ElectricalBossPro Blog — Running an Electrical Business

Texting Customers From an Electrical Business: Reminders, Alerts and Two-Way Replies

Ask a homeowner whether they'd rather get a phone call or a text about their electrician, and most will pick the text. They can read it at work, answer it later, and look back at it when they forget what time the tech was coming. For a small electrical shop, texting does a lot of the office's talking.

Communication Is Half the Experience

In Reviews and Referrals Through the Customer App: Word of Mouth for an Electrical Company, a quick reply to a customer's text was one of the things that gets people recommending a company. This article covers how to set texting up so it happens without someone glued to a phone.

There are two kinds of customer texts in a shop: the ones that should go out automatically, and the real conversations. Treat them differently.

Automatic Reminders and Alerts

Most “when are you coming?” calls disappear once customers get the right texts at the right time. ElectricalBossPro sends three kinds of automatic alerts, and each customer chooses which ones they want:

• The night before. A reminder that the electrician is coming tomorrow, so someone is home and the panel area is reachable.
• When they're next. A heads-up when the tech is on the way to them, sent from the tech app as the route moves.
• When the tech arrives. A text that the tech is at the house.

Reminders can also go out by email. Some customers want every alert, some only want the night-before reminder. Letting them choose means fewer annoyed replies and fewer people turning texts off entirely.

The customer app adds a live map of the day's route: “You're stop 12 of 20 — the crew is 5 stops away.” For a customer waiting at home, that is better than any phone call.

Two-Way Texting From the Office

Real conversations need a real person. Two-way texting lets the office text customers from ElectricalBossPro and read their replies in one place. That matters for a few reasons:

• It isn't a personal phone. Customers text the business, not the owner's cell or a tech who may leave next year.
• Anyone in the office can answer. If the office manager is out, someone else picks up the thread.
• It sits next to the schedule. The person replying can see the job, the address and the history while they type.

Typical office texts: confirming a time, asking for a photo of the problem, sending a gate code reminder, following up on an estimate, or letting a customer know a skipped job has been moved to Thursday.

What Not to Text

Texting is great for logistics. It is a poor place for anything technical or anything that needs a careful explanation. If a customer texts “the breaker keeps tripping, what should I do?”, the right reply is to book a visit, not to troubleshoot over text. Keep safety messages simple and point the customer to the electrician.

Don't send prices for big work by text either. Send an estimate they can review and approve online, so the details are written down and the approval becomes the scheduled job.

Keep Texts Short

Text messages are billed in segments, and every plan includes a monthly allowance of 500, 1,000 or 2,000 segments sent and received on Start, Pro and Crew. Short, plain messages go further. They are also easier to read on a phone in a hurry. “Hi, this is the electrical company. Your electrician is on the way and should be there in about 20 minutes” says everything it needs to.

Replies count too, since segments sent and received both come out of the allowance. Another good reason to keep conversations focused.

Texting and After-Hours

Customers text at all hours. Decide what the office does with a text that arrives at ten at night. Many shops answer the next morning unless it's urgent, and say so on their website and voicemail. The after-hours side gets its own article next: After-Hours Calls in an Electrical Business: Who Answers, What Gets Booked and What Waits.

Setting It Up

Start by turning on the automatic alerts for every customer and letting them adjust from there. Then move all customer texting off personal phones and onto the office's two-way texting. Tell techs to send customers to the office number, and put that number on invoices, the customer app and your website.

Within a couple of weeks, the office phone gets quieter, customers stop asking when the tech is coming, and the texts that do come in are the ones worth answering. For more on running the business side of an electrical shop, see the electrical business software page.