What happens to after-hours calls today
For most small businesses, an after-hours call goes one of three ways. It goes to voicemail, and the caller hangs up and rings someone else. You answer it at the dinner table or at 10 pm. Or you pay for an answering service that takes a message for you to return in the morning.
None of those book the job. By the time you call back, the customer has often moved on.
Voicemail
Free, but it relies on the caller leaving a message, and many won't. Text back vs voicemail
Answering it yourself
Every job is caught, but you're never off the clock.
Answering service
A person answers, but usually takes a message rather than booking. Text back vs an answering service
How Conversiq covers nights and weekends
- Your hours are set. Conversiq knows when you're open, when you're not, and what you do after hours.
- The call goes unanswered. It diverts to Conversiq, and the caller gets a WhatsApp from your business within seconds.
- It works out what kind of call it is. Urgent, routine, or just a question about your services.
- Routine work gets booked. The customer picks a time from your calendar for the next working day.
- Urgent work comes to you. Emergencies are flagged and you're paged straight away, so you decide whether to go.
- You wake up to a summary. Every enquiry, every booking, and anything that still needs you.
Emergencies stay your call
Conversiq never decides on its own to send someone out at midnight. It asks the questions that show how urgent a job is, using the triage questions you choose, and passes anything urgent to you straight away with the details.
Routine enquiries, like a quote or a booking, are handled through to a confirmed time without waking you.
Here's an example for a salon taking a booking on a Sunday night.
After-hours questions
Is this an after-hours answering service?
It does the same job without a call centre. Instead of taking a message, Conversiq replies on WhatsApp, answers questions, and books the work. See how they compare.
Can I set different rules for nights and weekends?
Yes. Your hours tell Conversiq when you're closed, and you choose what it should treat as urgent and how it should reach you.
Will it wake me up for every call?
No. Only urgent or sensitive conversations, or customers who ask for a person, are passed to you. Everything else waits in your morning summary.
What if the caller doesn't have WhatsApp?
For now, the caller needs WhatsApp installed to get the follow-up. SMS as a fallback is on our roadmap.
