Congrats on the growth. With two owners both in the field and taking calls on cell phones, my vote is the office person first, or at least someone who owns the phone and the schedule. Here's the reasoning:
- A third tech adds capacity, but you two are still the bottleneck for booking, dispatch and billing. More jobs flowing through the same chaos means more invoices slipping.
- An office hire usually pays for themselves by catching billing you're missing now, and by freeing one of you to sell replacements instead of driving to every service call.
- Once calls aren't being answered from a ladder, close rates and reviews usually improve on their own.
If you're not ready for a full-time hire yet, a middle step:
- Part-time CSR or remote dispatcher during peak hours, with the main line forwarding to them.
- Something covering after-hours and overflow (answering service or AI) so no-heat and no-cool calls at night don't go to voicemail and then to your competitor.
- Have them run billing at the end of every day out of Jobber, not on Friday.
At your pace, plan the field tech hire maybe 60-90 days after the office person, once there's a real schedule to slot them into. For the after-hours piece, disclosure, I'm involved with an AI receptionist built for trades: https://firstdeploy.ai
