ElectricalBossPro Blog — Running an Electrical Business

Getting Through the Busy Season in an Electrical Business

Every electrical shop has stretches when the phone won't stop. For some it's storm season, when generator calls and outage problems pile up. For others it's spring and summer, when homeowners start projects and builders are busy. Whatever your busy season looks like, it tests the business side of the shop harder than any other time of year.

Busy Is When Small Problems Get Big

In Simple Reports for an Electrical Business Owner: What Is Worth Checking Every Week, the weekly numbers were a way to catch trends. In the busy season, the trends move fast. A few unbilled jobs become a dozen. A couple of unanswered texts become a pile.

The good news is that most busy-season problems are predictable. If you plan for them before the rush, you can spend the rush doing work instead of fighting fires.

Before the Rush

A few things to do in the weeks before your busy season starts:

• Book plan visits early. Yearly generator maintenance and safety inspections that come due near the rush are easier to do just before it. The Waiting List shows what's coming due.
• Check your service list. Make sure prices are current so nobody quotes last year's number in a hurry.
• Set up estimate templates for the jobs you expect most, so quotes go out fast.
• Confirm cards on file for regular customers, so billing at completion just works.
• Write down the booking rules for the office: how many calls per van per day, what gets bumped, what waits.

Protect the Install Schedule

When the phone is ringing with service calls, it's tempting to pull the install van to help. Sometimes that's the right call. Often it isn't. A customer who booked a panel upgrade three weeks ago and gets bumped twice is a customer you may not see again.

If you run one van on service calls and another on installs, inspections and generators, keep that split as long as you can. The dispatch board, filtered by van, makes it obvious when the service side is overloaded. When you do need to borrow the install van, decide it once in the morning, not job by job through the day.

Keep Customers Informed

In the busy season, wait times grow. Customers handle that better when they know what to expect.

• Tell them honestly when you can come, even if it's later than they hoped.
• Let automatic texts handle the night-before reminder, the alert when they're next and the arrived text.
• Point them to the customer app's live map so they can see where the crew is.
• Use two-way texting from the office for changes, so customers get a quick update instead of a voicemail.

Watch your text allowance in a heavy month. Each plan includes 500, 1,000 or 2,000 segments sent and received on Start, Pro and Crew, and short messages go further.

Book Fairly

When there's more work than vans, someone waits. Decide in advance who goes first. Many shops put plan customers and existing customers ahead of new callers for non-urgent work, as a thank-you for their loyalty. Others go strictly in order. Either is fine if it's written down and the office follows it.

Auto-routing helps squeeze more into each day. Closest First or Furthest First from the shop cuts drive time between stops, which matters more on a packed day than any other.

Don't Let Billing Slip

Busy weeks are when invoices get forgotten. The fix is to bill as part of the job, not after it. When the tech taps Complete, the invoice is created and a card on file can be charged. Customers can pay from the customer app. Past-due follow-up sends reminders on its own.

The office's job in the busy season is a quick daily check that every completed job has an invoice. Five minutes a day keeps the money from piling up into a month-end mess.

Take Care of the Crew

Long days in a row wear people down. Watch hours on the time clock, rotate after-hours calls fairly, and resist the urge to stack one more job at the end of every day. A crew that's rested at the end of the busy season is a crew that's still with you next year.

When the rush ends, the slow season brings its own opportunities, covered next in Using the Slow Season in an Electrical Business: Inspections, Maintenance and Follow-Up. For the rest of the business side, go back to the electrical business software page.