Never lose a job with the top electrician answering service
Don’t lose out on potential customers with Sona, OpenPhone’s AI agent that can take calls for you 24/7. Capture every lead, answer common questions, and take messages with the best phone system for growing businesses.
Trusted by over 60,000 businesses
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Get a better call answering alternative to voicemail
Sona greets callers, takes detailed messages, and answers questions — all customized to your business needs.
Why Sona is a better virtual receptionist for your electrical business
Here are three reasons why Sona outperforms traditional answering services:
1. Integrated in your business phone
OpenPhone is a collaborative business phone system designed to help small and growing businesses scale their customer conversations. Businesses across the construction, home services, and professional services industries rely on OpenPhone to manage their communications efficiently. You can make calls, send texts, stay aligned with your team, and deliver personalized conversations to every single client.
Sona is an AI answering service integrated within OpenPhone. Your team can view Sona’s call logs, summaries, transcripts, and messages in your workspace right after a call ends. Project managers can review vendor updates, electricians can get up to speed on client requirements, and business owners can prepare for new client consultations based on their needs. Thanks to Sona, every detail is captured, and nothing gets missed. You can also sync Sona’s calls with your CRM or project management software, like Jobber and Salesforce.
Calls handled by traditional answering services happen outside your business phone, forcing your team to piece together updates from clients and vendors. You might miss out on urgent requests, schedule changes, or project specifications, which can hamper your team’s productivity.
2. More cost-effective
Save your business hundreds of dollars every month with Sona. Traditional electrician answering services typically charge expensive monthly plans with limited calling minutes, on top of which they charge steep per-minute overage fees. As your business grows and your call volume increases, it can get very expensive very fast.
Sona offers predictable pricing at $49 per month for 50 calls; additional calls are $0.99 each after that. Per-call pricing makes it easier to budget your answering service costs. You can handle multiple questions from callers or gather information from a potential client regarding their project without worrying about your calling minutes. AI phone calls that end within 15 seconds aren’t charged to you, so you won’t be billed for spam calls and wrong numbers.
3. Consistent service
Train Sona to accurately represent your business. Add general company information, like your business hours and services, or specific information, like answers to common FAQs, to Sona’s knowledge base. Test Sona before it goes live and make adjustments based on how it performs.
With traditional answering services, you give up having control over your customer experience. It takes weeks to set up and onboard a third-party service so that they understand your business needs. Even after investing that time and effort, mistakes are bound to happen. And with frequent staff turnover, you’re often back at square one.
As an AI receptionist, Sona always shows up for work and never quits. Deliver the same experience to your callers on every single call.
Your AI call answering service
Get started with Sona in minutes.
Connect Sona to after-hours call flows
Add Sona to your call flows with our call flow builder. It can handle incoming calls at any time, during and after business hours. Combine Sona with OpenPhone’s other call routing features, like phone menus, ring order, and call forwarding options.
Educate Sona on your business
Give Sona an introduction to your electrical business. Share general information, key policies, and answers to common FAQs. Sona quickly learns about your company so that it can give the right information to callers.
Collect follow-up details in messages
Need specific details about a project from a new customer? Get Sona to ask follow-up questions after it hears certain keywords when it takes a message. For example, if a customer is interested in a lighting installation, Sona can ask them for the scope, materials, and target timeline.
Easily see conversations handled by Sona
Review Sona’s call summaries, transcripts, recordings, and messages in OpenPhone. With our Jobber integration, your calls automatically sync with Jobber Requests.
Feature comparison
See how Sona compares to traditional call answering services.
Features
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Sona
Traditional answering services
Starting price per month
$49 for 50 calls, $0.99 per call for additional calls
~5x-7x the cost of Sona
Setup time
Instant
2-4 weeks
Brand voice and tone
Consistent
Highly variable
Monitoring
100% in OpenPhone
Custom solution or daily email summary
Integrations
HubSpot, Salesforce, Zapier, Make, Jobber, and more
Limited integration options
How to set up Sona in four steps
It only takes four steps to get started with Sona:
- Start with a free trial.
- Try our free trial features, including calls and recordings.
- Configure your Sona settings and test Sona in OpenPhone’s call flow builder.
- Once you’ve confirmed it’s a good fit, activate your OpenPhone account and get the Sona add-on.
“Prior to adopting Sona, we struggled with consistently capturing after-hours communications, resulting in missed opportunities. We now have absolute assurance that every incoming call is handled promptly.”
Why thousands of electrical services choose OpenPhone
See why the electrician industry rates OpenPhone as the #1 business phone provider by customer satisfaction in G2.
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Get a number for all your electrical contractors
Get access to local US and Canadian phone numbers and North American toll-free numbers with OpenPhone. Local phone numbers with specific area codes help you build trust with your customers. Toll-free numbers give you the ability to offer dedicated customer support with a nationwide number not tied to any city for residential and commercial clients.
All OpenPhone plans include a phone number for every user who joins your workspace. Your contractors and electricians can get their own phone numbers so that they can protect their personal phone numbers. They can also easily separate work and personal calls with clear call notifications. Share numbers for different departments, like one number for interior wiring and another for exterior installations.
Need more numbers? Add additional numbers for $5 per number per month in your OpenPhone account.
Collaborate more efficiently as a team
Stay on top of your projects with OpenPhone. Split responsibility for your incoming calls and texts with shared numbers; cut down on missed calls and unanswered texts. Get real-time updates and catch up on past context by viewing your customer interactions in your workspace with shared inboxes.
Assign follow-up tasks to your team when a client makes a request with internal threads. Tag a teammate next to a conversation thread to see if they’ve viewed it with inbox viewers. Coordinate with external stakeholders with our group calling and texting features.
Call handling made easy
Customize how you receive incoming calls with OpenPhone’s call management features. Set up custom call flows based on the time of day with our call flow builder. Drag and drop call flow steps in our intuitive, user-friendly visual canvas and see exactly how calls reach your team.
Decide how your team receives incoming customer calls, altogether or in custom ring batches, with ring groups. Provide your customers with a self-serve option to reach different departments with phone menus. Forward overflow calls to a backup number if your team is busy or unavailable. Route after-hours emergency calls to your on-call technician and routine inquiries to Sona.
Text messaging on autopilot
Send more messages in less time with OpenPhone’s automated text messaging features. Automatically respond to incoming texts when your team is busy with SMS auto-replies. Create automated text workflows for common scenarios like appointment scheduling with our Zapier and Make integrations. Quickly answer routine inquiries with pre-written text templates (snippets).
Go beyond standard text messaging with OpenPhone; send photos and videos as well. If a team member is stuck with an on-site issue they can’t solve, they can get help by sharing a video with their supervisor. Equipment malfunction? Share it using photo proof with your vendor and get it replaced.
Never lose track of your customer and vendor details
Stop scrambling to find customer and vendor information in your meeting notes. OpenPhone keeps track of every detail so nothing slips through the cracks.
Automatically record your calls and get instant AI-powered call summaries and transcripts so you don’t have to take notes again. Sync your call logs, texts, and call recordings with your CRM using our third-party integrations. Integrate directly with HubSpot, Salesforce, and Jobber, or build a custom integration with the OpenPhone API.
OpenPhone also helps you uncover details about your electrical services business you might otherwise not see for yourself. With AI call tags, you can use AI to analyze your phone calls and find out what customers are sharing with you over time. Get business insights across your customer base and make actionable decisions.
Call and text from anywhere on any device
Whether you’re in the office, at a job site, or on the go, OpenPhone travels with you. Your technicians can access OpenPhone on their cell phones, and your office staff can take calls on their computers. OpenPhone is available on Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, and the web. All you need is an internet connection to get started.
Find out how much you’re investing in your business phone solution upfront on our pricing page.
Frequently asked questions
Can’t find the answer here? Check out our Resource Center.
An answering service is a professional call management solution that handles incoming phone calls when your team is busy or unavailable. It can be an AI answering service within your phone system, like Sona, or an outsourced service with live receptionists. These services typically perform two essential functions: field routine inquiries about your services and capture detailed messages from new and existing customers so you don’t miss out on potential new jobs.
There are three key advantages to using an answering service for your electrical business:
- Never miss a call: A 24/7 answering service helps you attend to your customers and vendors, during business hours when you’re on a job site and after hours to help if electrical emergencies arise.
- Collect job-specific details: An AI voice agent like Sona can gather critical project information such as the type of electrical issue (residential vs. commercial), urgency level, and the location of the problem. This allows your electricians to arrive prepared for each job with the right tools and materials.
- Handle routine inquiries efficiently: Free up your licensed electricians from answering repetitive questions about service areas, licensing, estimates, or availability. A virtual receptionist service can provide instant responses about your offerings, certifications, and scheduling options while your team focuses on completing jobs safely.
Phone answering services for electrical contractors generally range from $180-$300 per month for basic packages with limited calling minutes, after which they charge $1.50-$2.50 per minute. These costs can quickly escalate in emergency call spikes, like in tough weather conditions that can cause rolling blackouts.
Sona provides transparent, predictable pricing that scales with you. It costs $49 monthly for 50 calls, and $0.99 per call after that. Calls less than 15 seconds won’t be charged to you.
Call centers are high-volume operations designed for enterprises that handle thousands of daily interactions. They provide comprehensive support, including troubleshooting, order management, and complex problem resolution, but require significant investment in setup, training, and quality control.
Answering services specialize in core call management — capturing messages, answering basic service questions, and directing urgent electrical issues appropriately. They're perfect for electrical contractors who receive moderate call volumes but need professional coverage during jobs, after hours, or when dealing with emergency spikes. Solutions like Sona are designed for trade businesses that require reliable call handling without enterprise-level complexity.
We’re biased here, but we believe Sona provides the best answering service for electrical businesses. It offers round-the-clock availability with customization specific to electrical services, enabling you to train it on your service areas, emergency protocols, and pricing structures. Unlike traditional electrician answering services, Sona is integrated in your OpenPhone workspace and can sync with your CRM, maintaining complete real-time records of all your customer communications.
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