AI that chases the quote you forgot to follow up.
Electrical work is quote-heavy. You price the switchboard upgrade, send it that night, and then you are on three other jobs and it is day eleven. The customer went with whoever followed up. Answers your calls, chases your quotes, books your jobs. From $2,500 setup + $349/month.
An AI receptionist and quote follow-up build for an Australian electrical business costs about $2,500 to set up and $349 a month with Square AI, against a market range of roughly $99 to $1,299 a month. It answers calls, qualifies the job, books it, and chases quotes on day 3, 7 and 14 without you remembering.
Electricians charge $80 to $150 an hour across Australia, with metro rates commonly $90–$140 and an average near $100–$115, plus call-out fees of $80 to $150, based on Australian cost guides compiled in 2026. A switchboard upgrade runs $1,500 to $3,500 — one recovered quote covers most of a year.
Electrical is a quoting business with a phone attached
Plumbing is mostly emergencies. Electrical is mostly quotes, and that changes where the money leaks. A homeowner rings about a switchboard that keeps tripping. You go and look. You price it that evening at $2,800. You send it. And then you are on a solar install for three days, and a rewire after that, and by the time you think about it again it is day eleven and they have gone with someone who followed up on Tuesday.
The rates put a number on what that costs. Australian cost guides put electricians at $80 to $150 an hour, with metro rates commonly $90–$140 and an average around $100–$115, plus call-out fees of $80–$150. But the hourly rate is not where the leak is. It is in the quoted jobs: a switchboard upgrade at $1,500–$3,500, a ceiling fan install at $200–$450, powerpoints at $150–$300 each, EV charger installs and solar work running into the thousands. These are compiled market ranges from cost-guide publishers rather than official data, so treat them as indicative — but they are consistent across many independent sources.
There is decent evidence that following up fast matters, though the best study is American and now fifteen years old. Harvard Business Review's 2011 audit of 2,241 US companies found the average response time to a web enquiry was 42 hours and 23% never responded at all. Firms that made contact within an hour were roughly seven times more likely to qualify the lead than those waiting an hour longer, and sixty times more likely than those waiting a day. US data, old, not electrical-specific — but nobody seriously argues the direction is wrong. The quote you chase on day three converts better than the one you chase on day eleven, and much better than the one you never chase at all.
What it does on an electrical call
Electrical calls split differently to plumbing. Fewer true emergencies, more quotable work, and a licensing question sitting underneath some of it.
Genuine emergencies through to you
Sparking. Burning smell from the switchboard. Exposed live wiring. Complete power loss where someone has medical equipment or a full freezer. The agent recognises these, stops qualifying and transfers immediately. Safety calls do not wait in a queue.
Quotable work captured properly
Switchboard upgrade, rewire, EV charger, solar, downlights through the house. The agent captures the scope, the property age, the access situation and photos where it can, then books the site inspection with enough detail that you are not turning up blind.
Level 2 routed correctly
Network connections, mains upgrades, overhead service lines — work that legally requires an Accredited Service Provider. If you are not Level 2, the agent can say so plainly and refer them on rather than booking an inspection you cannot legally complete. If you are, it flags it and prices accordingly.
Priced against real electrical jobs
Electrical work is mostly fixed-price quoted rather than pure hourly, so here are the quoted jobs and what one recovered one covers.
| Job | Typical market range | Jobs to cover a year of Square AI |
|---|---|---|
| Switchboard upgrade | $1,500–$3,500 | Less than three |
| Powerpoint install (single) | $150–$300 | Twenty to thirty |
| Ceiling fan supply and install | $200–$450 | Fifteen to twenty |
| Standard call-out + first hour | $160–$290 | Twenty-five to forty |
| Full house rewire | $8,000–$20,000+ | Well under one |
| EV charger installation | $1,000–$2,500 | Three to six |
Job value ranges compiled from Australian electrical cost guides published in 2026. These are market compilations from cost-guide publishers, not official statistics, and vary considerably by city, switchboard condition, access and scope. "Jobs to cover a year of Square AI" is our arithmetic against $6,688 (year one: $2,500 setup + $349×12) using the midpoint of each range.
Compliance paperwork is the other time sink
Electrical has a documentation burden plumbing does not. Certificates of Electrical Safety, compliance forms, solar and CER audit trails, photographic evidence tied to jobs. ServiceM8's digital form builder is genuinely strong here — you can build a certificate template that auto-populates from job data and emails on completion, and a lot of Australian electricians run their whole compliance workflow inside it. It is Australian-built and prices per job tier rather than per user, though the Android app lags the iOS one noticeably.
Tradify (from about $35/mo per user) is simpler with better Android support. Simpro suits commercial contractors above about twenty staff with progress claims and variations. AroFlo is the pick if stock and asset management is your real headache. We integrate with all of them, plus Xero, MYOB and QuickBooks. The AI books the job; your existing compliance workflow does what it already does.
Fourteen days, start to answering
Days 1–5 · Discovery
Your services, your suburbs, your rates, your fixed prices, your after-hours policy, your escalation rules. We listen to how you actually talk to customers, because that is what it has to sound like.
Days 6–11 · Build and test
Built, integrated with your job software, calendar connected. You ring it on a private number and throw your worst callers at it. Anything that sounds wrong gets fixed before it goes anywhere near a customer.
Days 12–14 · Live
Final tweaks, a 30-minute session so you can change things yourself, then live on your real number. First month we go through real transcripts together and tune.
Electrician questions
You send the quote as you always do. The automation watches for a response, and if nothing comes back it sends a follow-up on day 3, another on day 7 and a last one on day 14 — in your voice, referencing the specific job, not a generic template. The moment they reply it stops. You set the timing and the wording, and you can kill it for any individual quote.
$2,500 setup plus $349 a month with Square AI. The market runs roughly $99–$149/mo for self-serve platforms up to about $1,299/mo managed. Against a switchboard upgrade at $1,500–$3,500, recovering fewer than three quoted jobs a year covers the whole thing. Whether it does that in your business depends on how many quotes you currently let go cold.
Yes, if you configure it to. Level 2 work — network connections, mains upgrades, overhead service lines — legally requires an Accredited Service Provider. If you are not accredited, the agent can identify those calls and refer them elsewhere rather than booking an inspection you cannot complete. If you are, it flags them for the different rate. We set this during discovery because getting it wrong wastes a trip.
The AI books the job and writes the job card into ServiceM8; your Certificate of Electrical Safety templates and form workflows keep running exactly as they do now. We are not replacing your compliance process — we are making sure the job exists in the system with the right details before you arrive. Same for Tradify, Simpro and AroFlo.
It gives your call-out fee, your hourly rate and any fixed prices you have set — a powerpoint, a fan install, a smoke alarm. It will not price a switchboard upgrade sight unseen, because nobody can, and a customer who gets a phone number quoted then a different price on the day is a customer who leaves a review about it. It books the inspection instead.
Increasingly the majority of the inbound for a lot of residential sparkies. The agent captures the property details, existing switchboard situation, roof or garage access, and whether they have had an install quoted before. Those calls are long and detailed, which makes them exactly the ones you do not want to take standing on a ladder.
Maybe not, and we would rather say so. If you are answering nearly everything and your quotes are getting chased, the receptionist piece will not move much for you — the quote follow-up piece might still be worth it on its own. Have the free call and we will tell you which half, if either, is worth buying.
Fourteen days. Week one is discovery: services, suburbs, rates, fixed prices, Level 2 status, emergency keywords, quote follow-up timing. Week two is build and test — you ring it and break it as many times as you like. Day 14 it goes live on your number and we tune from real transcripts through the first month.
Go deeper
AI for plumbers
Same build, emergency-led trade. Different triage, different maths.
AI receptionist explained
The full breakdown, market pricing, and a calculator that uses your numbers.
Tradie Admin Autopilot
Receptionist plus quote follow-up, reviews and invoice chasing as one build.
What it all costs
Every price, ours and the market's, with sources attached.
Book your free 15-minute audit
Tell us how your calls and quotes actually flow. You get a straight answer within one business day — including whether the maths works for your electrical business.
Phone
0466 887 485 — Joel answers his own phone.
Response time
Within one business day. Usually within four hours.
Location
Penrith, NSW — working with businesses across Australia.
The quote you never chased went to someone else.
Fifteen minutes. We'll look at how many quotes you send, how many you chase, and what the gap is worth.
Or ring Joel: 0466 887 485
Sources
- Electrical rate and job value ranges compiled from Australian electrical cost guides published in 2026, including Yellow Pages Australia, Service.com.au and multiple independent trade cost-guide publishers. These are market compilations rather than official statistics and vary by city, switchboard condition, access and scope.
- National AI Centre, AI adoption insights: December 2025 to February 2026 — SME AI Pulse, conducted by Fifth Quadrant, minimum 400 Australian SME decision-makers surveyed monthly. Construction adoption below 30%. ai.gov.au
- Australian Bureau of Statistics, Counts of Australian Businesses, July 2021 – June 2025, released 26 August 2025 — 76,414 new construction businesses, highest of any industry; 2,729,648 actively trading businesses, 994,178 employing. abs.gov.au
- Oldroyd, J., McElheran, K. & Elkington, D., The Short Life of Online Sales Leads, Harvard Business Review, March 2011 — audit of 2,241 US companies. US data, 2011, not trade-specific; cited as directional evidence on response speed only. hbr.org
- AI receptionist pricing ranges compiled from vendor-published rates across Australian providers, 2026. Vendor-published, not independently audited, and subject to change.