ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Business Related Discussion average service call

Hi everyone I was wondering if I were to ask what your average service call would bring in total gross sales. this would be for residential work.
also same question but for the comm guys out there to.
now I know alot can go into the "average" but thought I ask.
thanks for your time.

Are you asking for average invoice in residential service (not new construction)?

Dave

yes basicaly, and also commercial service to.

I think an experienced electrician should be able to find the cause of any residential problem within an hour. Driving there and back also has to be figured into the price. After determining what the problem is, have a price ready to fix it. Be sure to charge a minimum for your services of finding the problem and definitely collect some loot for that. Good luck.

"I think an experienced electrician should be able to find the cause of any residential problem within an hour."

In a perfect world maybe, non professional wiring, can be a real challange, for the best of us, buried boxes, bootleg circuits, DIY cable routing, that only superman can see, when you get one of these, pack a lunch and cancel your afternoon calls, these are usually the jobs, they call you for, about 30 to 40% of all our residential service calls are for problems with non professional work.

Well... Average call for my company now would be $600. Althoughwhen I was able to sort through calls in a bigger company that average went to high $900's. Keep in mind though I was tought how to be efficient and sell. BTW I agree with LK not always do calls take under an hour only the most common ones are.

[This message has been edited by electrictim510 (edited 10-02-2006).]

There are a few ways I could figure this, but the easiest is to count deposits, even though many of them were payouts on the same contract. Mine average $1450 this year.

Most of my troubleshoots are simple, but occasionally one takes a half day. If the wiring is pre-thermoplastic insulation I have a heart-to-heart talk with the homeowner about rewiring.

Dave

"average service call"

Is it an emergency call, same day service?

Next day service?

Service by appointment?

Scheduled Call?

Each, may have different costs.

Wow...I guess I must be getting some bad calls.

I do 90% residential service, and my AVERAGE call is usually in the $150.00 range. That's because I do a lot of fixture changes, receptacle replacements, etc. I only charge $65.00 for a ceiling fan replacement or single fixture replacement because I'm competing with Lowe's and Home Depot. I have found that this usually gets me repeat customers, though, so it is worth it. My most recent call was replacing two outdoor wall lanterns with customer-supplied lanterns. I charged $115.00 total and it only took me about 40 minutes and a little caulk.

These small jobs are my bread and butter, and the larger jobs of rewiring or building new services probably only account for about 20-30% of my total job volume (not sales volume). In other words, I do 8 small jobs for every 2 larger jobs. But I usually make more relative profit off of the small jobs than I do the big jobs.

Kevin

P.S. This is in Western Tennessee where the "average" electrician only charges between $35 and $65 an hour. My target hourly rate is $100.00. I do flat-rate, so it varies slightly from job-to-job.

I agree, the average of a residential service call is around $150.

Most of them are small, like mentioned. Add a plug, swap out a fixture, reset a breaker... or the ones I hate the most are, when I gotta tell a guy $75, when all i did was reset the GFCI in his garage... I ussually don't have the heart unless its a far drive.