ElectricalBossPro Blog — Generator & Maintenance Plans

Selling a Yearly Electrical Safety Inspection Plan to Homeowners

Not every customer has a generator. Every customer has a panel, outlets, breakers and smoke detectors. A yearly electrical safety inspection plan gives an electrical contractor a reason to visit every house on the books once a year, not just the ones with backup power. It is a smaller, simpler offer than a generator plan, and for many homeowners it is the first recurring service they ever buy from an electrician.

A Second Plan Next to the Generator Plan

The generator plan and its price are covered in Pricing a Yearly Generator Maintenance Plan Customers Will Actually Sign Up For. A safety inspection plan works the same way in the software: a service on your service list, a price you set, and a minimum of 365 days between visits.

What changes is who you sell it to. The generator plan goes to generator owners. The inspection plan can go to almost anyone: homeowners in older houses, people who just bought a home, landlords with a few rentals, families who want a yearly check on their smoke and CO detectors. You might offer it at $149 a visit, or whatever fits your market.

What the Homeowner Is Buying

Homeowners do not buy “grounding and bonding checked.” They buy peace of mind and a piece of paper that says someone qualified looked at their house. Your job is to make that clear when you describe the plan.

In ElectricalBossPro, the tech works an electrical safety inspection checklist on their phone during the visit. It covers the main panel, breakers, AFCI and GFCI devices, grounding and bonding, surge protection, connections, outlets and switches, smoke and CO detectors, exterior outlets and covers, the meter base and service drop, and any generator, transfer switch or EV charger on the property. The tech adds readings, picks a condition and writes recommendations.

The office then prints the Electrical Safety Inspection report for the homeowner. That report is what the customer is really buying. Describe it plainly in the plan: “One yearly visit, full checklist, written report with recommendations.” The details of the report are in The Printed Electrical Safety Inspection Report: The Deliverable the Homeowner Keeps.

Who to Offer It To

Your existing client list is the best place to start. Some groups that often make sense:

• Past service call customers. Someone who called about a tripping breaker last year already trusts you with their panel.
• Panel upgrade customers. After a new panel goes in, a yearly check is an easy follow-on.
• Older homes. If you track panel age or year installed on the house, you can see which customers have older equipment.
• Landlords and property managers. One client, several addresses, each with its own yearly visit.

Tags and custom fields on clients help here. Tag past customers you want to reach, then send a text or email from the office offering the plan.

Make Sign-Up Easy

The offer can live in three places. In the customer app, customers can sign up for services and pricing you choose to show, including the yearly inspection plan. On your website, the sign-up form captures a card and sends the request to Form Responses, where one click turns it into a client. And on any estimate, the plan can be added as a line item, so the customer approves it online with the rest of the work.

Once the customer is signed up, the first visit lands on the Waiting List, and from then on the visit comes due again 365 days after each one is completed.

Run the Visit Like a Route

Inspection plans are only profitable if the visits are efficient. The Waiting List map shows every visit that has come due, with pins colored not due yet, due now and overdue past a 7-day grace. Group the due inspections by area, put them on one van for the day, and auto-route Closest First or Furthest First from the shop. Many shops put inspections and generator visits on the same van, with a second van on service calls and installs.

The customer gets a reminder the night before if they want it, an “on the way” text and an “arrived” text. When the tech taps Complete, the card on file can be charged and the invoice goes out.

The Plan That Leads to Other Work

An inspection plan is honest work on its own, and it also tends to surface other jobs. When a tech writes a recommendation such as replacing worn exterior outlet covers or adding a whole-house surge protector, the office can build an estimate from the service list and send it to the customer to approve online. The approved estimate becomes a scheduled job. Nobody has to remember what the tech said in the driveway.

Over a few years, a book of inspection plans becomes a list of houses you know well, with their equipment and history on record. To see how inspection plans fit alongside generator plans, reminders and billing, visit the ElectricalBossPro generator maintenance software page.