After-hours and weekend answering
Your voicemail is a dead end at 8pm. The caller does not leave a message — they ring the next place on the list.
7:40pm on a Tuesday…
The call you are losing right now
- The phone rings out. Voicemail nobody checks until Thursday.
- They google the next place on the list, and that one answers.
- You never learn the enquiry existed, so you never learn what it was worth.
What happens when it answers instead
It knows you are closed, and says so correctly
Your opening hours, in your timezone, as a fact rather than a guess. “Are you open Sunday?” gets your answer, not a hedge — and “we're closed now, but I can book you in for Thursday” keeps the caller.
It books for when you are next open
Being shut does not stop it taking the booking. It checks real availability, offers a time you can actually work, and the appointment is in the diary before you wake up.
It knows what cannot wait until morning
Every trade's brief carries what counts as urgent in that trade. A burst pipe, a knocked-out tooth, a collapsed dog — those become an urgent message rather than a booking for Thursday.
You read the whole call in the morning
A transcript, the contact, and anything it could not answer. Not a voicemail you have to listen to at 1.5× speed while driving.
What this actually takes
- For calls to your website out of hours: nothing but the free plan and one line of code.
- For calls to your phone line out of hours: a number, which is included from Essential up.
- Your opening hours, entered once during setup. It cannot know you close early on Wednesdays unless you say so.
the part nobody else prints
What it will never do
- Tell a caller you are open when you are not, or invent a time you have not made available.
- Handle an out-of-hours emergency as a routine booking — the trade brief decides which is which.
- Promise somebody a callback at a particular time. It does not know who is on tomorrow.
Questions people ask about this
Does it cost more to answer at night?
No. There is no out-of-hours rate, because there is nobody being paid to sit up. Your plan's minutes are the same at three in the morning as at three in the afternoon, which is the structural difference between this and a human service.
Will it book people in for times I am closed?
No. It has your real opening hours in your timezone, including holiday and off-season closures, and the booking tools refuse a closed day whatever diary is connected. It books the next time you are genuinely open.
What about a genuine emergency at 2am?
Each trade's brief carries what counts as urgent in that trade. It stops trying to book, captures what is needed, and raises an urgent message immediately — and it reads back your own emergency instruction, including telling somebody to seek emergency help rather than wait for you.
Hear it on your own site before you decide.
The free plan has real answered minutes — enough to put it on your site, show the team, and find out whether it is any good.