By business type
What an electrical contractor can safely automate
Electrical enquiries split cleanly in a way plumbing does not. On one side sits work with a form to fill in: a certificate, a consumer unit change, a charge point, a rewire quote. On the other sits somebody describing a smell, a spark or a tripping circuit, and that is not a support question at all. The line between them is the whole design of the assistant.
What people actually type
Not the questions on your FAQ page. These are the phrasings that arrive in a chat window, lowercase and unpunctuated, and the material has to answer them in those words rather than in yours.
- how much do you charge for a call out
- do you do landlord electrical certificates
- how much is an eicr for a three bed
- can you install an ev charger
- will my fuse box need upgrading for a charger
- my sockets keep tripping the breaker
- there is a burning smell from a socket
- how much to rewire a house
- do you issue certificates for the work
- can you add outdoor sockets
- do you cover my postcode
- are you registered with a scheme
What to feed it
In rough order of how much work each one takes off the front desk. Every one of these is a document you almost certainly already have.
| Your charges and minimum call out | The minimum charge, what it includes in time, the rate after it, and separate out of hours rates. Electrical jobs are often short, so the minimum charge is the number customers actually pay and the one that surprises them if it appears only on the invoice. |
|---|---|
| Inspection and certificate pricing by property size | Periodic inspection reports priced by bedrooms or circuits, what the price includes, how long the visit takes, and what happens when the report comes back with faults needing remedial work. The remedial follow up is the part nobody explains and the part that generates the complaint. |
| Charge point installation requirements | The survey questions you ask, the parking and cable route conditions, the supply capacity issue that decides whether an upgrade is needed, and whether any grant or scheme applies where you operate. This is the highest intent enquiry an electrician gets and the one most often lost to a slow reply. |
| The scheme and qualifications you hold | Your competent person scheme membership or local equivalent, your public liability cover, and what your certificates look like. Landlords and sellers ask this directly because their agent told them to. |
| What notifiable work means for a customer | Which jobs are notified to the local authority where you operate, whether you handle the notification, what paperwork the customer receives, and why they will need it when they sell or let the property. |
| Your service area and any minimum job size | The towns you work in, and whether small jobs at the edge of the area are taken at all. Electricians lose a lot of time to enquiries for a single socket forty minutes away, and publishing the rule ends those before they start. |
What has to reach a person
Anything that sounds like a live safety problem
A burning smell, scorch marks, a socket that is hot, sparking, a shock from an appliance, water near a consumer unit. The correct behaviour is to say to stop using the circuit, turn it off at the consumer unit if it is safe to reach, and call, with the number in the same reply.
This is not a case for a careful, hedged answer. It is a case for a short one that ends in a phone number, because the failure mode of a long reply is that somebody keeps using the circuit while they read it.
Remote fault finding of any kind
Why a breaker trips, why lights flicker, why a circuit died after a storm. Fault finding is a physical process of isolating circuits and testing, and no amount of description substitutes for it. An assistant that suggests a likely cause has both guessed and encouraged somebody to act on the guess.
The honest reply names the process, says it needs an attendance, and takes the enquiry with the symptom already written down so the electrician arrives knowing what to bring.
Whether a supply or a consumer unit can take a new load
This is the real question inside most charge point and electric shower enquiries. It depends on the incoming supply, the existing board, the earthing arrangement and what else is on the circuit, all of which are seen on a survey. The assistant should say what the survey checks, which is a genuinely useful answer, and stop before the verdict.
The wording when it cannot help
This is the message the assistant returns when nothing in the material covers the question. It is written by you rather than generated, which matters here more than anywhere: it is the sentence a stranger reads at the worst moment.
If you can smell burning, see scorch marks or have had a shock, stop using that circuit, switch it off at the consumer unit if you can do so safely, and call us on the number above. I cannot diagnose an electrical fault remotely. I can help with our charges, inspection reports, charge point enquiries and the areas we cover.
It names what it cannot do, gives the route that can, and offers to take a message. A refusal that only apologises leaves the person exactly where they started.
Rules and duties that shape the answer
Certification and notification are legal obligations
In many countries certain electrical work in a home is notifiable to the building control authority, and certified work has to be carried out or signed off by somebody registered to do it. The customer usually meets this rule at the point of sale, when a solicitor asks for the paperwork.
That makes precision worth more than reassurance here. Index what you actually issue and what you actually notify, and hedge the general statement to where you operate, because the regimes differ.
Landlords have their own electrical safety duties
Rented property in a growing number of places is subject to periodic inspection requirements at a set interval, with a copy of the report going to tenants and sometimes to the local authority. Landlords search for this in the language of the rule rather than the language of the trade.
Index it in their words as well as yours, and state the interval as the one that applies where you work rather than as a universal fact.
A recommendation carries liability that a description does not
There is a real difference between saying what a report covers and saying that a customer needs one, or between listing charger types you install and saying which one suits their car and their supply. The first is information about your business. The second is professional advice given without an inspection.
Write the indexed material as description rather than recommendation and the assistant inherits the distinction.
Never, whatever the documents say
Out of bounds
- The likely cause of a described electrical fault.
- Whether it is safe to keep using a circuit, socket or appliance.
- Whether a supply or consumer unit will take a new load without a survey.
- Any instruction for working inside a consumer unit or on fixed wiring.
- Whether a customer's existing installation meets the standard where they live.
Playbooks for this trade
One page per recurring question, written for a electrical contractor rather than in general. Each carries the phrasings, the material that answers them, a reply worth copying, and the line where it has to stop.
- Two kinds of electrical quote, and telling a caller which they wantSome electrical work is a fixed price product and some cannot be priced until a floor comes up. The reply has to say which one it is.
- New load on an old installation, answered without giving a verdictChargers, showers and hot tubs all raise one question about the supply. The honest answer is the short list the survey checks.
- Why an electrical fault cannot be worked out from a descriptionFault finding means isolating circuits and testing them. A guess from a description is worse than nothing, because somebody acts on it.
- The two questions hiding inside are you insuredThis question is really two. One is about your liability cover, the other about the paperwork a solicitor will ask for years later.
- The reply that has to get shorter as the danger gets worseOne electrical message makes a careful, balanced answer the wrong answer. It needs four instructions and a phone number.
- The slot is the easy half, the power off window is the appointmentThe date is the easy part. The real agreement is how many hours the house has no supply, and who has to be in while it does not.
- Half the after hours messages are not the electrician's to answerA dark house at midnight is often the street, the meter or the supplier rather than a fault in the building, and saying so saves a call out.
- The two electrical prices that cannot be a number in advanceFault finding is sold by time because the time is the work, and a board change can grow the moment the old circuits are tested.
- Who the invoice goes to is rarely who opened the doorThe tenant let you in, the agent instructed the job and the landlord pays. The invoice and the report go to different people.
- The complaint that arrives the day after the report doesA coded observation on an inspection reads to some customers as an upsell. That complaint is about trust, not about wiring.
- Answering hours, working hours and the hours the power can be offThe phone is answered until five. A job that turns the supply off cannot start at three, and a test may only run when a building is empty.
- One date, and several diaries that are not the electrician'sScaffolding, a suspended bay, a second electrician and a supply appointment can all hang off one day, and moving it moves none of them.
- What has already been spent when a job is called offA board, a charge point unit or cable cut to length stops being stock the day it is ordered for one address. That is where the cost sits.
- Two charges customers hear as one, and only one is a penaltyThe deposit buys the parts. The abortive charge covers the morning where the board turned out to be behind a fitted wardrobe.
- The work was done, the answer was unwelcome, and now they want the money backAn inspection that finds work, or a survey concluding the supply needs upgrading, feels to some customers like nothing was delivered.
- The guarantee on the labour is not the guarantee on the boxYour workmanship, the manufacturer's cover on the unit and the certificate behind the installation are three things with three routes.
- Parking is not a courtesy on a job with a cable drumExternal work needs the van within reach of the cable run, often a suspended bay, sometimes a tower. None of that is a convenience.
- The survey is short if the things it needs to see are reachableThe board behind the coats, the loft full of boxes and the meter cupboard key are what turn a survey into a second appointment.
Questions
- Can it quote for a periodic inspection report?
- It can quote your published price for the property size, which is a fixed product rather than a job that varies. What it should add every time is what happens when the report finds remedial work, because that is a second cost and a customer who hears about it first from an invoice becomes a complaint.
- Is the charge point enquiry worth automating?
- It is the strongest case on this page. Those enquiries arrive with a long list of questions about cable routes, parking and supply capacity, and they go to whoever answers first. An assistant that handles the general questions and captures the address and the parking situation hands you a survey booking rather than a cold lead.
- What if somebody insists on a diagnosis?
- Raise the caution level so the assistant refuses on a weak match rather than reaching for the nearest page, and write the refusal so it names the safety step and the phone number in the same sentence. A refusal that only apologises leaves the person exactly where they were, still using the circuit.
Keep reading
- For a plumbing and heating firmSorting an emergency from a routine job, quoting call out rates, and never suggesting a fix on gas work that only a registered engineer may touch.
- For a removals companyPrice depends on volume and access, so a survey comes first. Insurance limits are what customers misunderstand most, so say them plainly.
- For a car dealershipStock moves daily and finance adverts are regulated, so this is mostly about what a dealership assistant must never claim to know.
- Every business typeWhat an assistant has to know before it can answer for a trade.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.