October 13, 2026 · 3 min read
Some customers come with a rule. The house is a rental and the owner signs off on repairs. A family member holds power of attorney. One tech is never to be sent back. That rule has to reach whoever touches the job, every time.
Customer Alerts give that rule a home. The office writes it once on the client, and Dispatch Scout shows it in red on the job page, the job form, the dispatch board, the clients list and the tech app.
Most shops already try to capture this stuff. It goes in a client note, a pinned note, or a tag. The trouble is where those live. Notes sit on the client record, and the CSR booking a job or the dispatcher dragging a card on the board is not looking at the client record. Tags are short by design, so “call the owner before any repair over $500” does not fit.
So the rule gets missed on the one job where it mattered, and someone ends up apologizing to a property manager.
A Customer Alert is its own field on the client. It is not a note, a tag or the client summary. When it has text in it, you see it here:
The alert is red on purpose. Do Not Contact is amber, so when a client has both, the alert reads first. It is never a popup, and nobody can dismiss it. It stays until the office removes it.
The person who most needs the rule is the one standing at the front door. On iPhone and Android, the alert card sits at the top of the client section on the job screen, with a warning icon and a Customer Alert heading so it does not rely on color alone. Line breaks the office typed are kept. Techs can read it. They cannot edit it.
The office decides what the rule is. Everyone else just has to see it. That is why editing is limited and viewing is not.
Anyone who can see the client can see the alert. Only owners, admins, managers, dispatchers and accounting can add, change or remove it. Technicians, sales and CSR roles cannot rewrite it, even though some of them can edit other client details. The check runs on the server, so hiding a button is not the only thing standing in the way.
Included in the flat $40/user/month. Customer Alerts work on the web and in the iPhone and Android apps with no add-on and no setup beyond typing the alert.
A free-form note on the client record, shown in red, that appears everywhere your team works on that customer: the client page, the job page, the job form, the dispatch board, the clients list and the tech app.
Yes. The alert shows at the top of the client section on the job screen in both the iPhone and Android apps. Techs can read it but cannot change it.
Owners, admins, managers, dispatchers and accounting. Technicians, sales and CSR roles can see the alert but cannot rewrite it.
Do Not Contact controls whether you message the customer. Tags are short labels. A Customer Alert holds a few lines of plain text and follows the customer onto every job and the board.
No. Customer Alerts are included in the flat $40 per user per month.
See how scheduling and dispatch work in Dispatch Scout, or start a trial and add your first Customer Alert today.
Scheduling & dispatch Start Free TrialDispatch Scout is field service management software built for growing home service businesses. Scheduling, dispatch, invoicing, call tracking and payments in one platform, at one flat price of $40 per user per month.