Electrical work is just a step away from appliance repair. In many ways, it’s even a step beyond it because you have extensive certification and experience with potentially riskier circumstances. While construction and electrical repair are always in demand, expanding your business so you can offer your customers a full range of electrical and appliance servicing is a great step to rise above the competition and become the go-to expert for residential or commercial repairs. And expanding your business isn’t as difficult as it sounds; here are a few things you already have that makes the expansion easier.

• Many states already require hard-wired appliance repair to be handled by a certified electrician or electrical contractor. Major appliances where the building wiring is more permanently attached to the appliance, as a dishwasher or certain types of ovens, often involve complex electrical work and need wires to be spliced either in the appliance or in its junction box. This gives you an immediate advantage when expanding your services to appliances: all you need is an additional certification on your license, or sometimes no extra certification at all, to get started. These appliances can’t be repaired, installed, or replaced by general appliance repair technicians, which guarantees you a dedicated market, especially as hard-wired and digital appliances continue to grow in popularity.
• Once your business includes servicing hard-wired appliances, you can just as easily repair cord and plug appliances. Because the internal mechanics between hard-wired and corded appliances revolve mainly around the power source instead of the individual systems or parts, expanding your business to include cord and plug appliances is just a matter of becoming more familiar with those specific models instead of each broad category of appliance. Alternately, not expanding your business could put you at a disadvantage if you don’t expand: potential customers with a broken appliance or tight deadline often see electrical problems as electrical problems without differentiation and will remember that you only offered limited services.
• You already know the safety procedures for a wide range of circumstances. Many homeowners hesitate on electrical repairs even to cord and plug appliances because of the risk of electrocution or an electrical fire once the appliance is plugged back into a power source. There are even some repairs that make trained appliance repair technicians hesitate and recommend unnecessary replacements. But your experience with electrical components and the associated risks means you can better evaluate the state of an appliance and make repairs that cost your customers less money. Having a reputation for lower repair costs and greater expertise can help you expand your business even into appliance repair markets that face high levels of competition, and it can even help you secure customers that want a second opinion before spending money on a costly repair.
• You have the infrastructure and assets to get started. Appliance repair requires a bit of start-up. You have to get the right tools and know how to use them. You need to have a client base or the tools to start building one, and you need to be good at both marketing and securing word of mouth references. All of that is more difficult if you’re just starting out in the repair world because you have nothing to start from. But if you’re expanding your business from electrical work to include appliance repair, you can take advantage of the foundation you’ve already built. Tell your customers that you’re expanding, and they might either have something they need looked at or know someone with a broken appliance. You already have most of the tools and safety equipment, and you already know how to work with electricity, which is one of the greatest barriers to entry.

If you have been considering expanding your business, it’s easier to increase your knowledge base than to increase your service area. Because you already have the basic knowledge, the assets, and the first step into securing clients underway, it’s just a matter of gaining experience with specific appliances and common repairs. Go to Fred’s Appliance Academy to get started.