Nobody answers the phone at 2am. Something should.
Scenario: A regional HVAC company answering emergency calls at 2am
A voice agent picks up outside business hours, decides in seconds whether the call is an emergency, and either wakes the on-call tech or books a normal morning slot.
coverage without a night shift
from ring to booked or escalated
instead of a voicemail box
The problem
Emergency work is the highest-margin work a field service company does, and it arrives at the worst possible hour. Voicemail loses it to whoever answers first — usually a competitor with an answering service.
How the system works
- 1
Call lands on a dedicated number
The main line forwards after hours to a voice number owned by the business. Business hours are read from one config, so the schedule changes without touching code.
- 2
The agent triages in plain speech
A short scripted intake: address, system type, symptom, whether there's water or gas involved. The answers are structured as it goes — no transcript-scraping later.
- 3
Severity rules decide the branch
Explicit rules, not model judgment, classify the call: no heat below freezing, gas smell, active leak, or commercial contract customer all route to on-call. Everything else routes to booking.
- 4
Emergency: escalate until a human confirms
SMS plus a call to the on-call tech. No acknowledgement in five minutes, it escalates to the second name on the rota, then to the owner. The caller is told what is happening and given an ETA window.
- 5
Non-emergency: book against real availability
The agent reads the existing calendar, offers two concrete slots, writes the booking, and sends a confirmation text with a cancel link.
- 6
Morning summary
One email at 6am: every call, its classification, its outcome, and any call the agent flagged as unclear for a human to listen to.
What keeps it safe
The part most vendors leave out of the demo.
- Anything involving gas, fire, or injury is scripted to say 'hang up and call 911' before anything else
- The agent never quotes a price — it books, it does not sell
- Two failed understandings in a row and it offers a callback from a human instead of looping
- Every call is recorded and transcribed to the owner's own storage, deletable on request
- If the voice provider is down, the number falls back to the old voicemail box — never a dead line
Typical build time
3–5 weeks
Starting price
$6,500 one-time + $350/mo
Every build starts with a written scope and a fixed quote. Larger systems begin with a $2,500 paid discovery, credited toward the build — and yours to keep either way.