An after hours answering service should do two things: keep junk from waking you up, and make sure a real customer who calls at 10 pm reaches something better than a full voicemail box. With VettedCalls, the screening runs on every plan, day and night. What changes after hours is where a real caller goes once they're through. On Receptionist, it's our AI receptionist. On Pro there's no AI receptionist, so a call you miss goes to voicemail, at 2 pm or 2 am.
Below are three stretches when you're closed, a weeknight, a weekend and a holiday, walked through the way the Receptionist plan handles each call.
First, what "after hours" means to us
Your business hours are a schedule for each day of the week, in your time zone. Inside those hours, a caller who passes screening rings your phone for 12 seconds, and if you don't answer, the AI does. Outside them, that same caller goes straight to the AI and your phone stays quiet. Saved contacts still ring you at night. Priority Passthrough lets customers who say one of your selected priority words ring straight through to you, regardless of the time of day.
To change weekday hours from your phone, text HOURS 8-18 (or whatever your hours are, in 24-hour time) from your cell to your VettedCalls number. The weekend stays as you had it. Commands only work from your own cell, and you can require a PIN on the ones that change settings.
A Tuesday night, 9:40 pm
A homeowner you've never heard from calls about an upstairs air conditioner that quit. Her call forwards from your cell to us, and she hears: "Thanks for calling," then your business name, then "Who's calling, and how can we help today?" She has 4 seconds to start talking, gives her name and the problem, and presses 1 to be connected and get texts about her call.
It's after hours, so your phone doesn't ring. She hears "Let me connect you to the receptionist. This call may be recorded." The AI takes her name and what's wrong, reads back the last four digits of her number to confirm it, and asks what days work. It tells her someone from your team will reach out to lock in a time. If she asks what a service call costs, it says the team will go over pricing when they call back, unless you've set a flat trip charge, which it can quote.
You see the call's summary and transcript in your dashboard's AI call history. The AI can also text you an "AI MESSAGE" with her name, number and a summary, though it doesn't do that on every call, so check the history. At 7am your time you get a text summing up yesterday: how many calls came in, how many spam calls were blocked, and how many the AI answered. The time the AI spent with her counts as AI minutes, separate from your voice minutes.
At 11:15 pm a robocall dials the same number. It hears the greeting, says nothing and presses nothing, and the call ends with "This number does not accept unsolicited calls. Goodbye." It never reaches you or the AI. Like any call under a minute, it counts as one voice minute.
A weekend, Saturday
Assume Saturday is outside your hours.
6:55 am. A caller says their furnace is out and it's an emergency. "Emergency" is one of six priority words on every account, next to your trade's own defaults, and you can add up to 20 of your own. A heating and cooling company might add "no heat" (see how it works for HVAC). The call skips the press 1 step and rings you right away, for up to 40 seconds. When you answer, you hear "Priority call," then the caller's name and topic, before you're connected. On Pro with Team answering, every login rings at once and whoever answers first gets the call.
Say you're in the shower. A missed priority call goes to voicemail, never to the AI. You get a text alert and an email with the voicemail transcript. The caller isn't texted, because a priority call skips the press 1 question.
1:30 pm. Your biggest property-management customer calls. They're one of your saved contacts, so they skip screening and ring you, weekend or not. If you want a particular contact to go to the AI after hours instead, you can set that one contact that way. Miss a saved contact and they reach your voicemail, with no text to you or to them.
5:10 pm. The homeowner from Tuesday night calls back. She passed screening four days ago, so she's on your 60-day verified list and skips the questions. It's after hours, so she goes straight to the AI, which takes the new details for you.
A holiday, Thanksgiving
The schedule runs by day of the week, so a holiday that falls on a Thursday gets Thursday's hours. If Thursday is normally a workday for you, a caller who passes screening rings your phone for 12 seconds, and then the AI answers. If Thursday is outside your hours, callers go straight to the AI. Either way, a regular caller reaches you or the AI, and a priority call rings your phone first.
Suppose you step away from the table and take one call. On Receptionist, connected calls are recorded by default, after the caller hears "Connecting you now. This call may be recorded." Each recorded call gets a transcript with "Caller" and "You" lines and a one-to-two-sentence summary, kept in your call log for 90 days, so on Friday you can check what you agreed to. You can switch recording off in settings.
Friday at 7am the summary text counts Thursday's calls, voicemails and priority calls. A day with no calls sends no summary.
After hours on Pro
Pro has no AI receptionist. Screening, the shared spam registry and Priority Passthrough all run the same as on the other plans, but a caller who gets through at night rings your phone for up to 25 seconds, and if you don't answer, they go to voicemail. You get the text alert and the transcript, and a caller who pressed 1 gets a missed-call text saying you'll call back. Your summary comes weekly, on Mondays.
If most of your after-hours calls can wait for a callback in the morning, Pro covers them. If a call at 9:40 pm is often a job someone else will get by 9:45, you want Receptionist (coming soon).
What night coverage costs
Receptionist (coming soon) is $99.99 a month and includes 1,500 voice minutes and 250 AI minutes. Past that, an AI minute is $0.25. Team answering is an add-on to Pro. Add up to 4 more people for $10 a month each. Everyone's phone rings together and you share the minutes. Each robocall we block overnight usually counts as one voice minute. The pricing page has yearly prices and the rest of the details, and the AI receptionist page covers what the AI does on a call in more depth. Comparing this with a live service? Our answering service comparison lays out the options side by side, and call screening explains the part that runs before anyone answers.
Questions owners ask about after-hours calls
Does the AI answer while I'm open, too?
Yes, as a backup. During your business hours your phone rings for 12 seconds first, and the AI answers if you don't. After hours, callers who pass screening go straight to it.
Can my best customers still reach me at night?
Yes. Saved contacts ring you after hours as well. If you'd rather one of them went to the AI after hours, you can mark that contact to do that.
What about HVAC and other trades with real emergencies?
At signup you pick your trade, and the AI works from instructions for it. Your priority words start with that trade's defaults plus six words every account gets: urgent, emergency, help, asap, right now and today. You can add up to 20 of your own, such as "no heat".
Will the AI put the job on my schedule?
No. It takes the caller's details and the days that work for them, and tells them someone will reach out to lock in a time. You confirm the appointment when you call back.
How do I change my business hours?
Your hours are a schedule for each day of the week, in your time zone. For a quick change from your phone, text HOURS with a start and end in 24-hour time, like HOURS 8-18, to your VettedCalls number. That sets your weekday hours and leaves the weekend alone.