Playbook, electrical contractor
The reply that has to get shorter as the danger gets worse
Most of the design work in this network goes into making an assistant answer more fully. This page is about the one case where the correct move is the opposite. A message describing something hot, burning or sparking needs the shortest reply on the site, because every extra clause is time the person spends still standing next to it with the circuit live.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for asking for a person holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The failure mode here is length. A thorough reply keeps somebody reading, and reading is exactly what they should stop doing.
- The instruction does not depend on the cause, which is unusual: stop using it, isolate it at the board if that can be reached safely, call. No diagnosis is needed to give any of that.
- The trigger words are physical rather than technical, so they resemble nothing in the indexed material and will not match a page, which is an argument for putting them in the wording rather than trusting retrieval.
- The follow up question is nearly always whether it can wait, and the second reply must not soften the first by a single degree.
How it arrives
- there is a burning smell from a socket
- the plug got really hot
- i got a shock off the cooker
- there are black marks round the light switch
- something sparked when i plugged it in
- is it ok to keep using it until you come
What has to be indexed for this to work
| The safety instruction, written as wording rather than as a page | Four short sentences you have approved, held in the fallback so they appear regardless of what matched. Composition is a risk here and a fixed sentence is not. |
|---|---|
| How to isolate a circuit at the board, in general terms | Switching a circuit off at the consumer unit, with the qualifier that it is only if it can be reached safely. Switching off is the only board related instruction that belongs anywhere near this material. |
| Your phone number and when it is answered | Because the whole reply resolves to it. If it is not answered at that hour, the wording has to say what to do instead rather than implying somebody is picking up. |
The reply
Stop using that socket now. If you can safely reach the consumer unit, switch off the circuit it is on. Then call us on the number at the top of this page. Do not use it again until an electrician has looked at it.
Four instructions, no explanation, no hedging, no question. Explaining the likely cause would be more informative and less useful, because what the person needs is to be off this page and away from the socket, and a longer reply is measurably worse at producing that.
Where it stops
The trigger. Any description of heat, burning, smoke, a mark, a spark or a shock, on the first message, with no clarifying question of any kind first.
Call us on the number at the top of this page. Do not use that circuit until somebody has looked at it. If you would rather we rang you, leave a number, but stop using it either way.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- That it is probably nothing, or probably just the appliance.
- Ask what make the socket is, or any other question, before the instruction.
- That it can be used carefully until an electrician arrives.
- Any instruction involving removing a faceplate or looking inside anything.
Questions
- Should the assistant collect details at all here?
- Only after the instruction, and only as an offer. The order is what matters: instruction, then number, then optionally a name. Reversed, it becomes a lead capture form in front of a safety message, which is the worst version of this page.
- What if the person pushes back and asks whether it is serious?
- The second reply repeats the first. Softening it is the failure, and it is a predictable one, because the model will read the pushback as a request for reassurance. Write the wording so there is nothing to soften.
- Is refusing to explain not slightly patronising?
- It would be, on any other page. Here the explanation is what does the damage, because it converts an instruction into a discussion. The explanation belongs on the site, in daylight, for people who are not currently standing next to a hot socket.
Keep reading
- Everything for a electrical contractorCall out charges, EV charger enquiries and landlord certificates are answerable. A described electrical fault is an escalation, not a question.
- Handling asking for a person in generalThe design question at the centre of a support assistant. Offer early, offer once, collect what a reply needs, promise a time you can keep.
- 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.
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.