Field note · 21 March 2026
Preparing a findings visit when most jobs still arrive on WhatsApp
If the app is the side door, say so before we sit. We will still watch it, but we will not pretend it is the only way a job enters the company.
Many Kuching crews write to us after buying a request form they barely use. WhatsApp remains the habit: a photo of a leaking fitting, a voice note, a pin dropped in the chat. The app exists because someone told them householders “expect it.”
A sitting is still useful, but only if we agree what we are watching. If three live app bookings cannot be produced in a morning, we stage them with staff using real household addresses — a mother’s terrace in Stutong, a cousin’s condo in Tabuan — and we compare those attempts with how a WhatsApp job actually gets onto the board.
Bring one recent WhatsApp thread (names can be covered) and two screenshots of the app. Do not empty the day’s jobs. Do not invite the whole workshop to listen. If the honest first sitting is a dispatcher morning rather than a booking-flow sitting, we will say so in the reply from Office 9. The visit is for the stall you actually have, not for the app you wish was busier.