An AI receptionist for electricians that books into a real CRM
Designed for the outage call: run the safety questions first, book the service window second, and put sparks or a burning smell straight through to a person.
- On the roadmap, not available today
- Safety triage runs first
- Transfer rule part of the design
Electrical is the one trade where the first thirty seconds of a phone call can be a safety conversation. Half a house without power is an inconvenience. A burning smell at a panel is not, and the two calls open the same way. This page describes an agent designed around that distinction. It does not exist yet.
The call an electrical contractor actually loses
An outage call comes in some order of urgency the caller cannot judge for themselves. They know the kitchen has no power. They do not know whether that means a tripped breaker, a failed receptacle on a shared circuit, or a loose neutral quietly heating up behind a panel cover.
A good office manager sorts that with three questions: is it the whole house or part of it, does anything smell hot, and has the breaker been reset already. Those questions are the same every time, which is precisely why they are a good candidate for a script and a bad candidate for voicemail.
Meanwhile the calls that fund the year are not outages at all. They are panel upgrades and EV charger installs, and those callers ask what it costs. The office cannot answer that either, since it depends on the service size, the panel location and the length of the run. Those calls need booking, not quoting.
The call flow it runs
Safety first, then classification, then booking. None of this ships today.
- 1
Run the safety questions
Before anything else: is there a burning smell, visible sparking, a hot outlet or scorching around a plate. Any yes ends the flow and transfers. This block runs before the agent even takes a name.
- 2
Scope the outage
Whole property or part of it, whether neighbours are also out, and whether the breaker was reset and tripped again. A repeated trip is a different fault from a one-off.
- 3
Separate service from project
A dead circuit, a panel upgrade, an EV charger and a commercial bid are four different motions. The design captures which one this is as a field, because it decides which pipeline and which calendar the call lands in.
- 4
Capture the property electrics
For upgrades and chargers: current service size if the caller knows it, panel location, and whether the property is owned or rented. Enough for an estimator to arrive prepared.
- 5
Book the right kind of visit
A service window for a fault, an estimate appointment for a panel or a charger. Real slots read from the calendar, and a meeting record written against the contact.
- 6
Refuse to price
The design declines to quote a panel upgrade or a charger install and books the site visit instead. Permit and inspection requirements vary by jurisdiction and are not something a script can price.
What it will do, and what stays with a person
The line is drawn at anything that could be a fire.
| Situation | The planned agent | A person |
|---|---|---|
| Burning smell, sparking or a hot outlet | None. Immediate transfer with no further questions | Advises on shutting off power and dispatches |
| One dead circuit, breaker resets fine | Scope the outage, book the next service window | Only if the caller asks |
| Breaker trips again as soon as it is reset | Captures the pattern and flags the job as priority | Decides whether it waits until morning |
| EV charger enquiry | Captures service size, panel location and parking distance, books an estimate | Quotes after seeing the panel and the run |
| Panel upgrade price over the phone | Declines to quote and books the visit | Prices it, including permit and inspection |
| Questions about permits or inspection scheduling | None. Transfer, because requirements differ by jurisdiction | Answers for your specific area |
Rows describe the intended behaviour of a roadmap feature. Nothing here answers a call today.
Why a voice agent needs a CRM behind it
An agent that books into nothing is an answering machine that can hold a conversation. For an electrical contractor the cost shows up in the project pipeline, not the service one. A panel upgrade or a charger install has a quote, a permit, an inspection and a follow-up sequence, and none of that hangs off a transcript in a separate dashboard.
There is also a routing reason. Service calls and project quotes want different pipelines and often different people. A call captured with its type on it can be routed. A voicemail cannot, which is why charger enquiries end up in the same list as dead outlets at the same low priority.
The pipeline, calendar, knowledge base and approval queue are all live now. The receptionist will write into them when it ships rather than to be a parallel system you reconcile by hand every morning.
Settle this before it ships. Whether you must disclose an AI caller, and whether you may record the call at all, both vary by jurisdiction, as do the licence disclosure rules for contractors. Decide your position with your own counsel rather than assuming a default. This is not legal advice.
What electrical contractors ask about this
- Will it sound like a robot?
- The synthesised voice is not usually what gives an agent away. Delay is, and so is an answer that did not register what the caller said. The safety block at the top of this design is the hardest part, because a caller describing a burning smell needs an immediate response, which is why escalation is a hard trigger rather than a judgement.
- What happens when it cannot answer something?
- It says so and offers a person. The facts it may state come from your knowledge base: service area, call-out terms, whether you do commercial work. Everything else gets a scripted refusal. Pricing a panel upgrade and answering a permit question are both on the refusal list on purpose, since neither has a correct phone answer.
- Will it say it is an AI?
- Yes, by design. Several jurisdictions are moving toward requiring disclosure, and it is the safer default regardless. A caller reporting a hot outlet who later learns they were talking to software is a complaint you do not want. Confirm what applies where you work with your own counsel. This is not legal advice.
- What will it cost per minute?
- We are not publishing a number. It depends on your voice provider, your model class and your call length, and a safety triage that transfers in twenty seconds costs almost nothing next to a four-minute charger enquiry. The components are the platform fee, model, speech to text, text to speech and telephony, and the calculator page walks through the arithmetic.
- Is it legal to record the calls?
- Recording law varies by jurisdiction, and in some places every party on the call has to consent rather than just one. That is why a consent line is built into the opening of the call rather than being an option to switch on. Which rule covers you depends on where you and your callers are, so confirm it with your own counsel. This is not legal advice.
- Can it transfer to me?
- Transfer is the first behaviour in the design, not the last. The triggers are literal words rather than a judgement call: burning, smoke, sparks, hot to the touch, plus any request for a person. When one fires the agent stops the script and connects. If nobody picks up, it falls back to a message and a task rather than ending silently.
Get the panel and charger pipeline running now
Quote cadences and two separate pipelines work today. The voice half will route calls into them.