ElectricalBossPro Blog — Estimates & Quotes

Texting About an Estimate: Answering Homeowner Questions From the Office

Homeowners rarely call with a question about a quote. They text, or they say nothing and quietly hire someone else. “Does the charger price include the outlet?” “Can you do it on a Saturday?” “What's the difference between option 1 and 2?” A quick text answer keeps the quote alive. Two-way texting from the office makes that answer easy to give and easy for the next person to find.

Clean Invoices Start With Clear Conversations

The line items in Line Items That Hold Up: Electrical Estimates That Turn Into Clean Invoices answer most questions before they are asked. The ones left over usually come by text. Answering them well is the last step between a sent estimate and an approved one.

Two-Way Texting From the Office

ElectricalBossPro includes two-way texting with customers from the office. The office sends a text from the customer's record, and when the homeowner replies, the reply comes back to the office. The conversation stays on the customer, so anyone in the office can pick it up without asking a coworker what was said.

Texts come from your business, not from someone's personal cell. When an office person goes on vacation or leaves the company, the customer conversations do not leave with them.

Questions Worth Answering by Text

Many estimate questions are quick:

• What is included? Point them to the line description and confirm in a sentence.
• When can you do it? Give a rough window and offer to put them on the schedule once they approve.
• Can I drop one item? Yes, and update the estimate so the approval matches.
• Which option do you recommend? A short, honest answer, and an offer to talk by phone if they want detail.

For anything technical, keep the text general and offer a call or a visit with your electrician. A text thread is a poor place to explain electrical work in depth.

Asking for What You Need to Quote

Texting runs both ways. Before an estimate, the office can ask for the details that make a quote accurate: a photo of the panel with the door open, the spot where the charger should go, how many fixtures they want in the room. Those answers go onto the property as measurements, equipment or notes so the estimate and the job both have them.

When the information comes from a website request, a quick text right after the request lands in Form Responses often gets a faster reply than an email or a call. The photo side of this is covered in Quoting From the Photos a Customer Sends: When It Works and When to Send a Van.

Texting and Follow-Up Emails Together

Estimate follow-up emails remind homeowners who have not answered. Texting is for the conversation that follows. A homeowner who gets a follow-up email and has a question can text it, and the office answers. For a big quote like a generator, a personal text after a follow-up email often prompts the conversation that leads to approval.

Do not overdo it. One follow-up email and one friendly text is plenty for most quotes. More than that starts to feel like pressure.

Automatic Texts After the Yes

Once the estimate is approved and becomes the scheduled job, the texting does not stop. Customers can choose automatic alerts the night before, when they are next on the route, and when the tech arrives. The on-the-way and arrived texts go out from the tech app as the tech works the route, so the homeowner knows when to expect the van without the office making calls.

Replies to those texts come back to the office too. A homeowner who answers the night-before text with “Side gate will be open” or “Can you come after 10?” reaches someone who can act on it.

The Text Allowance on Your Plan

Every plan includes a monthly text allowance: 500 segments on Start, 1,000 on Pro and 2,000 on Crew, counting texts sent and received. Estimate conversations and automatic alerts both count toward it. Texting is available in the US and Canada.

Short texts go further. A clear two-line answer is better for the homeowner and uses less of your allowance than a long paragraph.

Answering Is How Quotes Get Won

An estimate with an unanswered question rarely gets approved. A quick, friendly text answer is often all it takes to move a homeowner from thinking about it to approving it online. For more on quoting in ElectricalBossPro, visit the ElectricalBossPro electrical estimate software page.