After-hours calls for trades: let an AI phone answer

Why do after-hours calls matter so much for trades?

Think about who rings a plumber at 9 pm. It is someone with a problem they want solved now, and they are ringing round until someone answers. The first business to pick up usually gets the job, because the caller's need is immediate and they are not shopping on price.

The same goes for an electrician after a power failure, a locksmith with someone locked out, or an HVAC business when the heating dies in winter. These calls are urgent, they are often high value, and they arrive at exactly the hours you are least able to answer.

During the day the problem is different but just as real. You are on a job, hands full, and the phone rings with a new enquiry. If you can see how many calls you miss in a month, it is a sobering number. The missed-call calculator helps you put a rough dollar figure on it from your own numbers.

What counts as urgent and what can wait?

Write this down once, for your trade. Here is a starting point.

Your own list will differ. A locksmith might treat a lockout at night as urgent but a lock upgrade as routine. The point is to decide in advance, so the AI is following your rules rather than guessing.

How does an AI phone handle the night shift?

With prepaid.ai, which gives your business an AI phone line, the AI answers every call, 24 hours a day, in a natural voice, and says it is an AI at the start. For a trade business, this AI receptionist can:

• Ask the right questions. What is the problem, where are you, what is the best number to ring back on.
• Mark urgent calls, so they show first in your dashboard.
• Put the caller through to you when you have told it that is the right outcome, for instance for a real emergency.
• Take a message with the details and email it to you, for everything else.
• Book an appointment into your Google Calendar, after checking the times are actually free, for routine jobs.

Every call is recorded and transcribed, with a summary, so when you pick up your phone in the morning you can see what came in overnight without playing back audio.

If you want the detail on how it covers evenings and weekends, see after-hours cover.

What should it say?

The AI learns your business from your website, so the better your site, the better it knows what you do, where you work and what you charge for call-outs. Make sure your site says:

• The suburbs or regions you cover.
• The services you do, and the ones you do not.
• Your usual hours and whether you offer emergency call-outs.
• Anything the caller should do first, such as turning off water at the mains.

Then add the rules you care about: which problems are urgent, who to transfer to, and what to say to someone who is outside your area.

See the pages for your trade for more specific ideas: plumbers, electricians, locksmiths and HVAC.

How do I set up an AI phone plan for after-hours?

1. Paste your website into prepaid.ai and let it build your business profile. Read what it found and fix anything wrong.
2. Write your urgent list. Five or six situations is plenty. Add them to what the AI knows.
3. Choose who gets transferred to. Pick the phone number that should ring for emergencies, and think about who else could take it if you cannot.
4. Decide your hours. What does the AI do during working hours, and what does it do outside them? You may want it to transfer during the day and take messages at night.
5. Connect Google Calendar, if you want it to book routine jobs.
6. Talk to it in the browser. Play a caller with a burst pipe. Play one with a leaky tap. Check it does what you would want.
7. Pick a prepaid plan and get a local number. Put the number on your website, your van and your Google listing, or keep the number you already have and forward it (below).

You have a 7-day free trial with no card, so you can do steps 1 to 6 before paying anything. A prepaid AI phone plan then runs 30 days, with minutes included. See the prices on the pricing page.

Keep your own number: forward the calls you can't take

Your customers already have your mobile number on the van, the invoices and a hundred fridge magnets. You don't have to change any of it. Forward your existing number to your AI phone line with a short code dialled from your phone, and your dashboard shows the exact codes for your number.

The setting most trades want is only the calls you don't answer: your phone rings as normal, and if you're up a ladder or asleep, the call goes to your AI phone after a few rings. There are also codes for calls while you're already on the phone, for when your phone is off or out of signal, and for every call. One code turns it off again.

The codes follow the standard most mobile networks use, plus Verizon's own codes in the US. A landline or an office phone system can be different, so check with your provider if a code doesn't take.

What about the calls I do want to answer myself?

Nothing stops you picking up. The transfer setting is about what happens when you are not available or when you have chosen to have emergencies put through. Many owners use the AI during the day for the calls they cannot take and keep their own phone for everything else.

What the AI will not do

To be fair about the limits: it will not turn up and fix the pipe, it does not take card payments over the phone, and it answers in English only. It is there to make sure no job is lost because nobody answered, and no night is lost because every call woke you.

FAQ