After hours answering service

An after hours answering service picks up your calls while the business is closed, which for a weekday 9 to 5 business is 128 of the 168 hours in a week. A Yes AI voice agent with an Australian voice answers, takes the caller’s details, puts urgent calls through to whoever is on call and emails you a summary.

What happens to a call at 9pm on a Tuesday?

This is the sequence for one call, from the moment it rings to the moment you read about it.

1. A customer dials your usual business number. Because the office is on its after hours schedule, your phone system or carrier diverts the call to the Yes AI agent instead of letting it ring out to voicemail.
2. The agent answers in your business name with a greeting you have approved. We recommend that the first sentence tells the caller they are speaking with an AI assistant, so nobody is misled.
3. It asks what the call is about and sorts it into one of the categories you have defined, usually urgent, next business day or information only.
4. It collects the details you have listed for that category: name, call-back number, suburb or street address, and the problem in the caller’s own words. Numbers and addresses are read back to the caller to check them.
5. It answers routine questions from the facts you have supplied, such as opening hours, the suburbs you service, or whether you handle a particular type of job.
6. If the call matches one of your urgent rules, it tries a live transfer to your on-call person. If nobody picks up, it texts that person the details and tells the caller that a message has been passed on and roughly when to expect a call back.
7. When the call ends, a summary goes to the email address you nominate, and by SMS as well on the Professional plan.

The caller talks to an agent that responds to what they say and hangs up knowing what happens next, rather than leaving a message after a beep and wondering whether anyone will hear it.

What lands in your inbox after each call

Each call produces one summary. A typical summary carries these fields:

Email summaries come with every plan. SMS notifications start at the Professional plan. Call recordings and full transcripts are listed on the Custom plan, so if your business needs audio of every call, raise it when you ask for a quote.

Turning after hours answering on and off

The agent only answers the calls your phone setup sends to it, so the handover between business hours and after hours matters as much as the agent itself. There are three common ways to manage it.

• Scheduled routing in your phone system. Most hosted and cloud phone systems let you enter business hours, so calls outside those hours go to a nominated number. This is the most reliable option because nobody has to remember anything at 5pm.
• Manual diversion at the carrier. On a Telstra nbn home phone, dialling *21, the destination number and # forwards every call, and #21# cancels it (Telstra call forwarding guide). It works, but someone has to switch it on each evening and off each morning.
• No-answer forwarding. Calls ring your phones first and reach the agent only if nobody picks up. This suits businesses where someone sometimes answers at night, and it doubles as overflow call answering during the day.

Whichever method you choose, your number stays with your current carrier. Diverting a call does not move or port the number, and you can switch the diversion off at any time.

What you set up before go-live

The agent knows only what you tell it. Before it answers its first real call, you and Yes AI agree on:

• the greeting, including the business name and how the agent describes itself
• your after hours window, including weekends and public holidays
• the facts it can share, such as services, service area, opening hours and any after hours fees you want stated
• the triage rules that decide which calls are urgent (see how after hours call triage works)
• the on-call names and mobile numbers for each shift, and a backup who also receives the SMS alert
• where summaries go and who receives the SMS alerts

Test calls follow. You or your staff ring the line pretending to be different kinds of callers, and the rules are adjusted until the results match what you would have done yourself.

Who is it suited to, and who is it not?

It suits businesses whose after hours calls currently go to voicemail, to a mobile that one person has to carry every night, or to nobody at all. Trades and home services, clinics, property managers and professional firms are the usual fits, because their callers often need a decision about whether something can wait until morning.

It suits you less if almost no calls arrive after hours, in which case a clear voicemail message may be enough. It is also the wrong tool if most of your after hours callers need a trained person to make a judgement on the phone, such as a crisis line. An AI agent can take details and pass calls on, but it should not be the only point of contact for people in distress.

What the agent will not do

• It will not give medical, legal, financial or safety advice. Anyone describing a threat to life is told to hang up and ring Triple Zero (000), which the federal government describes as Australia’s main emergency number for life threatening or time critical situations (Department of Infrastructure, Triple Zero).
• It will not quote prices, arrival times or outcomes you have not written down for it.
• It cannot make your on-call person answer. If nobody responds, the caller is told a message has been taken and when to expect contact.
• It can mishear unusual names or addresses on a poor mobile line, which is why it reads key details back before the call ends.

Which plan covers after hours?

Yes AI’s Starter plan covers business hours only, so it does not answer at night. The Professional plan includes after hours and weekend coverage with 1,500 minutes included for $599 per month ex GST, plus a one-off setup fee of $999. Coverage at every hour of every day sits on the Custom plan, which is quoted (Yes AI pricing). For how minutes are counted and how these plans compare with a human answering service, see what an after hours answering service costs.

If you are weighing this against keeping voicemail, read voicemail vs an after hours answering service. When you want to hear the agent answer with your own business details, book a demo or ask for a quote.