Setting up Yesoma for an electrical business

This guide walks through how to configure Yesoma for a licensed electrical contracting business. It covers the playbook that auto-populates your workspace at onboarding, how Yesoma handles emergency versus scheduled inquiries differently, and the practical decisions behind pricing, deposits, and warranty language that your customers will see.

1. Apply the electrical playbook in onboarding

When you create a new Yesoma workspace, the onboarding wizard asks you to pick your industry. Select Electrical services. Yesoma will load the electrical playbook and write the following into your workspace in one step:

• Eight pre-built services ranging from emergency call-outs to whole-home rewiring
• Seven policies covering deposits, licensing, warranties, permits, and code compliance
• Eight FAQs answering the questions electrical customers actually ask before they book
• Eight reply templates tuned for emergency and scheduled contexts
• A follow-up cadence (inquiry day 0, quote day 3, post-job day 1)
• A review-request flow timed for peak satisfaction

Everything the playbook writes is editable. The intent is to give you a working, credible workspace the day you sign up rather than a blank slate.

After the playbook loads, the wizard will ask you to confirm a few details it cannot pre-fill: your license number, your service area radius, and whether your team currently offers after-hours emergency service. Those answers get written into your Business Brain and into the licensing policy, so your customers see accurate credential language from day one.

2. Emergency versus scheduled inquiry handling

Electrical inquiries split into two very different tracks, and Yesoma handles them separately.

Emergency inquiries — tagged automatically when a customer's message contains words like "sparking," "burning smell," "no power," or "tripped breaker" — pull the emergency call-out template, which opens with a calm safety nudge before any pricing language appears. The template tells the customer to flip the main breaker if it is safe to do so, and to call 911 if anyone is in immediate danger. Only after that safety frame does it mention the $275 emergency call-out fee and the ETA for the technician.

This ordering matters. A customer whose lights just went out at 11 p.m. does not want to read about fees first. The template leads with competence and safety, which is exactly what signals that a licensed electrician — not a handyman — answered.

Scheduled inquiries get the standard first-reply template, which asks for address, problem description, home age, panel details, and a preferred time window. It also mentions the Master Electrician license and full insurance coverage in the second paragraph. Customers shopping for electrical work compare credentials carefully; the first reply is the right place to establish those.

You can configure Yesoma to route any inquiry tagged "emergency" to a specific team member or to trigger an SMS notification outside business hours. Go to Settings → Assignments → Emergency routing to set that up.

3. The "starts at + diagnostic" pricing reality

Electrical work is almost impossible to price over the phone, and customers frequently ask for a number before a technician has seen anything. The pricing reply template is built around this reality.

The template explains, briefly and without condescension, why a range is more honest than a flat quote: wire-run distance, panel condition, what is behind the walls, and whether adjacent work needs to be brought up to current code all affect the final number. It then directs the customer to the diagnostic visit as the right mechanism for getting a firm price.

The diagnostic visit fee structure is:

• $150 for a scheduled service call
• $275 for an emergency / after-hours call-out
• Both fees are credited toward the repair if the customer accepts the quote on the same visit

This is standard practice for licensed electricians and, once explained clearly, customers accept it readily. What they object to is paying a visit fee and then getting a repair quote that does not credit it. The template makes the credit explicit so there is no ambiguity.

In your Business Brain, each service is set to starting_from pricing with a USD anchor. The anchor gives customers a calibration point — "panel upgrade starts at $2,500" — while leaving room for the permit fees, service entrance condition, and inspection costs that the technician will fold into the actual quote. The starting_from label signals that the anchor is a floor, not a ceiling.

4. License, permit, and warranty messaging

Three things set a licensed electrical business apart from an unlicensed handyman, and all three are baked into the playbook:

Licensing. The policy titled "Licensed + insured — Master Electrician on every job" states the credential level and the supervision structure. The first-reply template for scheduled inquiries mentions the Master Electrician license and full insurance in the body. The FAQ "Are you licensed and insured?" provides the extended answer for customers who want to verify before they commit. You will want to edit the license number and state into the policy body after onboarding — the playbook leaves a [license number] placeholder there for you.

Permits. The permit policy explains that you pull all required permits, pass the fees through at cost, and coordinate the inspection — the customer does not have to deal with the building department. This is a genuine value differentiator; many customers have been burned by contractors who skipped permits and left them holding the liability. The FAQ on permits reinforces this. On large jobs (panel upgrade, EV charger, generator), the quote template includes a line item for permit and inspection fees so the customer sees exactly what they are paying.

Warranty. The warranty policy draws a clear line between installation work (1-year labor warranty) and repair work (90-day warranty). The post-job follow-up template reminds the customer of the applicable warranty period and invites them to reach out if anything does not perform as expected. This follow-up lands the day after the job closes, when the customer is still paying attention and before they have forgotten who did the work.

If you supply your own fixtures, the playbook includes a FAQ and a policy note clarifying that the warranty covers labor only for owner-supplied devices. This prevents a common dispute.

5. Deposits on large jobs

The playbook requires a 30% deposit for any job at or above $1,000: panel upgrades, EV charger installs, generator installs, and custom large-scope work. The deposit policy explains the rationale plainly — permit application costs and material procurement happen before the technician arrives on install day, and those costs are real whether or not the customer follows through.

The deposit note on each large-job service reads: "30% deposit due when the job is scheduled; balance due when the final inspection passes." The second half is as important as the first. Tying the final payment to inspection sign-off means the customer is not paying the balance until the work has been officially approved by the building department. That is a meaningful assurance, and saying it explicitly reduces pushback on the deposit itself.

Service-call and diagnostic visits do not require a deposit. The $150 or $275 fee is collected on arrival. Keeping smaller visits deposit-free reduces friction for first-time customers who are still deciding whether to trust you.

To adjust deposit amounts or thresholds after onboarding, go to Services, open any service, and edit the Deposit notes field directly.

6. What your reply templates look like in practice

Here is how the eight playbook templates map to the most common conversation flows you will see:

New emergency inquiry → Yesoma sends the "First reply — emergency call-out" template automatically if emergency keywords are detected, or you send it manually. It leads with safety, confirms the ETA and fee, and credits the fee to any repair accepted that day.

New scheduled inquiry → "First reply — scheduled inquiry" asks for the five details needed to quote the job and establishes credentials in the second paragraph. Customers who read to the end know you are licensed, insured, and permit-compliant before they reply.

Customer asks about price → "Pricing reply — starts at + diagnostic" explains the range, explains why a flat phone quote is not in the customer's interest, and converts the conversation toward booking a service call.

Quote sent → "Quote sent — follow up" summarizes scope, price, permit fees, timeline, and deposit in a clean block. The 30-day validity period is stated so the customer knows the window.

No reply after 3 days → The follow-up cadence fires "Quote follow-up (3 days)" automatically. It offers to walk through any questions about the scope or permit requirements — addressing the two most common reasons electrical customers go silent on a quote.

Job complete → "Post-job follow-up + review request" lands the day after the job closes, confirms the warranty period, and drops the review link. Electrical customers who are satisfied are very willing to write a review — they just need to be asked while the relief is still fresh.

Fully booked on requested date → "No-availability reply" offers two alternate dates and reminds the customer that emergency slots are kept available if the situation escalates.

Customer needs to reschedule → "Reschedule" offers two alternate slots and notes that if a permit has already been pulled, the new date will be confirmed with the building department to keep the inspection window intact.

You can edit any template body in Settings → Reply templates. The tokens {{customer_first_name}} and {{review_link}} are system-populated; bracket placeholders like [address], [date], [price], and [permit cost] are filled in manually when you send.