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Emergency callouts and out of hours work: pricing the interruption

Emergency work is the best paid hour in the trade and the most expensive interruption in the week. Both are true at once, and firms get into trouble by pricing the first and ignoring the second.

What you are charging for

Not the hour. The hour is the small part. You are charging for dropping what you were doing, for the customer who now gets moved, for being available at all, and for the fact that somebody has to be sober and near the van on a Saturday night. A rate that only reflects the labour is underpriced even when it looks high.

Say the numbers on the phone

• The callout charge, and what it includes — first hour, or attendance only.
• The rate after that, and when it changes.
• That parts are extra, and that a part you do not have on the van means a return visit.
• An honest arrival window rather than the one that gets you the job.

Almost every emergency dispute is about one of those four, and all four take thirty seconds to say. A customer who agrees to a number at eleven at night does not argue about it in the morning; a customer who was not told does.

The knock-on is the real cost

A four hour emergency does not cost four hours. It costs four hours plus the two customers who were expecting you and the evening spent rescheduling. If the schedule shows you immediately what an emergency displaced, those two customers get a phone call instead of a doorstep surprise — which is the whole difference between a busy day and a complaint.

Decide what an emergency is

Left undefined, an emergency is whatever the customer says it is, and you will attend at midnight for something that could have waited. Write down the two or three situations that genuinely warrant it — no heat in cold weather, water coming in, anything unsafe — and what happens otherwise. Whoever answers the phone then has an answer rather than a judgement call.

Record it properly even at 2am

This is where paperwork is worst and it matters most: unusual circumstances, a made-safe rather than a repair, and a return visit to come. A job sheet completed on the phone before you leave the property — photos, what you did, what still needs doing — is what makes the follow-up job straightforward and the invoice uncontested. See what goes on a job sheet.

Emergencies are the front of a sales pipeline

Half of them are a made-safe on equipment at the end of its life, with a customer who has just had a bad night and is thinking seriously about replacing it. Recording what you found against the property, and following it up in the calm of the following week, is the difference between a callout fee and an install.