Your electrician answering service books the visit. Try 14 days free.

The field-service record carries the symptom, panel brand and scope: a Jobber Request, a Housecall Pro customer and unscheduled job, or a ServiceTitan Booking intake. Your office turns that intake into scheduled work. Google Calendar and Outlook provide live appointment booking; QuickBooks receives the customer record. Custom connections use Zapier or signed webhooks, and Pro adds text confirmations.

Penny starts at $29 a month on Starter with annual billing. Pro at $99 adds the on-call schedule, text confirmations, and photo-by-text, which is how a caller sends you a picture of the panel label before the visit. Paid plans include monthly minutes; usage above the allowance is billed at the plan’s per-minute rate. The answering service cost guide compares plans, included minutes, and usage charges.

She asks whether the neighbors are out too. If the street is dark, she gives the caller the utility outage line you keep on file, takes a callback number, and does not book a truck. If only that house is out, she treats it as a service problem, books a same-day visit, and lets your on-call electrician know. Whether the fault is on the utility’s side of the meter or the homeowner’s is a call she leaves to the electrician on site.

She flags it and you decide. Panel upgrades, new circuits, EV chargers, generators, hot tubs, and rewires go on the ticket as permit-likely, and she tells the caller you pull the permits your jurisdiction requires and work with the local inspector. She does not tell a caller whether their job needs one in their town, because that depends on the AHJ and the code edition it has adopted, and that answer comes from you.

The vehicle, whether they want a hardwired charger or a NEMA 14-50 outlet, the panel amperage if they know it, where the panel sits, whether the garage is attached, and the address. That is enough for the electrician to walk in ready for the load calculation. She does not say whether the panel has room, and she does not price the run.

That the estimate is written on site. She captures whether the caller wants a standby unit with an automatic transfer switch or an interlock for a portable generator, what they need to keep running during an outage, the fuel they have at the house, and the panel size, then books the site visit. If a gas line is involved, she notes that a gas fitter may be part of the job so you can plan the second trade.

Yes. Tell her which callers are commercial accounts and which slots belong to your journeyman or your master, and she routes each call to the right calendar. A restaurant fit-out or a retail service call goes where you have said it goes. Anything three-phase or industrial gets flagged rather than booked, because most residential shops want to look at that before they commit a truck.

If nothing is warm and nothing smells, she asks them to find the nearest GFCI outlet, often in a bathroom, the kitchen, or the garage, and press RESET, because one GFCI can protect a string of outlets in other rooms. If the outlet comes back, they may not need a visit. If the GFCI will not stay reset, or the outlet is warm, she books the visit and writes down which GFCI they tried.

The brand goes on the ticket, and she tells the caller the electrician will want to look at it during the visit. She does not describe the risk or recommend a replacement over the phone. The same goes for Zinsco and Challenger panels, aluminum branch wiring, and knob-and-tube: recognized, noted, and left to the electrician to assess in person.

A reported electrical hazard interrupts routine intake. Smoke or sparks gets everyone outside and a 911 instruction before your on-call electrician is alerted. Other faults follow the priority rules your shop approves; Penny records observations without diagnosing the wiring. You can review and edit the rules in plain English. See Emergency Rules for the escalation workflow.