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Answering calls as a one-truck electrician
When you're the only one on the truck, the phone rings while your hands are in a panel. What should pick up, and what it must never say.
By the CosVoice team · · 6 minute read
One truck, two jobs
A one-truck electrician has two jobs, electrician and receptionist, and only gets paid for one of them. There's no good moment for the second. You're in an attic pulling cable, or on a ladder with a fixture over your head, or you've got the cover off a panel, which is about the last place on earth to go fishing in your pocket. So the call goes to voicemail. And the caller, who has a dead kitchen circuit and a list of three electricians, calls the next name.
An answering service for electricians takes the second job off you. It should pick up when you can't and take down what the caller sees, in their own words. It should collect the details that let you price a panel upgrade or an EV charger without a second call, write down inspection dates exactly, and get the details of an urgent call to you at once, so you can ring straight back. And it should never give electrical advice. Ours doesn't. It takes the details and passes them on.
The fix most people try first is calling back at lunch. It sort of works. But by lunch there are six voicemails, two of them are just "hi, call me back", and the afternoon job starts at 12:30. Better that every missed call is answered and turned into a note you can read in the driveway. Forwarding only your missed calls takes a short code on your mobile, and conditional call forwarding explains how that works.
The question your phone should never answer
"My breaker keeps tripping. Is it okay to just keep flipping it back on?" Somebody will ask that on your line this month. You know the honest answer starts with four questions and ends with you looking at it. Whoever or whatever picks up while you're working must not answer it at all. Not with a reassuring guess, not with a rule of thumb.
Our line doesn't. If the caller mentions heat, a smell or sparks, that goes in the note exactly as they said it, and the line follows your rule for it. For most electricians the rule is: tell them I'll call straight back. The line can't put a caller through to you, so that's what it says, and the written summary reaches you as soon as the call ends. It doesn't tell the caller what to switch off or what's safe to use. That conversation is yours, when you ring them.
What it writes down where the advice would go
When a caller describes a fault, the line asks the questions you'd ask and records the answers. It doesn't interpret them. Five things, mostly.
- What's happening, in the caller's words. Lights flickering, an outlet dead, a breaker tripping, buzzing, a warm switch plate.
- Where and how much. One outlet, one room, half the house, everything.
- Since when, and whether anything changed. A new appliance, a storm, work done recently.
- The house. Address, rough age, and where the panel is.
- Access and times. Who'll be home, and when.
Panel upgrades and EV chargers take a lot of questions
These are the good jobs, and the ones where a vague message wastes the most time. A panel upgrade call needs the current service size if they know it, where the panel is, whether the service comes in overhead or underground, and why they're asking. Adding a heat pump? Selling the house? Out of breaker spaces?
EV charger calls need the vehicle or the charger model, whether they've already bought the charger, where the panel is compared with where the parking lots, attached or detached garage, and the panel size again. The distance matters more than callers expect, and you know why.
Photos save a trip, as long as they go to the right place. The line's own email address keeps and forwards the text of an email, not the attachments, so a picture of a panel sent there won't reach you. Put your own email address or mobile number in the instructions as the place for photos, and the assistant gives that out. Or it tells the caller you'll ask for pictures of the panel and its label when you call. Written details and links do come through, and there's more in using your line's email address.
As for prices, the line quotes only from your rate card, and only if you allow it. Plenty of electricians would give it a service call fee and a starting price for a standard charger install, and let everything else wait for a look.
Inspection dates, exactly as given
Not every call is a customer. The building department calls with a window for the rough-in inspection. The general contractor's office wants to know if you can be there Thursday. The utility calls about the disconnect and reconnect for a service change.
A garbled inspection date costs you a re-inspection fee, or a week. The line takes down the date, the window, the address, the permit number if they give one, and the name of whoever called. You get it in writing, not as forty seconds of someone talking fast over a bad connection.
It can go the other way as well. If your jurisdiction still schedules inspections by phone, tell the line to make the call. It waits on hold and comes back with the date.
What a day looks like with it
Say you start at 7:30 on a service change and you're up a ladder most of the morning. Three calls come in and you answer none of them.
At 11:45 you sit in the truck and read three notes. One is a dead bathroom circuit, no heat, no smell, and the caller is fine with a callback today. One is an EV charger, a detached garage about forty feet from the panel, and the caller has your address for photos. One is the inspector's office: rough-in Thursday, between 8 and noon.
You make one call, to the charger customer, and you already know what you're going to say. Then you call the line from your own mobile (it treats your calls as instructions) and tell it to phone the bathroom circuit caller and offer tomorrow at 8 or at 2. The home services page shows how those instructions are written.
Three calls dealt with over a sandwich, and you didn't call anyone back just to ask what they wanted.
Common questions
Will it tell a caller whether something is dangerous?
No. It never gives electrical or safety advice. It writes down what the caller describes, in their words, and tells the caller you'll call back, straight away or later in the day, depending on the rules you've set.
Can it quote a panel upgrade over the phone?
Only if there's a price for it on your rate card and you've allowed quoting. Otherwise it says the price follows a visit. It never invents a number or a start date.
Can customers send photos of their panel?
Not to the line's own email address. It keeps and forwards the text of an email, but attachments aren't kept or passed on. Put your own email address or mobile number in the instructions for photos and the line gives that to the caller, or you ask for them when you call back.
What happens to an urgent call when I can't pick up?
The line answers, takes the address, what's happening and a callback number, and tells the caller you'll call them back. It can't put them through to you. The written summary reaches you as soon as the call ends, so you know what you're calling back about.
Read next: What an AI should never do on a call · Answering service for contractors · Replace your voicemail with the line
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