Out of hours
The Friday evening call stops being lost until Monday.
Nearly every business has the same hole: between six in the evening and nine in the morning, plus the weekend, the phone rings and nobody answers. The caller leaves no message, rings somebody else, and nobody in the business ever finds out the call happened. This page is about covering that hole.
The assistant answers when the office is shut or every line is busy, takes the full request, writes it up as a ticket or a row in a sheet, transfers whatever cannot wait to your on-call number, and sends a summary to Slack or email before morning.
The four holes worth covering
It is not only about the night. There are four different moments when the phone rings out, and three of them happen during working hours.
After hours and at weekends
The obvious one. The caller gets a real answer rather than a recorded message.
When every line is busy
Overflow. Instead of an engaged tone or a long hold, the assistant takes it and writes it down.
The lunch hour
One hour a day when, in a small business, nobody answers at all.
Holiday cover and seasonal peaks
When the person who usually answers is away for a week and there is nobody to replace them.
Genuine emergencies
Transferred to the on-call number, if you have one, under the rules you write.
What happens at eleven at night
The flow has one objective: that no call exists which nobody hears about the next day. Resolving it is a bonus; the proof that somebody rang is compulsory.
- 01 Say up front where they have reached The company, that the office is shut, and that the call will be taken anyway. A caller who does not know whether they got the right place hangs up.
- 02 Separate the emergency One question. If it is urgent by the definition you write, the call goes straight to the on-call number.
- 03 Take the full request Name, phone number, what they want and how quickly. Enough that no clarifying call is needed in the morning.
- 04 Write it and announce it A ticket in Zendesk or Freshdesk, or a row in a sheet, plus a Slack message or an email to whoever needs it.
- 05 Say when somebody will call back A concrete timeframe rather than a formula. And, if you want, an SMS confirmation so the caller holds a written trail.
What you find in the morning
The difference from a voicemail box is that in the morning you have completed fields, not five messages you have to listen to.
| The ticket or the row | With the name, the number, the request and the time of the call, ready to pick up. |
|---|---|
| The summary | A Slack message or an email, sent immediately rather than at the start of business. |
| The confirmation to the caller | An SMS with what was taken and when somebody will call back, if you choose to send it. |
| On the call record | The transcript, the ended reason, and the transfer if there was one. |
What it does not do out of hours
An answering service is useful in exactly the measure that it is honest about what it does not resolve at eleven at night.
- It does not resolve what needs a person It takes and writes. If the request needs a decision, that decision is made in the morning, and the assistant says so plainly rather than promising.
- It does not put the caller on hold Hold is not available on the browser phone, and the interface tells you to use a transfer instead. This flow is built without hold.
- It does not replace an on-call service It can transfer to your on-call number. If nobody answers there, it returns to the assistant and takes the details, but it summons nobody.
- No voicemail recording through our own PBX Voicemail boxes that route through our PBX are written and tested but have moved no real audio in this build. The proven path is taking the request in conversation, not leaving a message.
- It does not hide what it is Our recommendation is to disclose in the opening line. A caller who discovers at minute two that they were talking to a system feels tricked, and at eleven at night that counts double.
What businesses ask us
How does it know it is out of hours?
Through time conditions in the dial plan: the number goes to people during business hours and to the assistant the rest of the time. Alternatively you can let the assistant always answer and have it transfer to the team only during working hours.
Which is better, this or a voicemail box?
A voicemail box has one advantage: it is free. The disadvantage is that very few people leave a message, and those who do say half of what is needed. An assistant asks the missing questions. We have no figures of our own for the comparison and we are not inventing any.
Can it take overflow during working hours too?
Yes, if the dial plan sends calls unanswered after a few seconds to the assistant. What is proven end to end today is the Twilio route; queues and ring groups through our own PBX are written and tested but have moved no real audio yet.
What does it cost to keep a line open overnight?
You do not pay for availability, you pay for the seconds spoken. An assistant that receives no calls all night costs only the phone number. The pricing page shows how the per-call total is built.
Where to go next
Telephony
Numbers, trunks, dial plan, queues, operators and campaigns, in one system.
Operator handoff
Queue, operators, skills, transfer, and what the supervisor sees.
Phone numbers
Twilio works today. Your own SIP trunk has the code and the switch, but no carrier yet.
Pricing
Components at their published price, the platform on top, and what we cannot price yet.
Notes
-
1
The tools named on this page are the ones in
App\Services\Integrations\ConnectorRegistrycarryingimplemented. Anything that is only in the catalogue, without that flag, is not named here as though it worked. - 2 Time conditions are one of the dial-plan objects described on the telephony page. Hold is not available on the browser phone in this build.