Ryan remembers a call from a man who was working on a smoke detector and didn’t want to pay to have an electrician come out. He wanted advice. Ryan, who runs Watts Electrical in Holland, Michigan, gave it to him from start to finish. “I walked him through the whole entire process to get it done,” he says.
The man reached Ryan because Ryan is the one who answers. There is no front desk and no automated line between a caller and the electrician.
“When you call the number, you get me who answers,” he says. “I don’t have an AI or anything. I answer personally, and I answer all around the clock.”
The around-the-clock part is literal. The business lists itself as open 24 hours a day, every day, and Ryan says emergency calls do come in the middle of the night. He gets up and goes to them. Most of his work is residential. His website lists Holland and a wide spread of West Michigan towns, from Zeeland Township and Hudsonville to Grand Haven, Muskegon and Grand Rapids.
The smoke detector call shows what he thinks a phone call is for. “You get personalized service,” he says. “I’ll try to help you get it done right.”
When the job does need him in the house, the talking comes first. He goes over the work with the customer, they settle on a plan, and only then does he start. “I’m not going to tell you I’m going to do something and then do something different,” he says. “We’re going to talk it through, come up with a plan, and I’m not going to do anything to your house or business unless you approve it.”
He picks his questions with care. Plenty of choices on a job make no difference to the customer. The ones they will see every day do. “Exposed work does matter, so I ask about preferences,” he says. His reason is plain: “You don’t want to ruin someone’s house because you had a thought of doing something different.”
Being straight with people isn’t something he has to work at. Making things up never crosses his mind. “Why would I lie about something?” he says. “It just doesn’t make sense to make anything up.”
One homeowner’s account shows how that plays out when something goes wrong. Her fuse box started crackling and smoking on a Saturday morning, she wrote afterward. Ryan diagnosed the problem and replaced the defective parts that same day. Then he checked the other fuse boxes and some of the wiring in her older home to make sure nothing else was wrong. She saved his number.
Because he keeps his own calendar, Ryan says, he can bend it around what a caller needs. Some people need someone that day. Others are planning a project and want it booked out. Either way, the person who talks through the plan on the phone is the person who shows up to do it.
The man with the smoke detector called. Others text, which suits Ryan fine. “You can text me,” he says. “It’s just a regular phone number, just like you’re calling your buddy, or even if you’re calling for advice.”