ElectricalBossPro Blog — Scheduling & Dispatch

The Arrived Text: Telling the Homeowner the Electrician Is at the Door

The tech pulls into the driveway. Nobody answers the doorbell. The homeowner is upstairs on a work call, or in the back yard, or just did not hear it. The tech rings again, waits, calls the number on file, waits some more. Five minutes go by, sometimes ten. Multiply that by a few stops a day and it is real time lost on every route.

The arrived text is a simple fix for that.

The Second Text of the Visit

The first text is covered in On-the-Way Texts for Electrical Service Calls: Fewer Calls Asking Where the Tech Is. The arrived text is the one that follows it. When the tech gets to the address, the tech app sends an automatic arrived text to the customer. The tech does not have to stop and type anything.

Why It Helps

The arrived text does a few useful things for an electrical company:

• The door opens faster. A homeowner who did not hear the bell sees the text and comes down.
• The customer knows who is there. A text from your company at the moment a van shows up means the person at the door is expected.
• Absent customers find out. If the homeowner forgot about the appointment, the arrived text is the reminder that might still save the visit.
• Property managers and commercial contacts are told. The person responsible for the building knows the tech is on site, even if they are not there.

When Nobody Comes to the Door

Sometimes the arrived text does not bring anyone. The customer might reply “So sorry, at work, can you come back tomorrow?” That reply goes to the office through two-way texting, and the office can move the job. If there is no reply at all, the tech taps Skip with a note such as “Nobody home, rang and called,” and the office takes it from there.

Either way, the customer was told the tech was there. If they later say nobody came, the tech's skip note and any photo taken at the door tell the story. For what happens after a skip, see When a Tech Taps Skip: Putting Missed Electrical Calls Back on the Schedule.

The Customer Decides

The arrived text is one of the alerts customers can choose. In ElectricalBossPro, alert preferences include a reminder the night before, a text when they are next and a text when the tech arrives. Some customers turn on all three. Some only want the arrived text, because they will be home anyway and just want to know when to open the door. The tech app sends the texts the customer chose.

Arrived Texts on Recurring Visits

Recurring visits like yearly generator maintenance are often partly or fully outside. The homeowner might not need to let anyone in, but most still want to know someone is in the side yard. The arrived text tells them. For a yearly safety inspection, which needs inside access, the arrived text works just like it does on a service call.

Arrived Texts and Commercial Accounts

For a retail store, a gym or an office, the arrived text goes to the contact on the account. That might be a store manager who needs to open the back door or meet the tech at the electrical room. For after-hours work, it tells the facilities contact the crew is on site. Make sure the right person is on the account so the text reaches someone who can act on it.

What the Office Sees

On the dispatch board, the job moves along as the tech works it: started, then completed or skipped. Crew GPS on the office map shows the van at the address. The office can answer a customer's “is he here yet?” call by looking, not by calling the tech.

Short Texts Go Further

Texts are counted 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. The automatic arrived text is short. Replies from customers count too, which is one more reason to keep the conversation brief and let the office handle anything long by phone.

Texting is available for customers in the US and Canada.

A Small Text at the Right Moment

The arrived text is a little thing. It is also the moment the customer's experience of the visit starts, and a good start makes the rest of the job easier. To see how customer texts fit with the dispatch board, routing and crew GPS, visit the ElectricalBossPro electrician scheduling software page.