Most calls that come in after hours can wait until morning, as long as someone takes the details. A few can’t: no heat in January, water coming through a ceiling, a smell of gas.
The usual answers both cost something. Voicemail loses the callers who won’t leave a message, and they ring the next company on the list. Sending every call to the on-call tech’s mobile means they’re woken for a quote request at 11 pm.
An AI agent on the after-hours line can tell the difference. Here’s how to set it up.
The Call Flow
A Call Flow decides where each call to your number goes. For after hours you need three steps:
- A Time Condition with a rule for your opening hours, such as Monday to Friday, 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM. Calls in those hours take the rule’s exit; every other call takes Otherwise.
- Ring Agents on the rule’s exit, so your team answers in the day as they do now.
- The AI Agent on Otherwise, so the agent answers at night and at weekends.
The Standard support template sets this up for you: it rings your team in business hours, and the AI agent answers after. Choose your agent, check the hours, and publish.
A rule can cross midnight, and each Time Condition has its own time zone, so a branch in another city keeps its own hours.
What the agent does on each call
Give the agent what it needs to take a proper message, and it will:
- Find the caller. The Look up customer Tool matches the number they ring from against your contacts, or a number or account number they give.
- Take the details. Name, address, what’s wrong and how to reach them, asked the way a good dispatcher would.
- Answer the easy questions. Whether you cover their area, your after-hours call-out fee, what to do until someone arrives, from the documents you give it.
- Open a ticket. The Create ticket Tool files it with a subject, a description and a priority, linked to the caller, so the morning starts with a list, not a pile of voicemails.
Writing down what’s urgent
The agent decides what’s urgent from the rules you write, so write them the way you’d brief a new dispatcher. Put them in the agent’s Always and Never instructions, in plain words:
Always treat these as urgent: no heat when it’s below 40°F outside, water leaking through a ceiling or wall, a smell of gas, no power to the furnace. For a smell of gas, tell the caller to leave the house and call the gas company first.
Never promise a time someone will arrive. Never give a price for a new system.
Be specific. “Anything serious” leaves the agent guessing; “water coming through a ceiling” doesn’t. And say what should wait: a noisy unit, a thermostat question or a quote request is a ticket for the morning.
Waking the on-call tech
The agent hands urgent calls to a call destination: somewhere it’s allowed to send callers. Create one called “On-call technician” and choose who it rings:
- Your team, if the on-call tech answers in Crulon in their browser or on a desk phone. They see a note from the agent about why the caller is calling as the call rings.
- An outside number, if they’re on their mobile. Choose Bridge, so Crulon knows whether they answered. The call shows your business number, without the note, so the caller explains.
Then tell the agent when to use it, in one sentence: “When the caller has an urgent problem, such as a leak or no heat, and the agent couldn’t solve it on the call.” The agent reads that sentence to decide.
If the tech doesn’t answer in 30 seconds, or however long you set, the call comes back to the agent. It takes the details, opens the ticket and tells the caller someone will call back, so nobody is left hanging.
What’s waiting in the morning
By the time the office opens:
- Every call is in Conversations, with its transcript, a summary and the recording if you record calls.
- Every ticket the agent opened is waiting, linked to the caller.
- Emergencies have already gone to the on-call tech.
To get the summaries by email too, turn on Email a summary after AI-handled calls in your workspace settings. Each one goes to up to 10 addresses, such as the office manager and the dispatcher.
What it costs
Only the time the agent holds a call counts as AI minutes. Menus, ringing and your team’s own calls don’t. A night of short calls uses less than you’d think: see how AI minutes are counted for one call, second by second.
Try it before you rely on it
Talk to the agent in your browser while you write its instructions: ask the questions callers ask and check it sorts urgent from routine. A browser test can’t hand a call off, so once it’s published, call your own number from a phone after hours and ask for the on-call tech.
See how it fits together on after-hours answering and Crulon for home services.