019:41 on a Tuesday
Somebody just found out their breaker will not stay on.
They are standing in a dark hallway with a phone in their hand and a list of three names. You are the first one. You are also forty minutes into somebody else’s attic, or asleep, or at a table with your family.
Four rings, then your voicemail.
voicemailMost people do not leave one. They hang up and call the second name on the list, and you never learn the job existed.
Four rings, then we pick it up.
answeredYou still answer everything you can, exactly the way you do now. We only ever get a call your phone has already failed to catch.
02Your own listing
You already told them
you would answer.
Half of the shops your size publish nights or weekends on their listing. Eighty five percent of those have no way to take the job at all except by picking up the phone themselves.
- MondayOpen 24 hours
- TuesdayOpen 24 hours
- WednesdayOpen 24 hours
- ThursdayOpen 24 hours
- FridayOpen 24 hours
- SaturdayOpen 24 hours
- SundayOpen 24 hours
And if yours says you close at five, it changes nothing. The call still comes at 9:41. The only difference is that you never promised to be there for it.
03Meanwhile
They are not shopping around.
They are waiting.
An after-hours call is not a lead. It is somebody with a problem right now, and the person who calls back first usually gets it.
04What lands on your phone
One text. Everything you need to call them back.
Name, callback number, address, and what is actually wrong, in their words. It reads the number and the street back to the caller before it hangs up.
no app, no dashboard, no login
Today 9:44 PM
Dana Whitfield, 323 555 0142.
4412 Maplewood Ave, Silver Lake.
Before you believe any of it
Call it and tell it your
breaker keeps tripping.
It answers as Vista Electric, a company that does not exist, so say anything you like to it. Nobody is notified and I will not follow up on the fact that you called. If it sounds like a robot reading a script you will know inside twenty seconds, and you can close this page.
How the call actually reaches me
You dial one code on your own phone, once. Your carrier already has a setting for where a call goes when you do not pick up, and you point it at your Answered Line number. There is no app, and nothing of mine sits between your customer and your phone.
The code for your carrier, and the one that undoes it
Verizon
Verizon covers no-answer and busy together and does not let you route them separately. Dial it, wait for the confirmation tone, hang up.
Read off verizon.com/support/call-forwarding-faqsAT&T
The 20 at the end is how many seconds your phone rings before it rolls over. Any of 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 or 30 works. Add **67*{n}# to cover calls that come in while you are already on one.
GSM standard code, widely documented. I confirm yours before you pay.T-Mobile
Same code and the same ring timer as AT&T. Add **67*{n}# for calls that arrive while you are on another one.
GSM standard code, widely documented. I confirm yours before you pay.The way out, before the way in. If you try it and hate it, this puts your phone back exactly as it was.
##004#Clears every conditional forward on the line at once and puts your phone back exactly the way it was. Works on AT&T, T-Mobile and any other GSM carrier. On Verizon it is *73.
If your business line runs through RingCentral, Ooma, Google Voice, a desk phone system or anything else that is not a normal cell plan, none of these codes apply. Those are set in a web portal instead, and the setting is usually called something like ring group overflow or no-answer forwarding. Tell me which one you use and I will find it with you.
05What it costs
First, what the missed ones already cost.
Three taps. It runs in your browser and nothing is sent anywhere.
That is 9.7 times what the line costs. Catching one of those calls a month pays for it and the rest is yours.
Your figures, not mine, and an estimate rather than a promise. Nobody catches all of it. Nothing you tap here is sent anywhere, including to me.
Against that, nothing metered.
Answering services bill by the minute or by the call, so a busy month costs double a slow one and you find out on the invoice. A busy August costs the same here as a dead February.
one job a month covers it
- CoversYour shop. All your trucks, all your guys, one price.
- MeteringNone. No per minute, no per call, no overage.
- TermMonth to month. Cancel by email, no notice period.
- RefundFirst thirty days, email me and I refund it. I do not ask why.
- SpanishIt continues in Spanish if the caller speaks Spanish.
- SetupOne code on your phone, about fifteen minutes with me on the line if you want it.
06Before you spend anything
Here is what it refuses to do.
Every one of these is a deliberate limit, not a missing feature. An answering service that oversteps in your name costs you more than the calls it catches.
- It never tells your customer what to do to their system.Not to reset a breaker, not to shut a valve, nothing. It is answering in your licensed name and it is not qualified to give advice in it.
- It does not quote, and it does not schedule.No prices, no arrival times, nothing lands on a calendar. It takes the call and hands you the details.
- It never dials out. It only ever picks up.It will not call your customers, your list, or anyone else in your name. The only way it speaks to a person is if that person rang your number first.
- It cannot dial 911. It tells them to.Smoke, sparks, a shock or a gas smell and it stops asking questions and tells the caller to hang up and dial 911 themselves. That is the whole extent of it.
- It tells every caller it is automated.First sentence, before they have said anything, along with the fact that the call is recorded. California requires it and I would say it anyway.
Answered Line is built and run by Bridger Scott in Los Angeles. You deal with me directly, which means when something needs changing it changes that week rather than going into a queue.
Call the line before you decide anything. If it does not sound like something you would put your company name on, do not buy it.