The worst kind of lead is a name and a phone number. You call back, play voicemail tag, and when you finally connect you still don’t know whether it’s a five-minute socket swap or a full rewire. A good intake fixes that on the first call.

Here’s the question set, grouped the way a trained dispatcher actually asks them, conversationally, not like a form.

Contact and location

  • Full name
  • Best phone number (read it back to confirm)
  • Full address including ZIP
  • Property type: house, apartment, commercial, new build, or rental

Property type alone tells you a lot. A 1960s house with the original panel is a different job than a 2020 new build.

What’s actually wrong

Let the caller describe it, then probe by category:

  • Panel / power. Is there smoke, sparking, or a burning smell? Is the power fully off or partial?
  • Breaker. Did it trip? Does it reset, or trip again straight away?
  • Outlet / GFCI. Which room? Have they tried the reset button?
  • Lighting. One fixture, one room, or the whole house?
  • EV charger. Panel size, single- or three-phase, and where’s the parking?

Those follow-ups are the whole game. “My lights are out” and “the whole house is dark and the breaker won’t reset” are two very different trucks-rolls.

Urgency and timing

  • Is anyone in danger right now? (Yes/No)
  • How soon do they need it: today, this week, this month?
  • Preferred day and time

Close the loop

Confirm the details back, give a clear next step (“booked for Thursday 2pm” or “an electrician will call within the hour”), and send a summary. If you can’t book on the call, the caller should still hang up knowing exactly what happens next.

The point

Every question above exists to answer one thing: can I price and schedule this without a second phone call? When intake is consistent, you show up with the right parts, quote accurately the first time, and stop bleeding hours to phone tag.

Lining up a batch of real intake summaries on a dashboard makes the failure pattern obvious: the jobs that turn into an on-site change order are rarely the ones where the electrical description was vague. They’re the ones where property type got skipped, a rental where the caller isn’t the decision-maker, or a commercial unit that needed a different quote path from the start.

Wirewoman runs this intake on every call: panel, breaker, GFCI, lighting, EV charger, booking, then texts you the summary before you’ve packed up. Every entry keeps the caller’s own words for the problem instead of a dispatcher’s paraphrase, so whoever’s heading out can see exactly what the homeowner said, not a guess at it. See how it works.