24 hour call answering service
A 24 hour call answering service answers your number at any hour of the week, all 168 of them. During the day it takes the calls your team cannot reach; at night, on weekends and on public holidays it takes them all. Yes AI publishes round the clock coverage on its Custom plan, which is quoted.
Where do the hours go in a normal week?
Most businesses staff their phones for a minority of the week. A business open 9am to 5pm on weekdays looks like this:
| Period | Hours a week | Typical cover without an answering service |
|---|---|---|
| Weekdays, 9am to 5pm | 40 | Your staff, when they are free to pick up |
| Weekday evenings and nights, 5pm to 9am | 80 | Voicemail or a diverted mobile |
| Saturday and Sunday | 48 | Voicemail or a diverted mobile |
| Total | 168 |
Even inside the 40 staffed hours, calls go unanswered during lunch breaks, meetings and busy periods. That daytime gap is what overflow call answering deals with, and a 24 hour service combines it with full after hours cover.
How does 24 hour coverage compare with after hours only?
Yes AI publishes three levels of coverage on its pricing page:
| Coverage | What gets answered | Yes AI plan | Usually suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business hours | Calls during opening hours, such as overflow | Starter | Small offices that close at night and get few calls then |
| Business hours plus after hours and weekends | Daytime overflow, evenings and weekends | Professional | Trades, clinics and agencies with regular night or weekend calls |
| Around the clock | Every hour of every day, public holidays included | Custom | Emergency work, several sites, or high call volumes |
The published plan with 24 hour coverage is Custom. It also lists call recording and transcripts, a custom AI voice, multi-agent setups and an SLA. If your calls arrive mainly in the evening and on weekends, Professional may be enough; if they arrive at 3am as well, ask about Custom, and ask either way exactly which hours your written quote covers.
How calls reach the agent at any hour
With 24 hour coverage the agent becomes the fallback behind your staff during the day and the first answer at night. A typical setup runs like this:
- During opening hours, calls ring your staff first.
- If nobody answers within the delay you choose, or every line is busy, the call forwards to the agent. On a Telstra mobile, the no-answer delay defaults to 15 seconds and can be set to 15, 20, 25 or 30 seconds (Telstra mobile call forwarding).
- When the office closes, your phone system’s schedule sends every call straight to the agent, so callers do not sit through rings that nobody will answer.
- Overnight and on weekends, the agent applies your after hours rules, which can differ from the daytime ones. A daytime caller wanting a quote might be booked in; the same request at 2am is logged for the morning.
- Urgent calls go to whoever is rostered on, by live transfer or SMS.
Running two rule sets, one for when your team is in and one for when it is not, is the main difference between a planned 24 hour setup and leaving after hours answering switched on all day.
What about public holidays?
Public holidays catch out schedule-based setups, because the phone system treats them as ordinary weekdays and rings an empty office. The Fair Work Ombudsman lists 14 public holiday dates for Victoria in 2026. Those still to come are Melbourne Cup Day on Tuesday 3 November (some regional areas hold it on a different date), Christmas Day, Boxing Day and an additional holiday on Monday 28 December (Fair Work Ombudsman, 2026 public holidays). Every state and territory sets its own list, and some regional towns have local days.
With 24 hour coverage you do not need to edit the schedule for any of these: the agent is answering anyway, and calls still ring through to staff first if someone comes in. With an after hours schedule, enter each date ahead of time and check it the week before.
What a person still has to do
Coverage at every hour does not mean a person is available at every hour. The agent answers, records and routes calls. It does not fix a burst pipe, see a patient or settle a dispute. Before moving to 24 hour coverage, decide:
- who is on call overnight and on weekends, and how often each person is rostered
- which situations justify waking someone and which wait until morning (see urgent call escalation and on-call routing)
- who reads the overnight summaries first thing and returns those calls
- what callers are told about call-back times, so the promise matches what your staff can deliver
Callers who are distressed, angry or confused need a person sooner rather than later. The agent can recognise phrases you list and route those calls to a human, but it cannot comfort someone the way a trained person can. The trade-offs are set out in AI vs a human answering service.
What changes for callers
For the people ringing you, the difference is consistency. The same greeting, the same questions and the same follow-up promise apply at 10am on a Monday and at 10pm on a Sunday. Nobody reaches a full voicemail box or an unanswered ring at 7am on a Saturday. Callers who prefer to speak with a person can ask for a call back, and the summary records that request.
How are minutes counted when the line never closes?
Yes AI counts a minute as connected talk time handled by the AI, from answer to hang-up. Unanswered calls do not count, and when a call is transferred to your team only the AI’s part is counted. Because daytime calls only reach the agent when your staff miss them, a 24 hour setup can use fewer minutes than you might expect. The cost guide explains plan allowances and how to estimate your usage. To have the Custom plan priced, describe your call pattern on the quote form.