After hours answering for trades and home services
After hours answering for trades means a Yes AI voice agent takes your calls when you are on a job, driving or asleep. It separates emergency callouts from quote requests, records the address and job type, states your after hours callout fee, and sends urgent jobs to whoever is on call, by live transfer or SMS.
Is it an emergency callout or a quote request?
The distinction matters most at 11pm. A customer with water through the ceiling who reaches voicemail will usually ring someone else, while a quote request put through at midnight wakes you for nothing. These rows are typical examples by trade. You decide what counts as urgent, based on what you can actually attend overnight.
| Trade | Often urgent after hours | Usually waits for business hours |
|---|---|---|
| Plumbing | Burst pipe or water still running, sewage overflow, no hot water if you offer emergency hot water | Quotes, renovations, dripping taps |
| Electrical | Loss of power to part of a home once a network outage is ruled out, a burning smell from the switchboard (with the 000 instruction if there is smoke or fire) | New installations, extra power points, quotes |
| Locksmith | Locked out at night, a lock damaged in a break-in | Rekeying, security upgrades |
| Heating and cooling | No heating or cooling for vulnerable occupants, if you offer it | Servicing, new systems |
| Pest control | Rarely urgent; a wasp or bee nest at a doorway if you treat it as one | Most inspections and treatments |
| Building and roofing | Storm damage that needs a make-safe | Quotes and scheduled work |
What the agent records for each job
A call back is only useful if you have what you need to quote or attend. For each job, the agent collects:
- the caller’s name and mobile number, read back to confirm
- the full street address with suburb, plus access notes such as gate codes, dogs and parking
- the job type and what happened, in the caller’s words
- whether the caller is the owner, a tenant or a property manager, and who will pay
- whether the caller accepted your after hours callout fee
- how they found you, if you track your marketing
Stating your after hours callout fee
Many trades charge more after hours. The agent states your fee exactly as you write it, before the job is accepted, and records whether the caller agreed. Saying it on the call avoids the argument that starts when the invoice arrives. If the fee depends on the time or the location, for example a higher figure after midnight or outside your usual suburbs, give the agent the rule and it applies it. The amount stays your decision, and the agent will not negotiate it or offer a discount you have not approved.
Gas leaks and fallen powerlines
Some after hours calls are for the emergency services or the network operator, not a tradesperson. Energy Safe Victoria tells people who smell gas to ring the emergency number on their gas bill, and to call 000 if there is a fire or emergency (Energy Safe Victoria, gas emergencies). For fallen powerlines it says to stay more than 8 to 10 metres away, call 000 if lives are in danger, and report the location to the electricity supply company and the police (Energy Safe Victoria, electrical emergencies).
The agent can read out that guidance and then log the call for you. It will not talk a caller through turning off gas, water or power at the meter, because it cannot see the site or judge whether doing so is safe. If you work outside Victoria, give the agent your state regulator’s wording instead.
How does a callout reach the on-call tech?
- A customer rings your business number at night and the call is diverted to the agent.
- The agent answers in your business name and asks what has happened.
- It checks the job against your urgent rules and asks the follow-up questions you have set, such as whether water is still running.
- It takes the address and access details, then states the after hours callout fee and records the caller’s answer.
- For an urgent job, it transfers the call live to the tech on call. If the tech does not pick up, the job details go to them by SMS and the caller is told when to expect a call back.
- Quote requests and routine jobs are summarised for the morning, with everything needed to ring the customer back.
Rotas, backup numbers and the order of attempts are covered on the urgent call escalation page.
ServiceM8 and job management
Yes AI lists ServiceM8 among the integrations it works with. ServiceM8’s REST API treats jobs, clients and job activities as resources with their own web addresses (ServiceM8 developer documentation), which is how call details can be written into your job list instead of being retyped from an email. Confirm in your quote which plan includes the integration. Other job management software can be connected through its API where it has one.
For quoting, job booking and follow-up tools built for trades, see ai-tradies.au.
Which plan does a trade business need?
After hours coverage is part of the Professional plan, at $599 per month ex GST with 1,500 included minutes. Starter answers in business hours only, so on its own it suits a tradie who wants daytime calls caught while on site but is happy for night calls to go to voicemail. The cost guide shows how minutes are counted, and the checklist for choosing a provider lists what to ask any answering service, AI or human.
Limits for trade businesses
- It cannot diagnose a fault or price a job beyond the figures you give it.
- Calls from roofs, basements and rural areas can be poor quality. The agent reads back numbers and addresses but may still mishear an unusual street name.
- Some customers want to speak to the tradie who will turn up. Offer them a call back rather than forcing the conversation through the agent.
- It does not dispatch anyone. If nobody on your rota is available, the caller still has to wait or look elsewhere, and the agent tells them so plainly.
To hear the agent take an after hours callout with your trade, suburbs and fees loaded, book a demo.