Ivy — System Status

Before taking someone off the call list, Ivy asks if they’re calling about the house we called them about. You approved this on 30 September: only a yes takes them off. Only asked of someone Ivy called in the last 3 days (your change on 3 October; it was two weeks). Never asked on a repair, an emergency, or when someone asks for a person, so everyone else’s call is unchanged. And when one of them calls after hours wanting to see the house, Ivy tells them the office will call the next business day, and the office gets it as an “appointment requested” email and row.

Phase 1 is closed. Closed 2 October, on your go-ahead and a re-check of the 182 calls since the 19th. The inbound receptionist is built; fixes and small changes carry on alongside Phase 2.

A tenant reporting something that isn’t a repair is no longer stuck in a loop. Ivy used to ask “is that where the repair is?” and hear “it’s not a repair” as a no. She now states the address on file, takes a report (downed lines, for instance) to the office marked as a report, and sends a receipt or paperwork request to the front desk. Tested on both calls that went wrong. Our mistake, no charge.

When Ivy leaves a voicemail on an outbound call, the summary shows it. Ms. Arrington’s summary looked like no message was left; one was. Summaries now open “Voicemail left” and end with what she said. Our mistake, no charge.

Outbound calls in the Call Log say what happened on the call. Voicemail left, No answer, Interested — instead of words meant for incoming calls, like “Message taken”.

Your company email moved to Zoho tonight. Every @midgettfite.com address now lives on Zoho — switched at 7:31 PM on the 1st, with every mailbox copied over first, including that day’s mail. Each address was tested after the switch and all delivered. Everyone sets up their own email from the one-page sheet. The old server stays on in the background for a few weeks as a safety net.

Ivy emails you when calls are waiting for your approval. One email to all three of your addresses, listing every property with people waiting, and a link to the approval page. If they’re still waiting, a reminder every 4 hours. Every email goes out between 9 AM and 5 PM only — nothing at night. Once you press Approve on a property, its reminders stop. The first one went out on the 1st and you approved from it.

Anyone added to the Callback List after a property opens is picked up. Twice a day, at 9 AM and 1 PM, Ivy rechecks the Callback List against every open property. Anyone new who fits shows up for your approval, and you get one email about them.

Ivy never calls someone about a house she already told them about. When she reads the vacancies to a caller, she now remembers who heard which house. Those people are left off the calls about that house. If the house rents and comes back later, they can be called about it again.

Unticked people on an approved property now read “Not called”. Instead of “Awaiting approval”. Their checkbox stays, so you can still tick them later and press Approve. Your idea, 1 October.

Tenants on the Callback List are called, and called first. Your call, 1 October. Owners, vendors and staff on the list are still held back until you say otherwise.

“No upstairs” is noticed. If someone’s notes say no upstairs (or no stairs, ground floor only) and the listing says the unit is upstairs, they show up unticked with a note, so they aren’t called unless you tick them. Prompted by your test on the 1st.

Ivy calls your Callback List when a property opens up. Your idea from 11 August, calling real leads since 29 September. You approve who she calls on the dashboard; she calls one at a time, newest lead first, with your opening word for word. A yes goes to the front desk (after hours she takes when they’re free and it lands on Needs Attention). She leaves your voicemail on the first voicemail she reaches. “Take me off the list” is archived exactly as you decided — it worked on a real caller on the 30th. Every call is noted in the Called column and on the dashboard, and you get an email naming anyone she couldn’t reach after three tries.

Ivy’s alarms no longer go off on her own outbound calls. Three safety nets built for incoming calls were firing on her outgoing ones — including a false phone alarm on the evening of the 30th. All three now ignore outbound calls. Our mistake, no charge.

If we hang up first during a transferred call, the caller is released right away. Before, they could be left on a silent line. If the caller hangs up first instead, our existing safety net still catches it within under a minute. Found and fixed the same day, 9/24 — a driver's dropped call at noon turned out to be unrelated (the transfer itself was fine).

Ivy emails a rental caller the properties, with photos. At the end of the call she offers to send the list. What arrives is the same photos and wording as your own website, and the address she sent it to goes on the callback list beside them. If a caller asks for a text instead, she explains it's email only, in your words.

Your midgettfite.com email is working again. It had been down since 31 August — senders got a bounce and you got nothing, so you couldn't see who had tried. Two pieces of the mail server had come loose from the rest of it. Also fixed the underlying fault that took it down on every restart.

Ivy's email now comes from your own address. She sends as ivy@midgettfite.com through your server instead of the outside account whose daily cap ran dry overnight on the 7th. Anyone replying to her gets an automatic note pointing them at the office number.

Ivy signs the scripts she delivers. Where the office writes X and their initials, Ivy writes “X - IV”, so you can tell at a glance which scripts a caller heard from her and which from a person.

She no longer says a repair is logged when the log failed. If the write doesn't go through, she can't claim it did for the rest of the call — she says so and takes it as a message instead.

Asking for “records” no longer lands in repairs. A caller who says records, or uses a repair word about something that isn't a repair, gets one clarifying question first and then goes where they actually meant.

On a closed day she no longer offers to connect you. What she offers is decided by the office clock now, not by her judgement in the moment.

The step that handles repairs no longer fails to open. Closed by the September rebuild — that step does not exist any more. Repairs are their own specialist.

She checks in during a long silence. Instead of waiting for you to speak first.

Her goodbye finishes before the call ends. It used to cut off mid-word.

Rental enquiries that need a person go to the front desk, not to you.

She asks for the property address on a repair call. And for tenants she already knows it — she confirms the address on file instead of asking.

Ivy can now put a rental caller through to the office to book a viewing. A caller who wants to see a property is transferred, at any hour — during office hours to a person, after hours to the voicemail, using the two sentences you wrote. The office clock picks which one, not Ivy, so she can never offer a person when there isn't one.

The first-in-line walkthrough now says why you come and see it first. Your line, added where you said it goes: “because we don't want you to put an application in on a property you have not seen in person.”

Summary emails are off. You only hear from Ivy when something needs doing. Every call is still recorded with its full transcript — nothing is lost, it just isn't in your inbox. The alerts that need somebody to act still come through.

Your credit wording, word for word. Under 520 Ivy now says exactly what you wrote, including that the background and credit check cost is what they'd lose. It's locked so it can't drift.

Something reads the previous day's calls overnight and looks for problems. Not errors — the quiet ones. A promise that wasn't kept, someone greeted by the wrong name, a transfer that was offered but never happened.

If Ivy says she'll come back to something, she can't end the call until she has. A caller mentioned a leak mid-way through a rental enquiry and it was nearly dropped. Now an unfinished promise blocks the goodbye.

Your caller's own number now shows on the office phone. You asked for this on the 10th. It's been live since the 11th, and you watched one come through clean on the 17th. One change you'll notice: callers hear about four seconds more of the auto-attendant before the extension is dialled.

Every call is on a dashboard, with its transcript. One place to look, instead of scrolling email.

Ivy was rebuilt as a front desk plus four specialists. Repairs, rentals, people and messages each have their own instructions now. Before, one very large set of instructions handled everything, and a change to one part could quietly break another. This is why the phones have been steadier since the 9th.

The callback list carries the columns you asked for. Evictions and credit are written into their own columns rather than buried in a notes field, and the three script columns record whether a caller actually heard the first-in-line and $300 walkthroughs.

Ivy reads your current vacancies to renters. Your idea from 11 August, live since 28 August. Straight from the Vacancies tab you keep. She offers what's genuinely available, points them at the website, and still puts them on the callback list.

If your email ever goes down, an alarm phones a person. Ivy's emails go out through an account with a daily cap, and it ran dry one night in September. Now if messages can't get out, somebody gets a phone call about it rather than nobody noticing.

Callers can update their own phone number or email address. Ivy never changes a record herself — she files it on a new Pending Changes tab with the old and new values side by side, and it only takes effect when someone at the office picks Approved. Approving also emails a RECORD CHANGE note so the official record in Access gets updated too.

Ivy no longer asks "rent or buy?" She routes on what the caller already said. It was being asked of people who had just answered it — on one call she said "I understand you're interested in renting" and then asked anyway.

Email addresses are read back spelled out, letter by letter, before anything is filed. Repeating them as words can't catch a mis-hearing — the repeat sounds the same as the mistake.

A phone number the caller speaks is now read back in three groups — "six one five, seven one two, one eight eight six" — instead of ten digits run together.

If a rental caller doesn't make it onto the callback list, the office is told. After every call the system checks, and emails you their name and number if they were missed — whatever went wrong on the call. It went live at a quarter to eleven on Friday and caught four of that afternoon's callers. An email arriving is it working, not a new fault — and now the change above is in, these should become rare. A run of them is worth telling Steve about straight away.

Greets known callers by name

Handles first-time / unknown callers

Answers common questions (hours, how renting works) without transferring

Full repair intake with a safety-first check up front

Adds rental prospects to the callback list

Logs every repair to the office sheet

Logs every call with its outcome

Emails a summary after every call

Remembers how a caller likes to be addressed

Routine after-hours calls take a message instead — nobody's phone rings for a dripping faucet

Reads phone numbers back one digit at a time, so callers can actually confirm them

Transfers callers to the right person — Ivy tells them which key to press when the ringing stops

Callback list saves are now confirmed rather than assumed — and if one ever fails, the office is emailed the caller's full details so the lead isn't lost

A caller who asks twice no longer creates a second row on the callback list — Ivy updates the one they already have and merges in anything new

Call summaries and office emails now say "Ivy" throughout — the old name was still appearing in the transcript

If a call ever goes wrong, the office hears about it — if Ivy stops responding mid-call, you get an email with the caller's number so someone can ring them back

An emergency now reaches a real person at any hour — not just after 5. During the working day an emergency used to be logged with nobody rung. This was the gap behind the 424 Harding call

Emergency emails say EMERGENCY in the subject line. An emergency used to arrive titled the same as a message about a light bulb, which is why one sat unseen. Urgent is flagged too; routine deliberately isn't, so the flagged ones stand out

Ivy already knows the tenant's address — she says it rather than asking. “I have you at 690 Cainsville Road.” (Since 2 October a statement, not a question — see the loop fix above.) If they say it's somewhere else she takes the new one and the office gets a CHECK ADDRESS flag

Closing the office for a day. Friday 14 August is set — Ivy tells callers the office is closed today and doesn't recite the 9-to-5 hours at someone ringing on a weekday. Send Steve any future dates and they take a minute

Tenant calls no longer go to Nate. Vendors, contractors, Vantage Construction and development work go to Nate; tenants never do. Anything a tenant asks with no specific rule goes to the front desk

Repair status questions (“what time is the plumber coming?”) and lease or roommate questions both go to the front desk instead of a named person

A place for you to send requests — the Requests tab beside the board. Write anything, however small; it emails Steve within the hour and the Sent column fills in so you can see it landed

Open questions get chased automatically — the Open Questions tab. Put a name in “Needs answer from” and that person gets a short daily email listing only what's waiting on them. Nothing open means no email

Ivy answers noticeably faster — the pause after you finish speaking is roughly a second shorter than it was

Rental callers go on the list before any transfer. The version of this dated 8/13 didn't hold, which you saw for yourself on Friday — five callers put through to the front desk instead of taken down, one of them six times in a quarter of an hour. It was never the instruction telling Ivy to take their details; that was firing. Ten other lines scattered through her instructions told her to put a rental caller through, and those beat it. On one Friday call she'd already started — "let me get you on our callback list, may I have your first and last name" — then stopped and transferred when the caller said "I have the property I wanna see". All ten are gone. Wanting to see a particular property is no longer a reason to skip the list, because the list is what the office books viewings from. If a caller pushes to be put through, Ivy says so and keeps taking the details rather than giving way. Tested on three calls covering both of Friday's failures

Ivy asks which property they're ringing about, and it goes on the list with everything else. Friday showed why: three separate callers rang about the same address on Bel Air Drive across three days, and there was no way to tell it was one vacancy drawing the interest, because none of them was written down

A list of Friday's missed callers is ready for you. Eight people rang about renting between Tuesday and Friday and are on none of your lists. Steve has pulled their numbers, what each one asked for and what to say into a single sheet, ready for whoever makes the calls. The Bel Air Drive three are on it, and so is the man who rang six times

A repair call always reaches you now, even if Ivy stumbles. The step that handles repairs sometimes fails to open (see Reported). Ivy now notices that herself, takes the address, the problem and a callback number, and sends it to the office headed "NOT TRIAGED — the office must review it". Those emails aren't a new fault, they're the safety net working — but each one does need a person to look at it, because nothing was checked for urgency on that call

Ivy recognises someone already on the callback list. This is the Cara England question you asked on the 15th. Instead of interviewing them from scratch, Ivy opens with “I’ve got you on our callback list from August 12th — has anything changed since then?” and updates what we already hold.

A misheard “no” no longer starts a long explanation. A caller said no to being walked through how renting works, the line transcribed it as a different word, and Ivy read it to him anyway. She now asks once more in different words, and treats anything still unclear as a no — including on the question that would have transferred the caller to the front desk.

The callback list no longer records “no additional criteria”. When a caller had nothing to add, that sentence was being written into their row on the sheet. It is now simply left blank.

Ivy says she is adding you to the list once, not three times. Three different sentences all said the same thing while the callback list was being written. Now one short “One moment” and then the confirmation.

Listing-site referrals (Apartments.com and similar) no longer get bridged in mid-sentence. Those sites call in, play their own recorded hand-off first, then connect the actual renter a few seconds later. Ivy was treating the recording as the caller and starting the callback-list questions on it — the real renter arrived mid-script with no greeting, and the call ended with nothing captured. She now waits through the hand-off, then greets whoever actually comes on the line.

A caller who never says anything gets a polite goodbye, not a transfer. Silent lines were being sent to the front desk and told to press a key — which a caller saying nothing was never going to do. After two unanswered check-ins, Ivy now closes the call herself instead.

Ivy no longer narrates on top of the “One moment” pause when adding someone to the callback list — one line instead of two stacked together.

Ivy no longer says a message is sent before it actually is. The confirmation is now real — she waits for it before speaking, and if a send ever fails she says so plainly instead of claiming it worked.