What a text-back and answering setup costs an electrician, and the month it pays for itself
Line-item costs for missed-call text-back, an answering service and call tracking at an electrical shop, plus the hypothetical math on when each one pays back.
You were on a ladder when the phone rang. It went to voicemail, the homeowner did not leave one, and she called the next electrician on the map. That call happens at every shop, every week, and the fix costs less than most owners assume. Here is the line-item version.
What you are buying
Three pieces, and you can buy them one at a time.
Missed-call text-back. Software watching your business line. When a call goes unanswered, it sends a text within seconds: "Sorry we missed you, this is [company]. What can we help with? Reply here and we will call you back shortly." The homeowner replies instead of dialing the next name. Cost: $30 to $150 a month depending on whether it comes bundled with a CRM, plus a setup fee of $0 to $300. Most shops pay in the lower half of that range.
A tracking number or forwarding line. So the text-back and the answering service both see the call. $10 to $40 a month. Some text-back tools include it.
A human answering service. Someone who picks up in your name, takes the address and the problem, and either books it into your calendar or pages you for emergencies. Cost: $150 to $600 a month for a small electrical shop, usually priced per minute or per call, with the low end covering after-hours only and the high end covering full business hours. Trade-specific services that know what a service call is cost more than general receptionists and are worth it.
Full stack, monthly: roughly $200 to $800. Text-back alone: under $150.
The hypothetical shop
Take a made-up two-truck electrical company. It gets 70 inbound calls a month. Like most shops with the owner in the field, it misses about a quarter of them. Say 18 missed calls. Some of those are spam and vendors, so call it 12 real prospects who hung up on voicemail.
Assume half of the prospects who actually reach a person would have booked, at an average job of $520. That is 6 jobs and roughly $3,100 a month walking to a competitor. Put your own numbers into the calculator and you will get a figure for your shop instead of mine.
Now add text-back at $100 a month. In practice not every missed caller replies to a text. Suppose a third do. Four conversations, two jobs booked, about $1,040 in recovered revenue against $100 in cost. The payback on text-back alone is inside the first month, and that math holds even if you cut my assumptions in half.
Add a business-hours answering service at $400 a month. Now most of the 12 prospects reach a person. Six jobs at $520 is about $3,100 against $500 in total monthly cost. Still pays back in month one, with margin to spare for the calls the service books that you would have lost to a bad voicemail even when you called back.
Where the math breaks
Honesty about the failure modes.
If your minimum service call is under $150. The recovered job needs to cover the cost of recovering it. At a low ticket you still want text-back, because it is cheap, but the answering service needs volume to pay. Raising the minimum is the fix, and the pricing guide explains how to present it without losing the call.
If the callback is slow. Text-back buys you a reply, not a job. If the homeowner texts back "my panel is buzzing" and nobody responds for three hours, you paid for a lead you then abandoned. The number that matters is minutes from reply to a human calling. Under five is where the booking rate holds.
If the answering service books badly. A generalist service that says "someone will call you" instead of booking a window is a slightly nicer voicemail. Give them a script, three questions and calendar access, or do not bother.
If you do not track it. Without a tracking number you cannot see how many calls were missed, how many texted back, and how many booked. You will feel like it is working or not working and you will be guessing.
How this ranks against other spending
Compare the same $500 a month to a search campaign. Google Ads in most electrical markets cost $40 to $120 per click and a few hundred dollars per booked job once you count wasted clicks. That is money well spent when the phone is answered. Spent while a quarter of calls go to voicemail, it is buying leads to lose. Fix the phone first, then turn on the ads, which is the order the Google Ads guide recommends.
The reason this trade underprices the phone is that nobody sees the calls that did not leave a voicemail. In our data, 13.5% of electrical listings claim 24-hour availability and 40% list no hours at all. Both groups are promising or implying an answer they are often not set up to deliver. The missed calls guide has the full setup, including the scripts.
If you want text-back and the answering script set up before you spend a dollar, the free 14-day trial covers any service, no card, text or call.