ElectricalBossPro Blog — Running an Electrical Business

After-Hours Calls in an Electrical Business: Who Answers, What Gets Booked and What Waits

Electrical problems don't keep office hours. Power goes out at dinnertime, a breaker won't reset on a Saturday, and a storm knocks a generator customer off the grid at two in the morning. Every electrical business has to decide how it handles those calls. Not deciding is a decision too — usually one that ends with the owner answering everything.

Set the Rules Before the Phone Rings

The previous article, Texting Customers From an Electrical Business: Reminders, Alerts and Two-Way Replies, touched on texts that arrive late at night. Calls are the bigger version of the same question.

The worst time to decide what you'll do with a late call is during the late call. Write down the rules while it's quiet, share them with anyone who might answer, and stick to them.

Decide What You Take

Not every after-hours call needs a truck tonight. Many shops sort them into a few buckets:

• Go tonight. The kind of calls you have decided are worth an after-hours trip — a home with no power, for example, or a commercial account that can't open in the morning. Your electrician decides what counts.
• First thing tomorrow. Problems that can safely wait a few hours. Book them for the morning.
• Normal scheduling. Questions, quotes, and non-urgent repairs. Answer during business hours.

Anyone answering the phone who isn't an electrician should never be making safety calls. Their job is to take the details and pass anything that sounds urgent to the on-call electrician, who decides. If a caller describes something that sounds dangerous, the script should tell them to contact the utility or emergency services first.

Decide Who Answers

Common options for a small electrical shop:

• The owner, always. Simple, and exhausting. It usually doesn't last.
• A rotation. Techs take turns on call, a week at a time. Pay them for it in a way that is fair to your crew.
• Voicemail and texts until morning. Honest and sustainable, if it is clearly stated on your website and voicemail.
• An answering service that takes messages and passes on urgent calls.

Whatever you choose, make sure customers know. A voicemail that says “we return calls starting at 7am” sets expectations better than silence.

Price It Separately

After-hours work costs more. The tech gives up their evening, and the next morning often starts late. Most shops charge a higher service call for nights and weekends. Put it in your service list as its own line, like “After-Hours Service Call,” so it lands on the invoice correctly without anyone remembering a different number.

Say the price on the phone before dispatching. A customer who agrees to it at night won't be surprised by it in the morning. The thinking behind the regular service call fee is in The Service Call Fee: How an Electrical Business Prices the Trip and the First Hour.

Give the On-Call Tech What They Need

The on-call electrician is usually working from their phone, away from the office. They need the same information the day crew has. In the ElectricalBossPro tech app, they can see the job with the address and a navigation button, the equipment saved on the house, access notes and past notes. If a generator customer calls in a storm, the tech can see the generator and transfer switch details, when they were installed and what was found at the last maintenance visit, before they leave the driveway.

When the tech completes the job, the invoice is created and a card on file can be charged. Nobody has to remember to bill it in the morning.

Hand Off to the Morning

The night shouldn't leave a mess for the office. A simple routine:

• Anything the on-call tech handled is completed on the job with notes and photos.
• Anything booked for the morning is already on the dispatch board.
• Texts that came in overnight are answered first thing from two-way texting.
• Website requests sitting in Form Responses are booked or called back.

With that in place, the office starts the day knowing exactly what happened overnight, instead of hearing it secondhand.

Protect the Owner's Nights

After-hours calls are one of the fastest ways for an owner to burn out. Even if you take the calls yourself for now, set the same rules you would give anyone else. When the business grows enough to add a rotation, the rules are already written. More on protecting your time is in the owner time management article later in this series.

For everything else that goes into running an electrical shop, return to the electrical business software overview.