A tenant reports no cooling. Your tradie reaches the strata property, but the outdoor unit is behind a locked plant-room door and nobody on site can approve extra work. Air conditioning call out triage should stop that trip before the van leaves.
Triage prepares the job for dispatch. It does not diagnose the unit. The office decides whether to escalate the enquiry, hold it, book diagnostic work, place it under scheduled maintenance or arrange a replacement site assessment.
Run the safety screen before opening the calendar
Ask the safety questions before offering a booking time. Office staff need a written company script for reports involving smoke, fire, burning smells, electrical smells, visible arcing, damaged wiring, safety alarms, water around electrical equipment, a medical emergency or immediate danger at the property.
Do not turn that list into a diagnosis. Record the caller’s exact observation. Write “caller reports water below the indoor unit near a power outlet”. Do not write “blocked drain caused an electrical fault”. The first note can be passed to the tradie. The second is an unsupported conclusion.
Give the safety screen three clear routes:
- Emergency guidance: If the caller reports fire, smoke, visible arcing, an active safety alarm, a medical emergency or immediate danger, stop the booking. Use the official emergency guidance written into your company script. Do not offer an appointment as the answer to an emergency.
- Manager or licensed-tradie review: If the caller reports damaged controls, damaged wiring, water near electrical equipment, a burning or electrical smell, or cannot complete the screen, hold the enquiry. Send the caller’s exact words to the named manager or licensed tradie before anyone offers a normal booking.
- Normal queue: Use this route only when the screen is complete, no listed trigger was reported and the rest of the booking information can be collected.
Do not improvise instructions about isolation, relighting, resets, damaged equipment or emergency response during the call. Do not ask the customer to remove covers, touch wiring, bypass controls, climb to plant, enter a restricted area or keep resetting faulty equipment. Ask only for observations they can make safely and without tools.
For worker-safety questions, use the WHS regulator responsible for the state or territory where your employees work. For example, a NSW business can check its workplace safety duties with SafeWork NSW (opens in a new tab). Do not send licensing, tax or customer-contract questions to the WHS regulator.
Set the release status and booking type
Do not let an air conditioning service enquiry drift from a phone call into the calendar. Complete two fields after the safety screen: release status and booking type.
Use these release statuses:
- Escalate: The caller reports a condition covered by your written safety process, or cannot complete the safety screen.
- Hold: Access, authority, equipment details, address information or billing instructions are missing.
- Ready: The safety screen is complete and the information needed for the selected booking type has been collected.
Use these booking types:
- Diagnostic visit: The customer reports a fault that needs inspection.
- Scheduled maintenance: The visit is scheduled work inside the agreed maintenance scope.
- Replacement assessment: The customer wants replacement options based on an inspection of the equipment and site.
Write both fields on the active job. Beside an escalation, name the person handling it. Beside a hold, state exactly what is missing and who is getting the answer.
Name the person allowed to mark a job ready. It may be the dispatcher, service manager or owner. The rule stays the same: the van does not move until the required information is present or a manager records why an exception was accepted.
An urgent label does not fix missing access. A preferred appointment time does not create repair authority. Put the job on hold until the gap is cleared.
Separate the people involved in the job
The caller may not be the occupant. The occupant may not own the property. The owner may not approve repairs. Accounts may need a purchase order before paying anything.
Record each role separately:
- Caller: The person describing the problem.
- Occupant: The person using the affected area.
- Arrival contact: The person meeting the tradie.
- Owner, strata manager or facility manager: The person responsible for the property.
- Visit approver: The person authorising the diagnostic attendance.
- Repair approver: The person allowed to approve labour, parts or replacement work.
- Billing contact: The person or business receiving the invoice.
Get a direct phone number for the arrival contact. If the caller is not on site, say so on the job.
Ask who can approve work after inspection. Record any approval limit and the required method. A commercial customer may require a work order, purchase order or written approval. A strata manager may approve attendance while the owner or body corporate controls further work.
This prevents a common failure. The tradie inspects the unit and identifies work that could proceed, but the occupant cannot approve it. The tradie either waits, leaves or performs work that later becomes disputed.
Clear the address and access route
Capture the unit or tenancy, street address, suburb, state or territory and postcode. The address controls travel, property access and which licensing regulator covers the work.
Then ask how the tradie reaches the equipment. Check:
- Keys, gates and security desks.
- Parking and loading restrictions.
- Plant rooms and locked compounds.
- Roof access and who controls it.
- Site inductions and sign-in.
- Occupied-area restrictions.
- Building manager or strata contact requirements.
- Safe access that must be arranged by the customer.
Do not accept “someone should be there”. Get the person’s name and direct number. If access depends on a strata manager, building manager or tenant, record who confirmed the arrangement.
Attach those instructions to the active job. An old email about a different visit is not a current access plan.
Identify the affected equipment without diagnosing it
A commercial caller says the air conditioning is not cooling. The site has several units, but nobody recorded which unit serves the affected office. That is not ready for dispatch.
Record the equipment type, location, area served and visible asset identifier. Ask for the make, model, serial number, label or displayed code only when it can be seen safely. A floor-level photo may help. Do not ask the caller to climb, open a cabinet or enter a restricted area.
Useful entries sound like this:
- Wall-mounted split system in the rear meeting room.
- Ducted system serving the upstairs tenancy.
- Outdoor unit beside the eastern loading area.
- Asset label visible as the customer has reported it.
- Displayed code copied exactly, not interpreted by the office.
Match service history to the affected asset. Work completed on another unit at the same address does not explain the current report.
Good air conditioning enquiry triage collects enough equipment information to assign the right tradie and prepare the van. It does not promise that a named part has failed.
Turn the caller’s story into observable facts
Ask what happened, when it began and which areas are affected. Ask whether the condition is constant or intermittent. Ask what the caller can see, hear or feel without approaching unsafe equipment.
Useful observations include:
- The system does not start.
- Air moves but the room is not cooling.
- One area has lost service while another still works.
- The unit starts and stops.
- Water is visible in a stated location.
- A noise begins when the equipment runs.
- A visible display shows a stated message or code.
- The control display is blank.
Keep customer theories separate. If the caller says the compressor has failed, label that statement “caller believes compressor has failed — not confirmed”. Then ask what they observed.
Use neutral questions. Ask “What does the display show?” rather than leading the customer towards a fault code. Ask “Where is the water visible?” rather than suggesting a blocked drain.
Train office staff to write “caller reports” and “not confirmed” whenever a customer names a cause.
Use air conditioning call out triage to choose the booking type
Choose the work before assigning the tradie. The intake record should point to a practical booking type.
Book a diagnostic fault visit
Use this type when the customer reports a breakdown, the safety screen is clear and the tradie needs to inspect before work can be priced or approved.
Describe the reported condition without naming a failed part. “Complete loss of cooling” is useful. “Replace compressor” is not unless an inspected and accepted scope already exists.
Reserve scheduled maintenance for agreed work
Use this type only for scheduled work inside the recorded maintenance visit scope. A breakdown remains diagnostic work unless the service agreement expressly sets another route for reported faults.
Record the agreement or job reference, the scheduled task and the person who confirmed the scope. If the customer asks for work outside that scope, get separate approval. Use the process for building an air conditioning maintenance plan and maintenance visit scope when the recurring work itself needs tightening.
Arrange a replacement assessment
A caller may ask for a new system because the existing unit is not working. That request still needs inspection. The tradie must identify the equipment, site constraints, services, access and required work before preparing a replacement assessment.
Do not calculate equipment or labour from the customer’s guess. After inspection, use an air conditioning replacement quote that scopes the equipment and site.
Run separate Australian licence and scope checks
Do not treat one licence or business registration as permission for every task. Separate contractor or business licensing, individual occupational licensing, refrigerant-handling authorisation and electrical licensing.
Start with the job address. For contractor or business licensing, ask the regulator for that state or territory which authority the business needs for the booked work. For a NSW job, direct that question to NSW Fair Trading (opens in a new tab). For a Queensland job, direct it to the Queensland Building and Construction Commission (opens in a new tab).
Check the individual tradie separately. Ask the occupational licensing regulator for the job location which individual licence covers the booked diagnostic scope. Record the licence checked, the person who checked it and when.
For refrigerant handling, start with the Australian Government’s Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (opens in a new tab). Use its current page to find the authorisation process and register-checking route that apply to the work. Record the authorisation checked, who checked it and when.
Treat fixed electrical work as another scope. Ask the electrical licensing regulator for the job location which licence covers that work. For a Victorian job, use Energy Safe Victoria (opens in a new tab) for the electrical licence question.
Match the tradie to the booked diagnostic scope, not every repair the inspection might uncover. Write the limits of that scope on the job. If the findings require refrigerant handling, fixed electrical work or another licensed task outside those limits, stop and reassign that work to a tradie whose checked licence or authorisation covers it.
For each assignment, record the job location, booked diagnostic scope, scope limits, licence or authorisation checked, assigned tradie, checker and check date. If a required field is blank, do not dispatch the job.
Tell the customer what the booking covers
Read the company’s actual call-out terms to the customer. State the pricing basis, the included task or time, how travel is treated, how after-hours attendance is treated when it applies, when payment is due and what finding triggers separate repair approval. Use your own figures from the current price record.
Separate the diagnostic scope from repair labour, materials and replacement equipment. A diagnostic booking does not authorise everything the tradie finds. Record who can approve extra work and whether the approval must be written or tied to a purchase order.
Give office staff a plain booking script:
> “The call-out is priced as [actual pricing basis] and includes [actual task or time]. Travel is treated as [actual treatment]. After-hours attendance is treated as [actual treatment]. Payment is due [actual payment point]. If inspection identifies repair labour, parts, replacement equipment or a return visit outside that scope, we will stop and ask [approver name or role] to approve a variation by [approval method] before that work starts.”
If the inspected work differs from the accepted scope, stop. Write a variation. Get approval. Then proceed.
The Oak Street house example is electrical, but the approval boundary is the same. R. Chen at 14 Oak Street accepted quote Q-1847 for a bathroom exhaust fan and four LED downlights. The total was 1,105 sample currency units. The ceiling was lined and chasing was excluded. Extra cable and chasing became an approved 160 variation, so invoice INV-1847 totalled 1,265. The figures are a worked example, not an air conditioning rate card.
Check GST treatment against current guidance from the Australian Taxation Office (opens in a new tab). Do not copy GST wording from an old job without checking that it fits the current business and transaction.
Once the work is complete, use the air conditioning invoice process for call-outs, parts and repairs to carry the approved scope into billing.
Before dispatch, use the air conditioning call out triage record to send the tradie the customer’s observations, the booked scope and its limits, the access contact and the named repair approver.