Hire desks are holding the hire industry together.
But who’s holding them?
Hire desks in the plant, tool and equipment hire industry are under constant fire. They’re juggling kit availability, chasing missing returns, fielding urgent calls, handling delivery delays, dealing with system issues — often all before 10am. They’re the glue between customers, operations, yard teams, and drivers. But that glue is being stretched thin.
Burnout is creeping in, and most of the time, it’s going unnoticed.
Mental overload is becoming part of the job
Hire desk staff are human dashboards. They’re expected to know everything — what’s available, what’s coming back, what’s broken, what’s being delivered, what’s overdue.
And when that information is buried in emails, spreadsheets, or slow-moving systems, the pressure builds fast.
What helps:
- Real-time stock visibility without needing to check five different tabs
- Automated alerts and reminders that take pressure off memory
- One place to track customer comms, requests, and booking status
Emotionally, they’re stuck in the middle
Hire desks are the go-between for everything — smoothing over customer issues, managing internal expectations, and absorbing last-minute changes.
They’re expected to deliver great service, but often don’t have the tools or autonomy to act quickly or efficiently.
What helps:
- Giving customers access to their own live data, so they don’t have to ask
- Real-time delivery tracking and service updates
- Message boards or push notifications to broadcast critical info in seconds
Tech that’s meant to help, but ends up slowing them down
Many hire desks are working on legacy systems. Rental management software that’s clunky, unintuitive, and disconnected from how modern businesses actually work.
Even when updates are made, they’re often focused on the back office — not on improving the experience for customers or easing the burden on the desk, not to mention the extra expense and leadtimes.
What helps:
- Plug-in tools that connect with existing systems (rather than replace them)
- Customer-first portals that reduce the admin load internally
- Seamless rollouts that don’t require huge retraining or downtime
Too many repetitive tasks, not enough time
Manually creating quotes, chasing signatures, answering the same questions, sending the same documents… It’s all wasted time that stops hire desks from doing higher-value work.
What helps:
- Self-serve platforms where customers can quote, rehire and access documents
- Quick account views to see spend, open hires, and company activity at a glance
- Smart internal dashboards that reduce double handling
And often, hire desk staff feel like no one sees it
Burnout doesn’t always come with fireworks. Sometimes it looks like detachment. Or silence. Or just doing the bare minimum to survive the day.
Hire desk teams are at the centre of your business — but they’re rarely invited into conversations about how it runs.
What helps:
- Asking them what could improve their day-to-day
- Involving them when choosing new systems or processes
- Recognising their role not just as admin, but as customer experience leaders
This is exactly why we built Hire HQ
We didn’t build Hire HQ to replace the hire desk. We built it to take the pressure off.
It’s a customer-first portal — designed so your clients can get quotes, rehires, delivery updates, documents, invoices and job tracking without needing to pick up the phone.
But behind the scenes, it’s built with the hire business in mind too.
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Your team gets access to an internal dashboard
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You can switch between accounts easily and see open hires, spend and activity at a glance
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Send push notifications to customers instantly if phone lines are down, new kit lands, or bad weather disrupts deliveries
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You can finally reduce repetitive admin, manual chases and get paid quicker
Hire HQ connects the dots — between the customer, the hire desk and the back office — so your people can do their jobs better, and your business runs smoother.
All without replacing your core rental system.
Are you ready to take some weight off your team’s shoulders?
