Questions about after hours answering

It answers your business phone at the times you are not working. It takes the caller's name, number and what they need, works out whether it is urgent, puts the urgent ones through to you and writes the rest down for the morning. You set the hours it covers.

Nothing. They are two names for the same thing. Out of hours is the older wording and you still hear it from businesses that came off a human bureau. Overflow answering is different again: that is inside your hours, when your own line is busy.

For work that cannot wait, yes. Most people will not leave a voicemail after hours. They hang up and ring the next number. An answered call keeps the caller talking long enough to get a name, an address, the job and a booking, so it stays yours.

An answering agent trained on your business, not a person in a call centre. It uses your business name, speaks in a New Zealand voice and tells any caller who asks that it is an assistant. It never claims to be you or a named member of your staff.

Answer them, yes. Take them yourself, usually not. The value in an evening call is the job, not the conversation, and the job survives being written down and rung back in the morning. What does not survive is nobody picking up.

Yes, and that is the usual setup. You give it a start and finish for each day and it only ever answers outside those. Inside your hours the phone rings at your end exactly as it does now, and nothing is intercepted.

Yes. Every day has its own start and finish, down to the quarter hour, so an early Tuesday and an early finish on Friday are both fine. You can also hand over a single afternoon, or a single hour, without changing anything permanent.

The New Zealand public holidays are already in it, including Matariki and your regional anniversary day, and they are treated as days you are closed unless you say otherwise. You can also set a Christmas closedown with the date you open again, and callers are told that date.

Yes, and only those. You write in your own words what counts as urgent. Those calls ring your mobile straight away with the caller's details. Everything else is taken down and waits until morning, so the phone does not go for a price enquiry.

Overflow is answering inside your own hours, when your line is engaged or nobody gets there in a few rings. It is worth having if you lose calls at lunchtime or during a busy morning. It is separate from after hours and you can run one without the other.

No. Keep the number on your van, your signage and your website. You divert that number to the answering line when you finish for the day, and take the divert off in the morning, or leave it running on your hours so it happens by itself.

On most New Zealand mobile plans it is a short code you dial once, or a setting in your phone's call forwarding menu. There is a version that only forwards when you do not answer and a version that forwards everything. We set it up with you on the first call.

Yes. An 0800 number points wherever you tell your provider to point it, including on a schedule, so the freephone line can be answered out of hours without touching your landline or your mobile.

Yes. Name the numbers that should never be intercepted, such as a big client, your subcontractor or your partner, and those calls ring your mobile at any hour. Everyone else is answered.

The text goes out during the call, while the caller is still talking, not after a shift ends. A booked job appears in the diary the same minute. Nothing is batched up and sent in the morning.

Yes. It reads the real diary and offers times that are genuinely free, then writes the booking in with the caller's details attached. It will not offer a time you are already on a job, and it will not book a day you have marked as closed.

Yes, a recording and a written transcript of every call, kept with the caller's number. Useful when somebody remembers a conversation differently, and useful for hearing what your callers actually ask for at night.

Yes. Names, numbers and addresses are kept in one address book, so when the same person rings back on Thursday it already knows who they are and what happened last time, without anyone looking it up.

It does not read card numbers back over a call, and it never will. It can text the caller a payment link and confirm on the call once that has gone through. Payment links use your connected payment provider.

Pay as you go is NZ$10 a month for the number, then NZ$1 a minute, with NZ$10 credit to start. The monthly business plan is NZ$129 for your first three months, then NZ$199, with 200 minutes and 50 texts included. Nights, weekends and public holidays do not carry an extra charge.

No lock in period and no cancellation fee. Most people start with the evenings, watch a fortnight of it, then widen the hours or narrow them. If it is not earning its keep you turn it off.

Yes, and it starts on your own number with your own callers, because a demo call proves nothing. Talk to us and we will tell you exactly what the trial covers before you hand any calls over.

The account opens straight away and your agent is deployed and trained within 24 hours. Most of the work is the conversation about your hours and what counts as urgent, and that is one phone call.