Half of what people call an emergency isn't one. The other half is
An emergency line that treats every call as urgent wakes you for a dripping tap; one that treats none of them as urgent misses the gas smell. The whole job is telling them apart in the first twenty seconds, and doing it the same way at 4am as at 4pm.
From $99 a month · Robocalls are never billed
Incoming callTomás Iglesias“There is water coming through the kitchen ceiling right now.”
Graded urgent · Dispatched, call-out fee stated on the call
- First, not last
- Urgency is classified before the agent books, prices or captures anything else
- 911 or the utility
- For the hard cases the answer is not a booking, and it says so
- $0
- Spam and wrong numbers are zero-rated and never escalate to anyone
Not a message. A booking
Every one of these is something the product does on a real call, not a capability statement. Where it refuses to act, that refusal is the design.
It asks the safety question before the sales question
Is there a smell of gas. Is there smoke. Is there sewage inside the property. Is a line down. These run ahead of the name, the address and the availability, because the order of the questions is the difference between a triage and a booking form with an urgent checkbox on it.
For the real ones, the answer is not a slot
It tells the caller to ring the gas emergency line, the utility or 911 immediately, and it notifies you at the same time. It does not book them, price them or talk them through it. An agent that offers a Tuesday appointment to somebody standing in a house that smells of gas has failed in the most expensive way available.
For the urgent-but-safe ones, it dispatches
Water coming through a ceiling, no heat with a newborn in the house, a lock-out at midnight. These climb the escalation ladder to whoever is on call, with a one-line brief attached, and each leg has to be accepted by pressing 1 so nobody's voicemail can absorb it.
For everything else, it books and does not wake you
The great majority of calls that arrive on an emergency line are ordinary work with an anxious caller attached. Those get the same triage, the same capture and a real slot in your calendar, and nobody's phone rings at 3am.
It states your call-out fee and prices nothing else
Your emergency service call fee, exactly as you configured it, before anyone is dispatched. It will not estimate a repair it has not seen. A number guessed over the phone at midnight is a job you lose twice: once on the argument, once on the review.
Every decision it made is readable afterwards
The transcript, the classification, what was captured, who was escalated to and what was refused. When an emergency call goes wrong the question is always what was said, and on this line that is a document rather than a memory.
What people say before they say yes
In the words they are usually put in. Where the objection is right, it says so.
“Only a person can judge whether something is an emergency.”
A person can judge better than a machine on the ambiguous middle, and worse on consistency, because the judgement is made by whoever happens to be on the desk at 4am on their ninth hour. What the agent does is apply the same rules every time and refuse to make the call on anything genuinely dangerous, where the correct answer is not a judgement at all: it is 911.
“I'd rather be woken for everything than miss one.”
That is a defensible position, and you can configure it: set every classification to escalate. Most people who start there move off it within a fortnight, because being woken for everything means being woken mostly for nothing, and the cost of that lands on the following day's work.
“My emergency calls are the ones I most want to take myself.”
And the ladder tries you first. The agent is not deciding whether you get the call; it is deciding whether the call is worth your night, and doing the twenty seconds of fact-finding you would otherwise do half-asleep before you can act on it.
What it will never do
You are handing your phone to something that talks to your customers when you cannot. These are the lines it does not cross, and the words it uses instead.
It never invents a price
It states the call-out fee and the rates you configured, and nothing else. Where it does not know, it says so and brings it to you rather than guessing — a number said on the phone is a number you are held to at the door.
What it actually says
“I'm not going to guess at the repair before someone's seen it — you'd only be annoyed if I got it wrong.”
It never promises an hour it cannot keep
Work in the field is booked in windows, because a specific time is a promise the traffic breaks. It offers the window that actually has capacity left, and it will not invent one to end the call politely.
What it actually says
“I can do Tuesday morning, between eight and twelve — I won't give you an exact hour and have you waiting in all day.”
It never sends anyone to voicemail
If the transfer ladder runs out and nobody accepts, it takes the details, commits to a specific callback window and flags it. A beep is the one outcome worse than not answering at all.
What it actually says
“I can't reach anyone this minute, so let me take the details and someone will call you back before nine tomorrow.”
The job lands where you already work
Google, Outlook, Apple, Exchange, CalDAV — whichever calendar you already keep. Then your payments, your CRM, and whatever you automate with.
…and a lot more besides
- Warm transfersWarm transfersAnnounced — who is calling and why, before you take the line.
- Spam never billedSpam never billedRobocalls are spotted, zero-rated, and never become a customer.
- A number per sourceA number per sourceVan, yard sign, Google listing — see which line brings the work.
- Team & on-callTeam & on-callTries you, then a second number, then whoever is on call.
- Run it by textRun it by textReply to a text to move a job, block a morning, clear a day.
- Clear a day, everyone toldClear a day, everyone toldCall off a wet Tuesday; every customer is told and re-offered.
- Never invents an answerNever invents an answerNo price or slot it was not given. It takes a message instead.
- Any trade, no codeAny trade, no codeGoal, questions and guardrails are settings, not a rebuild.
What counts as a hard escalation?
Gas, smoke or fire, sewage inside a property, a downed power line, and anything the caller describes as a medical emergency. These are the universal ones. Your trade adds its own, and those are configuration: a locksmith's is a child or a pet locked in a vehicle.
Will it ever tell someone to call 911?
Yes, and it is the one instruction it gives without hedging. It also stops trying to help beyond that point, because keeping a caller on the line to collect an address is exactly the wrong thing to be doing in that moment.
Can it dispatch to different people for different emergencies?
The escalation ladder and which classifications may climb it are both configuration, so a water emergency and a lock-out can reach different people. What it does not do is decide on its own who is best for a job.
Does it charge more for emergency calls?
No. There is no per-call or per-minute billing at all, so the night your phone goes mad costs the same as the night it does not. Your own emergency call-out fee is a separate thing entirely. That is what it quotes to the caller.
What if the caller is panicking and not making sense?
It stays on the line, keeps the questions short and concrete, and escalates rather than looping. Where it cannot get what it needs it takes what it has, commits to a callback window and sends an urgent notification. It does not keep asking.
When it answers
The hour, not the trade. Every one of these is a time your phone rings and nobody picks it up.
Answered for your trade, in your words
The questions, urgency rules and escalations are configuration. 31 trades have their own page.