Electrical
AI receptionist for electricians
Electrical calls sort on a question the other trades do not ask: is this dangerous right now. A tripping breaker is an inconvenience, a burning smell from a socket is not, and the correct first response to the second is to tell the caller to stop using it rather than to book them in for Thursday. An AI receptionist for an electrical contractor has to get that boundary right, and it has to handle the other half of the call volume that is nothing to do with faults at all: people asking for a price.
Triage
Electrical triage sorts on danger first, inconvenience second
Most trades escalate on how much worse it will get. Electrical escalates on whether it is presently unsafe, which is a judgement about the current state rather than a forecast. That inverts the usual order of questions.
| Level | What the caller says | What should happen |
|---|---|---|
| Stop using it now | Burning smell, scorch marks, a socket or switch hot to touch, sparking, a buzzing consumer unit, smoke. | The agent tells the caller to stop using that circuit, advises turning it off at the board if they can do so safely, and hands over to a person immediately. It does not book an appointment first and it does not attempt to work out the cause. |
| Dangerous condition | Exposed conductors, a damaged cable, water reaching a fitting or consumer unit, a shock received from an appliance or fitting. | Immediate escalation. A shock reported by a caller is treated as urgent regardless of how minor they say it was, because the person best placed to judge that is not on the phone. |
| Loss with a dependency | Total power loss where there is medical equipment, a business that cannot trade, a tenanted property, or a vulnerable occupant. | Same-day. The dependency is what raises it, not the outage, so the agent has to ask rather than assume. Total loss also warrants checking whether neighbours are affected, because that points at the supply rather than the installation. |
| Fault without danger | One circuit dead, a breaker or RCD that trips occasionally, lights flickering, a socket not working. | Booked normally, with the caller asked to note when it trips, because a pattern is worth more to the technician than any description of the symptom. |
| Planned and quoted | Rewires, consumer unit replacements, EV charger installation, additional circuits, landlord certificates, periodic inspection. | Qualified rather than booked. This is where the large invoices are, and it needs different questions from a fault call. |
These are a starting point, not your rules. What counts as an emergency in your business, in your market, for your customers is written with you before launch and put in the contract.
Intake
What the agent asks on a electrical call
Electrical intake splits in two, and running one script across both is the usual failure. A fault call is trying to establish danger and scope. A quote call is trying to establish whether the job is worth a visit and what the electrician needs to know before quoting.
Is it dangerous now
- Any smell of burning, scorching or visible smoke
- Anything hot to the touch, sparking or buzzing
- Has anyone had a shock, however small
- Is water involved, and is it near the board
- Can the affected circuit be turned off safely at the board
Scope of the fault
- One circuit, several, or the whole property
- Are the neighbours affected too
- Does it trip immediately or after a while, and with what running
- Fuses or breakers, and roughly how old the board looks
- What changed recently: new appliance, building work, weather
Quote and project calls
- What is wanted, and by when
- Property type, age and whether it is occupied during works
- Owner, landlord, tenant or main contractor, and who pays
- Whether a certificate or building control sign-off is required
- For EV chargers: off-street parking, distance to the board, supply type
Compliance and access
- Whether a landlord certificate is due or overdue
- Existing installation condition report, and its date
- Site inductions, permits or working hours on commercial jobs
- Access, parking and whether the board is reachable
- Whether an insurer or managing agent is involved
The line it does not cross
What the agent never attempts on a electrical call
This is the trade where the agent's most valuable output is often an instruction to stop and wait. The boundary is drawn tightly and deliberately, and none of it is negotiable at build time.
- It never tells anyone to open, remove or inspect anything electrical.
- It does not advise resetting a breaker that has tripped repeatedly, because repeated tripping is a fault doing its job.
- It does not diagnose. A description of a symptom is captured and passed on, never interpreted into a cause on the phone.
- A reported shock is always escalated to a person, regardless of how the caller characterises it.
- Anything burning, smoking or sparking ends the booking flow and becomes an immediate handover, with the caller advised to stop using the circuit.
- It does not price work over the phone. Rough figures given to callers are how disputes start, and an agent is a poor place to start one.
Demand
How electrical work actually arrives
Electrical demand is more evenly split between reactive and planned work than either heating or plumbing, and that split is the commercial fact that shapes the phones. Roughly speaking, faults arrive unpredictably and are urgent but small, while quotes arrive during office hours and are not urgent but large. Losing the second kind is more expensive and much less visible.
It is also the trade where the caller is most often shopping. Somebody wanting a consumer unit replaced or a charger installed will ring three or four electricians in an afternoon, and in that comparison the first to answer with a competent set of questions is a long way ahead of the two who send the call to voicemail. Nothing about that requires the answer to be immediate, only that it happens.
Regulatory work adds a third pattern that is genuinely predictable and therefore worth automating: landlord certificates and periodic inspections come due on dates that are already known. An agent that recognises a certificate enquiry, captures the property details and books the inspection is doing work that would otherwise sit in somebody's inbox until the deadline.
The live demo
The demo line is not open to the public yet.
We would rather say that than publish a number that rings out. Book a demonstration and you will hear the agent handle a real HVAC call, including the ones it is supposed to escalate rather than answer.
- Tell it your air conditioning stopped working last night.
- Ask for the first appointment tomorrow morning.
- Say the outdoor unit is making a noise you cannot describe.
- Change your mind halfway through and ask something else.
- Answers at any hour
- Separates an emergency from a routine call
- Asks what a technician would ask
- Captures the appointment request
- Hands over to a human when it should
Frequently asked questions
Frequently asked questions
- Will an AI receptionist give electrical safety advice to my customers?
- Only the narrow kind that is always correct: stop using it, do not touch it, turn it off at the board if you can do that safely, and wait for a person. It never tells anyone to open a fitting, reset something repeatedly, inspect a board or investigate a smell. That boundary is written into the build rather than left to the model, because the difference between those two categories of advice is the difference between helping and being liable.
- How does it handle a caller who has had an electric shock?
- As urgent, always, whatever the caller says about how minor it was. The agent captures what happened and where, and escalates to a person immediately rather than booking anything. The reasoning is straightforward: the only person able to judge the severity of that report is not the one describing it over the phone, so the rule is written to remove the judgement rather than to make it.
- Can it handle quote requests for rewires and EV chargers properly?
- That is half of what it is for. Quote calls need a different set of questions from fault calls, and running one script across both is the usual reason they get handled badly. For an EV charger the agent captures off-street parking, the distance from the board, the supply arrangement and the timescale, so the electrician can decide whether to visit and what to expect. It does not give a figure, because a price given on the phone by anyone who has not seen the property is how a dispute starts.
- What about landlord certificates and periodic inspections?
- These are the most predictable calls an electrical contractor takes and among the easiest to lose to whoever answers first, because the person calling has a deadline rather than a preference. The agent recognises the enquiry, captures the property, the number of circuits or bedrooms, the current certificate date where the caller has it, and books the inspection against your real availability where it is connected to your scheduling system.
- Does an electrical contractor need different triage rules from an HVAC company?
- Yes, and that is the substantive difference rather than a marketing one. Heating escalates on temperature and time, plumbing on whether water is moving, and electrical on whether something is dangerous at this moment. The intake questions, the escalation triggers and the safety boundary all follow from that, which is why we write them with you rather than reusing another trade's model.