Screening asks every new caller a question before your phone rings. For a sales call that's the point. For someone standing in an inch of water, it's one step too many. Emergency call routing is the exception we built in. Priority Passthrough lets customers who say one of your selected priority words ring straight through to you, regardless of the time of day. The call skips that question and rings you right away, for up to 40 seconds, on every plan.
One emergency call, step by step
- We answer in your business name: "Thanks for calling [business]. Who's calling, and how can we help today?"
- The caller has 4 seconds to start talking.
- An AI model reads what they said and picks out their name, a short topic, whether it's a priority call and whether it looks like spam.
- If they used one of your priority words, the call is flagged as a priority call.
- It skips the press 1 or press 2 question that every other new caller who gets through hears.
- The caller hears "Connecting you now."
- Your phone rings in the Cloud Softphone app right away, for up to 40 seconds, whether or not it's inside your business hours.
- When you answer, you hear "Priority call," the caller's name and their topic, then a beep, and then you're talking to them.
The first three steps don't go away. A priority caller still hears the greeting and still goes through the AI check; the text question is the only thing they skip. That's also why the whisper can tell you who it is and what's wrong before you say a word.
Your priority words
Every account starts with six universal priority words: urgent, emergency, help, asap, right now and today. On top of those, you get a set of defaults for your trade.
You can add up to 20 of your own in the dashboard. The trade defaults stay on either way, so your words add to the list instead of replacing it.
Pick words your callers say when something has gone wrong, in their language rather than yours. A homeowner doesn't say "supply line failure"; they name the room that's flooding or the thing that stopped working. Think back to the calls that had you driving out after dark last winter, and write down the words those people used.
One thing to expect: since today and help are on the universal list, a caller who simply wants someone out today can come through as a priority call too.
If you miss a priority call
On Pro, a call you don't answer goes to voicemail. On Receptionist, most missed calls go to the AI receptionist, but a priority call you miss goes to voicemail instead, the same as on Pro.
The voicemail greeting uses your business name and asks for the caller's name and what they need, and the message can run up to 120 seconds. You get a text alert for the missed call, since priority calls always alert, and for the voicemail you get an email with the full transcript and a link to play it.
The caller isn't texted. A priority call skips the press 1 question, so the caller never agreed to texts, and there's no missed-call text and no "Got your message" text. The alert goes to you.
What stays the same on every plan
Screening, the shared spam registry and Priority Passthrough run on Pro and Receptionist alike. The plan only changes where a call goes after it passes: to you, to the AI receptionist, or to voicemail. The priority ring itself, up to 40 seconds and outside business hours as well, is the same on both.
Your text summary counts priority calls alongside calls, spam blocked and voicemails, so you can see how often your priority words fire: daily at 7am on Receptionist, weekly on Pro.
The calls that don't need a priority word
Some callers never face the screening question at all. Saved contacts skip screening and ring you around the clock, so put your regular customers, your suppliers and the people on your current jobs in there. A caller who passed screening in the last 60 days skips it too, and each call from them restarts the 60 days. Priority words are for everyone else: the first-time caller with a problem that can't wait.
Emergency routing for your trade
Our pages for specific trades: plumbers, electricians, HVAC, roofers and property managers. Smaller trades, tree services among them, are grouped on the home services and construction and remodeling pages.
For the rest of what VettedCalls does, see features and how call screening works. To get set up, forward your cell with the code for your carrier from the call forwarding guide or the setup walkthrough, and see pricing for the plans.