The call at 9pm when the power is out.
Electrical work splits into calls that cannot wait and calls that can, and you cannot tell which is which from a missed number on your screen. This answers all of them, works out which is which, and only interrupts you for the ones that earn it.
Three calls, three different jobs
Electricians get a wider spread of call types than most trades, and the wrong response to any of them costs you.
The urgent one. Power out across half a house, a burning smell from a consumer unit, a tripping circuit that will not reset. That caller wants somebody now, and if they get voicemail at 9pm they will find someone who answers.
The compliance one. A landlord or agent needing an EICR, a PAT round, a certificate before a tenancy starts. Unglamorous, repeatable, often the steadiest money you have. It is also the call most likely to go to whoever replies first, because there is nothing to choose between electricians on a certificate.
The quote. A rewire, a garden office, a consumer unit upgrade. Worth real money, and the one you are most likely to forget to call back because it is not on fire.
Handling all three properly needs someone on the phone all day. That is the job this does.
What it does on an electrical call
- Separates safety calls from everything else. Burning smells, sparking, exposed conductors and total loss of power get pushed to you immediately, with the address and the details already taken.
- Gives the safe advice while they wait. If you want it to, it can tell a caller to kill the circuit at the board and stay off it until you arrive. You approve every word of that.
- Books certificate work straight in. EICRs, PAT testing and landlord work are predictable in length, so it can book them into real slots without asking you.
- Captures enough to quote. Property type, age of the installation, board condition, access, what they actually want done. So the quote call is short and you are not going out to look at nothing.
- Follows up the quotes you would have forgotten. A quote sent and never chased is the most common way electricians lose work they had already won.
Will customers hate talking to it?
A few will. I would rather say that than pretend I have built something nobody objects to.
In practice the objection is much smaller than owners fear, because callers are comparing it to voicemail rather than to a person. Somebody whose power is out at 9pm is not evaluating your customer service philosophy. They want to know an electrician is coming and when. Answer that quickly and the rest stops mattering.
The one thing that genuinely damages you is a system that pretends to be human and gets caught, especially on a safety call. Mine says what it is when asked, and hands straight over to you when a caller is worried, angry, or describing something that is not routine. On electrical work that handover threshold is set deliberately low.
How it gets built
Discovery, design, testing, launch, support. Most voice builds are answering real calls inside two to three weeks. I test against real scenarios before it takes a single live call, because the failure that matters is not a clumsy sentence, it is a booking that never reached your diary.
It runs on Vapi, Twilio and ElevenLabs, wired into whatever calendar and CRM you already use, in accounts you own. You see the tool costs before we start, and you can cut my access the day handover is done.
When I would tell you not to bother
If your work is almost all subcontract for one or two main contractors, your phone is not where jobs come from and this changes nothing.
If you are a one-person operation already booked months out on word of mouth, answering more cold calls is not a benefit, it is a source of awkward conversations.
It pays when you take a real share of your work from people finding you cold, when out-of-hours calls are going unanswered, and when quotes are going out and never being chased. If that is not your situation, I will say so on the audit call.
Common questions
Will my customers get annoyed talking to a bot?
A few will, but most are comparing it to voicemail rather than to a person. Someone whose power is out at 9pm wants to know an electrician is coming and when. It says it is an assistant if asked, and on electrical work I set the handover threshold low so anything worrying reaches you fast.
Can it give safety advice on an urgent call?
Only what you have approved, word for word. Usually that is limited to telling someone to isolate the circuit at the board and stay off it until you arrive. It is not going to diagnose a fault over the phone and I would not build it to try.
Can it book EICRs and landlord certificates without asking me?
Yes. Certificate work is predictable in length, so it fits into real slots in your calendar and confirms by text. That is usually the first thing electricians hand over to it, because it is steady work that nobody needs to think about.
Will it chase quotes I have sent?
It can, and this is often worth more than the call answering. A quote sent and never followed up is the most common way electricians lose work they had already effectively won. It follows up on a schedule you set, politely, and stops when someone replies or asks it to.
I only get a few calls a day. Is it worth it?
Sometimes. At a handful of calls a day it depends on what a job is worth and how many of those calls are coming in when you cannot answer. A rewire enquiry lost at 9pm is a different number from a missed PAT test. We work that out on the audit rather than guessing.