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After-hours & emergency calls

Emergency HVAC Calls, Answered Instead of Sent to Voicemail

When a homeowner's furnace dies at 2 AM in freezing weather, the call is either answered or it is lost. Sara picks up, takes the address and the problem in the caller's own words, and puts the whole thing in front of you when the call ends.

39%
of phone leads never reach a person
Invoca, 2025 — from an analysis of over 60 million calls
34%
of calls arrive outside business hours
CallRail, 2025 — and those callers are 24% likelier to book

Industry figures, not ours. Thermoi has no completed customer pilots yet, so we have no results of our own to quote.

The Calls That Come In After Hours

Every one of them is handled the same way: answered live, written down in full, and sent to you. What counts as urgent is your call to make, not ours.

No heat, 2 AM, 15°F outside

The call you cannot afford to lose to voicemail. Sara answers it live, takes the name, the callback number, the service address and what the furnace is actually doing, and books a time if the caller wants one.

AC out in a heatwave

Same handling, day or night. Everything the caller says is captured word for word, so you are reading the actual call rather than a two-line voicemail when you decide who goes first.

Water coming from the air handler

Sara takes the address, the symptoms and a callback number. You get the summary and the full transcript the moment the call ends, with the arrival window if a time was agreed.

What Actually Happens On a 2 AM Call

Six steps, and none of them are aspirational.

1

The phone is answered

A homeowner calls at 2 AM. Their furnace has stopped and it is 15°F outside. Sara answers with your business name, because your shop's identity is handed to her at the start of every call.

2

She says what she is

Sara tells the caller she is an AI assistant in her first sentence, before they start explaining the problem. No accent games, no pretending to be your night dispatcher.

3

She takes the details

Name, callback number, the service address, and the problem in the caller's own words. If the caller asks for a person, she takes a message rather than promising a transfer she cannot perform.

4

The job gets written down

If the call ends in a booking, it is recorded with the customer, the service type, the address and the arrival window they were given. The transcript sits alongside it, so the time the caller actually heard is always checkable.

5

You are notified when the call ends

An email to whoever should get it and a message into your Slack channel, with the caller, the number and the summary. Both are yours to switch on during setup, and both are off until you do.

6

You call back knowing everything

The full transcript and summary sit in your dashboard. Your on-call tech rings the customer back already knowing the address, the system and what was said.

What Sara Does With an Emergency Call

She answers as your shop, not as a service

At the start of every call your business name and greeting are handed to the agent, so the caller hears your company, not a generic answering desk.

She says she is an assistant, up front

No pretending to be a person. Callers are told what they are speaking to in the first sentence, before they explain their problem.

The details get captured, not guessed

Caller name, phone number, what is wrong, the service address, and the arrival window if a time was agreed. The full transcript comes with it, so you can check what was actually promised before you send anyone.

Email and Slack when the call ends

Two channels, both yours to switch on during setup: an email to whoever should see it, and a message into a Slack channel. That is the complete list — there is no SMS, no robocall and no mobile app.

A full transcript of every call

The whole conversation and a written summary are stored against the call. If a call goes badly you can read it word for word instead of guessing what was said.

No transfers, no phone tree, no hold music

Sara does not put callers through to a person, and she does not promise to. She takes the details and your on-call tech rings back. Nobody is left holding for a human who is on a roof.

What It Does Not Do

Every answering product on the market claims these. We do not have them, and you should know that before you connect your line rather than at 2 AM.

No severity scoring

Nothing in the product reads a call and stamps it CRITICAL. You decide what is urgent, from the caller’s own words in the transcript.

No SMS or automated phone alerts

Notifications go to email and Slack only. If you need a text at 2 AM, forward the email to your carrier’s SMS gateway or point Slack at your phone.

No escalation chain

We do not watch whether your tech responded and hand the call to a backup after five minutes. There is no such timer, and we would rather say so than imply one.

No technician tracking

We do not know where your trucks are or who is free, so we cannot route by location or job status. Nothing in the system holds a technician’s position.

No calendar sync yet

Booked jobs land in your Thermoi dashboard with the address and window. They do not write into Google Calendar, ServiceTitan or your CRM today.

Not a life-safety service

A gas smell or a carbon monoxide alarm is a 911 and gas-utility call, not a scheduling call. No answering system, ours included, is a substitute for that.

The Alternative Is Voicemail

That is the real comparison. Not a perfect dispatch system versus ours — a recorded greeting versus something that picks up and writes the job down.

  • The caller talks to something instead of a beep
  • The address and the symptoms are captured while the caller is still on the line
  • You wake up to a transcript, not a 9-second message you have to replay twice
  • A caller who wanted a time slot has one, with the window they were given
  • Nothing is promised to the customer that you cannot deliver at 2 AM
  • You choose what is urgent, with the whole call in front of you

See It Answer Your Kind of Call

Book a 15-minute demo and hear how an after-hours call is handled end to end. The first month on your real line is free — no card, cancel anytime.