So I'm a 3 man shop and I have control issues. Im the only person who answers the phone and returns customer calls. I start my installations @ 10am and try to shut it down by 4pm (no lunch). I can never answer the phone during business hours as I'm always busy with the installation or proposal. So the voicemail /email/txt messages pile up.

If I can get finished up by 4 or so I can get home, eat something real quick and start listening to voicemails. I get 10+ messages a day. It can easily take a couple hours to get through all that and I'm calling customers back at 7pm and later. I usually stop calling around 8pm and finish them up the next morning.

The problem is those long days. Tonight I didn't get home until after 7pm doing an after hours service call because I'm 3 weeks out. So I went through all the messages and I haven't called anyone back yet. So tomorrow morning I have a dozen calls to return before we start again @ 10am. I can't/won't start calling until 9am so that's a problem. Some of these calls can be 20+ minutes long. I don't know what to do and this happens regularly.

How are you guys handling calls? There has to be a better way.