Virtual moving surveys: how to run the call and build the inventory.

Not every move needs one. The line is three bedrooms. A house that size holds more than anyone can list over the phone, and the gap between what the customer remembers and what is in the garage is where estimates go wrong.

Sales books the survey. The moment it is booked it goes on the survey board with the job number, the addresses the customer has, and the move dates. The surveyor should never open a call without knowing who is on the other end.

• A stable connection and a headset. If your video freezes, the customer stops walking.
• A video link the customer can open on a phone, because the phone is what they carry through the house.
• The call checklist in front of the surveyor. Not learned by heart. In front of them.
• A trained surveyor: someone who knows what a crew needs to hear, not whoever is free.
• A short message to the customer beforehand: charge the phone, turn on the lights, open the closets and the garage.

The order matters. Packing and the move overview come first because they change what you look for in every room. Access comes after the rooms because by then you know what has to fit through the door.

1. 1

   Introduce yourself and the purpose

   Your name, the company, and what the next few minutes are for: seeing everything that is moving, so the price is right the first time.

2. 2

   Say that the call is recorded

   Tell the customer the survey is recorded for accuracy and training, and wait for the yes. The recording is what the inventory gets built from.

3. 3

   Settle the packing

   Full pack, partial, or none. If it is not a full pack, decide now who packs the TVs, the mirrors, and the art. Those are the items each side assumes the other is handling.

4. 4

   Get the move overview

   One address to another, or extra stops? Anything going to storage? Anything to be thrown away? Confirm the addresses and the dates.

5. 5

   Cover third-party services

   Anything connected to a water or gas line has to be disconnected before move day, by the customer or by a technician they hire: a fridge with an ice maker, the washer, a gas dryer, a gas stove. Say it on the call so it is not a surprise at 8 am.

6. 6

   Walk room by room

   Every room, in the order the house is laid out, with closets and cabinets open. Ask about the things people forget: lamps, rugs, and the pictures and mirrors on the walls.

7. 7

   Stop at bulky and high-value items

   The piano, the safe, gym equipment, a large TV, a stone table top, anything the customer calls valuable. Get a clear look, ask for a measurement when size matters, and note how it has to be handled.

8. 8

   Check access at both ends

   Truck access, elevator, stairs, the walk from the door to the truck, and whether the building wants a certificate of insurance. Then the same questions for the destination.

9. 9

   Ask about special cases

   Military moves are the common one: is either address on a base? Add anything else that changes how dispatch plans the day.

10. 10

    Close the survey

    Remind the customer about the attic, the basement, and everything outside. Go through the items you cannot take. Then say when the estimate will arrive.

Access is where a correct inventory still produces a wrong price. The furniture is the same on the third floor. The day is not.

The call collects. The inventory prices. Someone has to sit down with the recording and build the item list (many movers call it the cube sheet). In a small company that is the same person who ran the call. Keep it a separate step anyway, with its own clock.

1. 1

   Watch the whole recording

   Start to finish, before you type anything. The item mentioned in the last minute often changes the job.

2. 2

   List items by room

   Every item goes under the room it was seen in. Decide once whether boxes are counted per room or in one group of their own, and do it the same way every time. A move with extra stops gets its own set of rooms for each stop.

3. 3

   Note the access for each room

   Second floor, basement, narrow stairs. It shows the crew where the hard carries are.

4. 4

   Override the standard size when it is wrong

   Your item list has a normal size for a sofa. When this sofa is clearly bigger, change the number instead of trusting the default.

5. 5

   Tag what needs attention

   Packing, bulky, crating, fragile, high value, not going. The full list is below.

6. 6

   Attach a screenshot to every notable item

   The bed with drawers, the TV, the treadmill. A picture answers the crew lead's question before it is asked.

7. 7

   Save the access pictures

   The driveway, the street, the building entrance. Take them from the recording, from street view, or from the home's online listing.

8. 8

   Write the notes, then check the work

   The type of home and everything sales and dispatch should know. Then one read-through for missing rooms and missing tags before anything is sent.

A tag turns a line in the inventory into an instruction. Use the same short list on every job, so sales, dispatch, and the crew read it the same way.

Treat the sizes as starting points and write your own down. Two people tagging the same living room should produce the same list.

Three people touch a survey: the salesperson who books it, the surveyor who runs the call, and the estimator who builds the inventory. Without a board, the customer is the one who finds out it got stuck.

Add three more for the jobs that leave the straight line. Need more info: the surveyor or the estimator is missing something (a room not seen, an address, a measurement), and sales gets it from the customer. Canceled: the customer cancels on the day. Revision: something changes after the survey, and the inventory has to be updated and sent again.

The surveyor’s notes go on the board in a fixed order, the same way every time, so the estimator never has to hunt for the room nobody saw.

Addresses: origin confirmed, destination not known yet
Driveway: shown on video, large truck can reach
Bulky, fragile, antique: upright piano (living), glass top (dining)
Not going: washer, dryer, patio set
Rooms not seen: attic
Packing: partial, kitchen and art
Other: elevator at destination must be reserved

The estimator has seen the whole home on video. Before the job leaves the survey desk, the estimator rates it as a standard move, a special move, or high risk, and raises a flag for anything dispatch should not learn on move day.

A high risk move is also the kind of job where a manager shows up at the start. The flag is how the manager finds out in time.

Score a few finished inventories against their recordings every week. It is how you coach a surveyor without sitting in on every call.

Where should the survey board live? Not in a spreadsheet, which is easy to start and hard to scale. And not inside all-in-one moving software, where you get the steps the software company imagined and cannot add or remove one when your business changes.

Build it in Airtable. It is a database that looks like a spreadsheet, so you can build exactly the statuses, the timer, and the flags in this Playbook, and change them the same afternoon.

The finished inventory goes to the salesperson who booked the survey, and to one shared company inbox, so it never sits in the mailbox of someone who is off that day.

Sales turns it into the estimate and sends it the same day, with a call to walk the customer through it. Our Playbook on how to write a moving estimate covers the document itself. A full inventory is also what makes a firm price safe to offer: see binding vs non-binding estimates. With flat rate pricing, and crews paid a flat amount tied to the estimate, the inventory is the number everything else hangs on.

When the job books, the survey is not typed again. Sales still fills in the intake row for dispatch, and links it to the survey line. The inventory, the tags, the access pictures, and the risk flags travel with the job onto the board described in moving company dispatch. The crew lead opens the job and sees the piano, the stairs, and the picture of the driveway.

It runs backwards too. When a crew finds that the job did not match the inventory, dispatch sends that to the survey desk the same day. Was a room skipped? Was a tag missed? That is how the next survey gets better.

• 3 bedrooms and up always get a survey, in-home or virtual. Smaller jobs can be quoted by phone.
• Run the call in the same ten steps, from the introduction to the prohibited items.
• Say the call is recorded, and wait for the yes.
• Ask the access questions for both addresses.
• A room you did not see is written down, never guessed.
• Build the inventory from the recording, by room, with tags and screenshots, within 3 hours.
• One board, four statuses in a straight line, and a timer on every survey.
• The estimator flags special and high risk moves for dispatch.
• Build the board in Airtable, so you can change it when the business changes.
• The inventory travels with the job to sales and to dispatch. Nobody types it twice.