Emergancy work flow

[LukeGeorge]

Hi Everyone,

My first post here, just a simple question.

I currently get all of my work through word of mouth and contracts that I have secured, all of this work is the basic 9-5 stuff with a few call from customers with issues that have come from recommendations.

However I am looked to open up a few guys to 24/7 call out and wonder if anyone has had any success with any sites/apps that have actually managed to send through some jobs,

On the flip side is there any to definitely stay away from? I am not a member currently of any sites like Bark or Check a trade.

Thanks

Luke

 

[James]

I don’t think there is much of that work out there.

Domestic,
forget it, nobody is paying double time to get it fixed in the middle of the night. Turn it off and deal with it in the morning.

Comercial/retail.
Large companies have agreements with companies to provide out of hours servicing and not many others are in need, turn it off and wait till the morning

Industrial.
In house maintenance crews for larger companies that run 24/7
Small companies, turn it off and let day shift sort it.

 

[LukeGeorge]

I don’t think there is much of that work out there.

Domestic,
forget it, nobody is paying double time to get it fixed in the middle of the night. Turn it off and deal with it in the morning.

Comercial/retail.
Large companies have agreements with companies to provide out of hours servicing and not many others are in need, turn it off and wait till the morning

Industrial.
In house maintenance crews for larger companies that run 24/7
Small companies, turn it off and let day shift sort it.

I don’t think there is much of that work out there.

Domestic,
forget it, nobody is paying double time to get it fixed in the middle of the night. Turn it off and deal with it in the morning.

Comercial/retail.
Large companies have agreements with companies to provide out of hours servicing and not many others are in need, turn it off and wait till the morning

Industrial.
In house maintenance crews for larger companies that run 24/7
Small companies, turn it off and let day shift sort it.

Appreciate the reply,

That makes sense, wasn’t sure how much was out there, I guess it the morning the domestics will just jump on google too.

I can also imagine that a fair few of the domestics would end up being a power cut if some kind too.

 

[LukeD]

Just have rates ready .As if they want you they need to know the costs ! I always explain that between 9pm and 7am . Its not based on "hour rates etc" as it fully disturbs the night and the next day there is a knock on effect .Also with a family every one gets disturbed . And as mentioned a lot of the time there is very little you can safely do etc.

 

[Dustydazzler]

If anyone wants me to come to fix a job after 9pm then its £185 per hour. I price this way because really don't want to work past 9pm and if I really have to then the job must pay.
I would say in the average month I might get 3 calls after 9pm and 99% of the time if because something had blown and knocked out the RCD and was a simple job to unplugg/disconnect things to get the power backon then offer to come back in the mornin on my day rate. I reckon 5 more good years and I can pretty much pack it all hopefully

 

[DefyG]

Used to have contract with brewery/pub chain who provided their share of late night calls, but very little domestically (see post #2), and certainly not as much as 3 per month as post #5.

Without a contract for something like a brewery/pub chain its a non-starter.

 

[westward10]

I was going to suggest the brewery chains but you are likely to need nationwide coverage and the chances of a small enterprise getting a contract is all but zero. Commercial refrigeration is another as down time can be very costly.

 

[freddo]

I wouldn't bother, I've been doing call outs for over 10 years now. It's not great having to stop what you are doing to attend a problem. Most of my call outs are for domestic (can't reset RCD is most common one) We also have a contract with a local company that has retirement/assisted living properties. I only really do it as no one else in the company will do it.

Today was the few Saturdays I've not worked this year and I got a call out at 7:00 this morning.

I do quite enjoy fault finding really.

 

[oscar21]

How old are you, I used to work all the hours god sends when I was younger but I'm 53 now and you have no chance of getting me to work past 4.30PM, and even less of a chance on a Saturday, don't care what the problem is.

 

[UNG]

Call out work can be very hit and miss going from nothing to being over run and anything in between, I did call out work for 25 - 30 years mainly on alarm systems but with a bit of electrical work occassionally so have seen a lot of ebbs and at times very testing flows
Sometimes there were no call outs for weeks but at other times you could end up with 10 or more on a Saturday or Sunday when the weather was bad and be out for at least 18 - 20 hours
The problem is if you build a customer base for call out work what happens if you get a high level of calls all at once that you can't service what is your fallback
I actually enjoyed the call out work as I always felt it improved my faultfinding skills, ability to work under pressure and also changed some of my design and installation ideas going forward

 

[Dustydazzler]

Call-out ( out of office hours ) work is fine so long as it pays you twice what you day rate is

 

[LukeGeorge]

How old are you, I used to work all the hours god sends when I was younger but I'm 53 now and you have no chance of getting me to work past 4.30PM, and even less of a chance on a Saturday, don't care what the problem is.

I’m 34, and it’s not really for me as I have a young son and find myself already working less and less, it’s for a couple of the guys that work for me, they have asked for ways of earning more so thought this might be a nice way for them to rotate a call out service.

 

[OnlQQker]

I built two websites for friends, one was for a flat roofer the other for a heating engineer.
I targeted keywords in the area they lived and spread this out to a 30 mile radius to catch all traffic. It took me around 6 months to get them both to top of search engines in the fields they wanted to cover.

Long story short they both asked me to take the websites down, they couldn't handle the calls, even though they were making shed loads of money.

I don't know how you could find a happy balance, 'mybuilder.com' seems the best of a bad bunch.

 

[LukeD]

Ive never advertised .I am paid to go to work , not answer the phone all day long to people I dont want to know asking me daft questions . Clients do my advertising

 

[Risteard]

I built two websites for friends, one was for a flat roofer the other for a heating engineer.
I targeted keywords in the area they lived and spread this out to a 30 mile radius to catch all traffic. It took me around 6 months to get them both to top of search engines in the fields they wanted to cover.

Long story short they both asked me to take the websites down, they couldn't handle the calls, even though they were making shed loads of money.

I don't know how you could find a happy balance, 'mybuilder.com' seems the best of a bad bunch.

This is the problem. If your website isn't at the top of Google then no-one will see it. If it is, then you will be inundated with calls - including nonsense spam and sales calls. There's no easy answer I'm afraid.

 

[KungFuTurkeyLeg]

Probably find domestics just want phone advice for free, not actually want a visit in the middle of the night. Unless I could smell smoke or see flames, that's a future me problem for the morning

 

[Dustydazzler]

I get quite a few people send me pictures of a socket or old fuse box and expect me to complete a fault find based off of 2 or 3 photo(s)