trade business knows what comes next. Since when? Which pipe? Where exactly do you live? Could you send a photo? The photo arrives two hours later on WhatsApp, on the personal phone of a colleague who is on another job.

The actual work hasn't started yet, and three calls and a chat are already gone.

The idea: everything that matters in one enquiry

An enquiry with photos turns this around. Your website has a short form made for the phone. The customer picks what it is about, describes what happened in two sentences and takes a few photos right from the form. Then postcode, phone number and the best time to call.

Seconds later the enquiry is on your phone: sorted, with photos, marked urgent when the customer says so. You see at a glance whether it is an emergency, whether the job is in your area and what to bring.

Try it yourself

Here is the form as it could appear on a business website, and next to it the business owner's phone. Fill it in, with your own photos if you like, and send it.

The demo runs only in your browser. Nothing is sent or stored.

What you get out of it

• The first call starts with an answer. Once you have seen the photos, you can give a price range on the phone or say which part you will bring.
• Nothing gets lost. Every enquiry lands in one list, not in the chat history of a single phone.
• You are faster than others. Many customers ask several businesses. Whoever calls back first and already knows the details has a head start.
• Fewer trips just to look. Not every job needs a visit first. Good photos are often enough for a first quote.

How the enquiry reaches your phone

There are three common ways, and which one fits depends on how you work today:

1. Telegram. The enquiry arrives as a message with photos, to several people in the business at once if needed. Fast and reliable, and the photos can be forwarded directly.
2. Email. Good when the office handles enquiries. It needs an extra notification, so the email does not sit unread in the inbox or vanish into the spam filter.
3. Push notification. The enquiry rings like an app message, without any messenger. It runs through the website itself and needs no app from the app store.

Either way, the enquiry also lands in a list, so you can look up later who asked what and when.

What to watch out for

• Keep it short. Every field that is not needed costs enquiries. Name, phone, postcode, description and photos are almost always enough.
• Shrink the photos. Phone photos are often several megabytes. The form should resize them before uploading, so it also works in a basement with poor signal.
• Data protection. Photos from people's homes are personal data. The form needs a link to your privacy notice, and old enquiries should be deleted after a fixed period.

What it costs

At Mikavo, an enquiry form with photos costs from €490 as a single solution at a fixed price, built into your existing website. Your website stays as it is, the form is added. If you do not have a website yet, both can be done together.

The best enquiry is one where you already know what to do before you call back.