ElectricalBossPro Blog — Scheduling & Dispatch

Emergency Electrical Calls: Moving One Job to the Top Without Wrecking the Day

Some calls cannot wait for the next opening. A homeowner with no power to half the house in the middle of winter. A restaurant whose walk-in cooler circuit went down an hour before dinner. A property manager with a tenant whose whole unit just lost power. These calls jump the line, and the question for the office is how to let them jump without throwing the rest of the day into chaos.

Same-Day Versus Emergency

Ordinary same-day calls are covered in Fitting Same-Day Service Calls Into an Electrician's Route. Those slot into a route wherever they fit. An emergency is different: it goes next, ahead of whatever the tech was about to do.

What counts as an emergency is your company's call, and it is worth writing down. A short script for the office, written by the electrician who owns the business, keeps the person answering the phone from making technical judgments on their own. That script is yours to write. The software's job is to make the scheduling side fast once the decision is made.

Pick the Van

Open the office map. Crew GPS shows where every van is. The closest van is not always the right one:

• A service van between stops is usually the best choice. Its next stop can wait an hour.
• An install van in the middle of a panel upgrade usually cannot leave. The house it is at may have its power off.
• A maintenance van on generator visits can often break away, since yearly maintenance can move to another day without harm.
• The owner may be the best answer if they are out doing estimates nearby.

Check the dispatch board for that van and today to see what is left on its route before making the call.

Put It at the Top

Add the job to the chosen van for today and set it as the next stop in the route order. The tech app shows it on the tech's phone in that spot. A quick call or text to the tech is still a good idea for a true emergency, so they know to head there as soon as the current stop is wrapped up.

Put what the customer said in the job notes, in their words. If the property is already on file, the equipment saved on the house shows on the job card: the main panel with its brand, rating and location, any subpanels, a generator and transfer switch if there is one, and the access notes. The tech walks in already knowing what is in the house.

Deal With the Rest of the Route

An emergency stop can take ten minutes or three hours, and nobody knows which until the tech is there. Plan for the longer case. Look at the rest of the van's day:

• Stops with customers who took time off to be home should stay if at all possible.
• Flexible stops, like a fixture swap or a recurring inspection, can move to tomorrow.
• Recurring visits from the Waiting List can go back to another day without losing their place in the cycle.

Move what needs to move on the board, then send those customers a text through two-way texting. A customer who hears “we had an emergency call, can we come tomorrow morning instead” at 11am is usually fine. A customer who waits until 5pm and hears nothing is not. For moving jobs, see Rescheduling Electrical Jobs: Moving a Call to Another Day or Another Van.

The Emergency Customer's Texts

A customer in an emergency wants to know the van is really coming. The automatic on-the-way text goes out when the tech heads there, and the arrived text when they pull up. If the customer uses the customer app, they can see the route on a live map. That cuts down on the repeated “are you close?” calls that tie up the office during a busy stretch.

After the Call

When the tech taps Complete, the invoice is created from the work done, and a card on file can be charged on the spot. Emergency and after-hours rates, if you charge them, come from your own service list. The before-and-after photos and notes stay with the job, and anything the tech updated about the equipment flows back to the house record for next time.

Emergencies Are Easier With One Board

An emergency on a whiteboard means erasing, rewriting, calling the tech and hoping the other customers find out. On one dispatch board with crew GPS and automatic texts, it is a few clicks and a couple of courtesy messages. To see how emergency dispatch fits with routing and the rest of the schedule, visit the ElectricalBossPro electrician scheduling software page.