A checklist before you open in a new city

The signboard goes up on Monday. Then the owner wonders who picks up if someone calls at two on Saturday afternoon, and what they hear. Before you open in a new city, four things must be true and tested. A named person answers every enquiry, with cover for their day off. They answer in the language the city buys in. The Maps listing is live and correct. And the first ten enquiries go into one register under one routing rule. If any test fails, move the opening or the advertising, not the checklist.

This checklist is for the last week before the shop, branch or agent goes live. Every line has a test you can run yourself, from a phone, in an afternoon. The smaller the presence, the more each line matters, because there is nobody else to catch what one person misses.

Who answers

• One named person owns every enquiry from the city. Not "the branch". A name, written on the register and known at head office.
• A second named person covers their weekly off and leave. Test: ask the owner, without warning, who answers on the city person's day off. If there is a pause, the line fails.
• The local number rings where that person is. Not at a reception desk in head office, and not on a landline in an empty shop. Test: call it from a phone in the city at lunchtime on a working Saturday.
• Missed calls are returned. Test: ring once and hang up. Note how long the call back takes, and whether it comes at all.
• WhatsApp on the local number is answered by the same person. A buyer who calls, then messages, should meet one person, not two.

Which language

• The greeting and the first answers are in the language buyers use. In Hubballi that may be Kannada, in Coimbatore Tamil. Keep English ready too. Test: a friend who speaks only the local language calls and asks the price, the delivery date and who services the product.
• The city person can quote without phoning head office. If every price question becomes "I will check and call you", buyers hear a messenger, not a business.
• Quotations and WhatsApp quick replies exist in that language where local buyers expect them, and the signboard matches what they search for.

What the Maps listing says

• A Google Business Profile exists for the new address, with the right category, hours, the local number and photographs of these premises, not head office. Start verification well before opening, because Google runs that step at its own pace; check its current process.
• The pin sits on the right building. Test: stand near the shop, search your category and the locality on a phone, and tap directions. See where it takes you.
• Name, address and number match on the profile, the website's page for the city and every directory you are listed in.
• An agent with no premises does not get a fake shop on Maps. List the area served instead, if the platform allows it for your kind of business. Check its current rules first.

How the first ten enquiries are recorded

• A routing rule decides who owns each enquiry. Use pin code or district. An enquiry from inside the city's area goes to the city person, wherever it arrived. Head office forwards; it does not answer.
• One register, started on day one. Date, source, the buyer's area, who answered, how long it took, what was asked and what happened. A shared sheet will do.
• A sit-down after the tenth enquiry. The owner and the city person read all ten together. Where did they come from, how fast were they answered, and why were any lost? Not after a calendar period. After ten.

Ten is a small number on purpose. It arrives early enough to fix a wrong greeting or a broken routing rule before the advertising starts. Decide the rule before opening so that no enquiry sits in the wrong inbox.

Imagine a laundry equipment maker opening in Bengaluru

Imagine a Chennai maker of commercial washers and dryers for hotels, hospitals and laundry businesses. It opens a sales and service office in Bengaluru's Bommasandra industrial area. The details are illustrative.

The office opened on a Monday, with a mailer to hotels booked for Thursday. The Maps profile still carried the Chennai head office number, and its pin sat at the industrial area's main gate, not on the plot. The Bengaluru manager's weekly off was Thursday, so the mailer's calls went to Chennai, where staff quoted Chennai service dates. When the owner asked for the first ten enquiries, the register showed four. The rest sat on the service engineer's personal WhatsApp.

Putting it right took two weeks and the mailer's slot. The profile moved to the Bengaluru number and the pin to the plot, a second person now covers the manager's off day, and the register started again at one. The mailer went out once every test passed, a fortnight later than booked, and the rebooked slot cost an extra ₹25,000 (an illustrative figure).

When to skip parts of the list

If you sell in the city only through a distributor, most of this list is theirs to keep. Give it to them and ask for the register. And if you are testing a city with ads and a dedicated number before committing, the Maps section can wait; the answering and recording sections cannot. Choosing the city and planning the entry come first, and our guide on how to enter a new city covers that ground. What goes wrong in the months after opening is in our note on mistakes businesses make when they open a second city.

Run the tests a week out

Print this list and run every test yourself, from a phone, a week before the signboard goes up. Mark each line pass or fail. If more than two fail, move the opening date. Our locations pages list the cities we cover, if you want to read about the city you are opening in. To talk about the routing and the profile, tell us what you need; Google Business Profile management, lead routing and assignment and new market entry strategy are the related services.