Handle After-Hours Calls
Decide what happens at 9pm on a Sunday.
On this page
Your receptionist answers at 9pm on a Sunday whether you plan for it or not. This guide is about deciding what it should do at 9pm on a Sunday.
Evenings and Saturdays carry real volume
A meaningful share of calls arrive outside business hours — evenings and Saturday mornings especially. Those are the calls a traditional front desk loses entirely, and they’re often the urgent, higher-value ones.
With after-hours set up
Without a plan
With after-hours set up
Decide what should happen
There are three sensible policies. Most businesses use a mix.
- Capture and book
- It takes the details and books your first genuinely open slot. Right for the large majority of after-hours calls.
- Capture and flag urgent
- It takes the details and alerts you immediately, without promising a time. Right when you decide case by case.
- Transfer to a person
- With transfers set to Any time, a caller who asks for a person rings your alert number and is put through if whoever answers says yes. A caller reporting gas, carbon monoxide or fire is never transferred: they're told to leave and call 911.
Don't route everything to your mobile
How to set it up
- 1
Set your real hours
Business Config → Hours. Everything outside these is after-hours. Get the time zone right — it’s the most common mistake.
- 2
Decide your default
For most trades, capture-and-book is right. Callers get certainty and you start the morning with a full schedule.
- 3
Define what counts as an emergency
Be specific in Services: “no heat below freezing”, “active leak”, “no hot water”. Vague words like “urgent” get used by everyone. You don’t need to list gas, carbon monoxide or fire: those always get the safety instructions, whatever you set.
- 4
Say what an after-hours call-out costs
If out-of-hours carries a premium, put it in Services so the caller hears it on the call rather than on the invoice.
- 5
Point alerts at the right phone
Owner alerts. If someone else is on call at weekends, send after-hours alerts to them.
Handling genuine emergencies
Turn transfers on with Any time and point Owner alerts at the on-call phone. A caller who asks for a person is put through; everyone else is captured and booked as normal, and urgent calls are flagged to you right away.
Be direct about it. Your receptionist can tell the caller you don’t do out-of-hours emergency work and that someone will call at 7am. An honest no beats a promise you can’t keep.
Use capture-and-flag. It takes full details and alerts you immediately, so you decide whether to call back, without the caller sitting in silence.
What the caller hears
A Sunday evening, closed
Sample call
It never pretends you’re open. It says you’re closed, takes the details, and does the most useful thing available, which is usually a firm morning slot.
Only if you’d genuinely work them. Hours control which slots it can offer, so listing hours you don’t work means booking appointments you’ll have to cancel — which shows up as a falling hold rate.