After-hours dispatch for home services, step by step

For home and trade service businesses, after-hours calls fall into two buckets: genuine emergencies (burst pipe, no heat in winter, electrical hazard) and non-urgent calls that can be booked for the next available window.

The playbook for each is different. Emergencies need to reach a human now. Non-urgent calls just need to be captured and scheduled. Getting both right — without requiring your team to monitor a phone all night — is what this guide covers.

What Riley does

Riley is Televox's AI dispatcher configured for home and trade services. When a call comes in after hours, here's what happens:

Step 1: Greetingstrong. Riley answers with your company name and asks about the issue. The tone is calm and professional — people calling about a plumbing emergency are usually stressed, and the first response sets the tone for the call.

Step 2: Diagnose urgencystrong. Riley asks targeted questions based on your knowledge base. For a plumbing company, this might be: Is water actively flowing? Have you found the shutoff valve? Is there visible damage? The answers go into an urgency classification.

Step 3: Route accordinglystrong. Emergency calls (active flooding, no heat in a cold climate, electrical hazard) are immediately transferred live to your on-call tech's cell. Non-urgent calls are booked for the next available service window and logged to your system.

Step 4: Send confirmationstrong. For every call — emergency or not — the caller gets a text confirmation. For emergencies, it's the tech's name and that they're on the way. For non-urgent bookings, it's the appointment window and any prep instructions (e.g., "please clear access to the water main").

Step 5: Log to your systemstrong. A structured record is posted to your CRM, Jobber, Housecall Pro, ServiceTitan, or any webhook: caller name, address, problem description, urgency flag, appointment ID.

Setting up the knowledge base

The most important setup step is your knowledge base. Riley answers from what you put in it — and it won't guess. Upload a document that covers:

What counts as an emergencystrong for your business. Be explicit: "active flooding," "no heat when outside temperature is below 40°F," "electrical hazard with sparking or burning smell" — these should be listed clearly.

Your service areastrong. Zip codes or city names you cover. Riley will tell callers outside your area that you don't service that location and, if you want, suggest they search for local alternatives.

Your service typesstrong. Plumbing, HVAC, electrical — and the sub-categories within each. This lets Riley accurately describe what you can and can't help with.

Pricing rangesstrong (optional). If you want Riley to give callers a rough sense of what a typical service call costs, you can include this. If not, Riley will tell callers that a technician will provide a quote on site.

Setting up the emergency transfer

Configure the transfer action with your on-call number. You can set this as a fixed number (always the same on-call tech) or use a rotating schedule (different number each week — you update it weekly in the dashboard).

When Riley classifies a call as an emergency, it announces the situation to the caller — "This is a true emergency — I'm connecting you to our on-call technician right now. His name is Dave. Stay on the line." — and bridges the call. No hold music, no voicemail.

What this doesn't cover

This playbook handles the call receipt and routing. It doesn't replace your dispatch software, your scheduling system, or your field team. Riley creates the record and, in the case of emergencies, initiates the call — but the tech still needs to respond.

If your on-call tech doesn't answer the transfer, the call falls back to voicemail for that number. Riley can't make a tech pick up their phone. What it can do is ensure that every emergency gets a transfer attempt, and that every non-emergency is captured and logged rather than lost.

Getting started

The fastest path to getting this running:

1. Create a Televox accountstrong and create a new agent for your business.

2. Upload your knowledge basestrong — a one-to-two page document covering your service area, service types, emergency criteria, and any relevant policies.

3. Configure extractorsstrong: caller name, callback number, service address, problem description, emergency flag, preferred time window.

4. Set up the emergency transfer actionstrong with your on-call number.

5. Connect your scheduling integrationstrong (Cal.com, Jobber, or any webhook) for non-emergency bookings.

6. Forward your after-hours linestrong to your Televox number.

Call the number yourself and test both scenarios: a non-urgent call that gets booked, and an emergency that gets transferred. Listen to the recording in Call History to verify the flow works as expected.

Once you're satisfied with the test, you're live. Every call that comes in after hours will be handled — emergencies escalated, non-emergencies booked, every caller texted a confirmation.