AI receptionist for electricians: the call that came while you were on a live board.

Most trades can put a phone on speaker. An electrician working on a switchboard, in a roof space or up a ladder cannot, and would not, because it is a job where the attention matters more than the interruption.

This makes an electrician's phone unusually badly answered even by trade standards. The calls arrive through the day, they arrive during exactly the tasks that cannot be paused, and the callback happens hours later.

The gap is expensive because of what electrical calls turn into. A small call-out is often the front end of a switchboard upgrade or a rewire, and the customer who could not reach you has already booked somebody for the small job.

Commercial makes it sharper again. A builder or a facilities manager ringing about a site is not going to leave a voicemail; they are going to try the next electrician on their list, and that list is short.

A caller saying there is a burning smell, sparking, smoke from a power point or a switchboard that keeps tripping is not a booking enquiry. Any system answering an electrician's phone has to recognise that and stop being a receptionist.

This is the single most important thing on this page. An automated answer that calmly offers a caller with a burning smell an appointment on Thursday is a genuinely dangerous outcome, and it is what a poorly built system will do.

The handling has to be simple and absolute. Certain descriptions trigger plain safety advice, a reach for a real person immediately, and a note that if it is urgent the caller should turn the power off at the main switch or call emergency services.

The list of what counts is written by the electrician, not by us, because a licensed person decides what is an emergency and what is a Thursday job.

What has to be treated as urgent

• Burning smell, smoke or sparking.

  Safety advice, then straight to a person. Never a booking.

• Any hot or discoloured power point or switch.

  The same, immediately.

• A switchboard tripping repeatedly.

  Not a nuisance. Escalated.

• No power to a property with medical equipment.

  Escalated regardless of the hour.

The ordinary calls, which are most of them. Booking a call-out, quoting a call-out fee, answering hours and areas, taking the details for a quote on a defined job, and telling somebody whether you do the kind of work they are describing.

The quote calls are the largest group and the most improvable. An electrician ringing back with the address, the property type, what the customer wants and whether it is a house or a unit already captured is starting from a much better place.

The switchboard and rewire enquiries are worth capturing carefully because of their value. Knowing the age of the property and whether there is a safety switch already tells an electrician most of what a first phone call would have.

Commercial calls are different and should be routed rather than handled. A builder ringing about a site wants the electrician, and the right behaviour is to take the details and flag it immediately rather than book anything.

The ordinary calls it can take

• A standard call-out.

  Booked into the slots you allow, with the address and the problem captured.

• The call-out fee.

  If yours is fixed, it can say it. If it is not, it says a quote follows.

• Whether you do the work.

  Solar, EV chargers, data, three phase, whatever you actually do.

• The details for a quote.

  Property age, type, access, and what the customer wants.

Your call-out fee, your hours, your areas, what work you take, and the escalation list. It must never estimate a repair, never say whether something is safe, and never advise a caller to do anything electrical themselves beyond turning the power off.

The estimate line is where electricians get burnt in every sense. Electrical work uncovers other work, so anything said before somebody has looked becomes the price the customer was expecting.

The do-it-yourself line matters more than it sounds. The only instruction it is ever allowed to give a caller is to turn off the power at the main switch, and only in the safety escalation. Anything beyond that is advising unlicensed electrical work.

The rest is straightforward and it is mostly a written version of what whoever answers the phone already knows: which suburbs, which days, which jobs you turn down.

What it never does

• No repair estimates.

  The call-out fee if it is fixed, and nothing beyond it.

• No safety judgements.

  It never tells anybody something is fine.

• No instructions beyond the main switch.

  Anything else is asking an unlicensed person to work on electrics.

• No promises about arrival times.

  It books into slots you control, and that is all.

It answers the calls that ring out while you are on the tools, in your business's voice, handles the ordinary ones, escalates the dangerous ones immediately, and leaves you a proper set of details for everything else.

The result is that being unreachable stops costing you the work. The customer who rang at eleven while you were on a board has a call-out booked for tomorrow, and you found out about it when you came down the ladder.

The after-hours effect is bigger than most electricians expect. A meaningful share of electrical calls arrive in the evening when something has gone wrong at home, and those callers are choosing purely on who answers.

It runs on your existing number, every call is recorded and readable, and the escalation rules can be tightened the first time something is handled in a way you do not like.

What it will not replace

• It is not an electrician.

  It books, it captures, it escalates. Nothing technical is decided by it.

• It is not an emergency service.

  For a genuine hazard it says so plainly and gets you, or tells the caller to ring emergency services.

• It does not decide your day.

  You set what it can book and when.