Follow-Up · Out-of-hours call handling
Sleep. We'll handle the 3am leak.
An AI agent that picks up every call after hours, triages the job, and only escalates the genuine emergencies to your mobile. The Saturday-night routine enquiries get booked into Monday's diary without waking you up.
The leads worth most arrive when you're asleep.
Emergency trades win the highest-margin jobs in the out-of-hours window. The customer who calls a plumber at 9pm on a Sunday with a burst stop-tap is not price-shopping. They're ringing the first number that answers.
48%
of UK emergency trade calls happen outside 9 to 5 working hours.
Source: Checkatrade / Rated People emergency-trade analysis
2 to 3×
margin uplift on out-of-hours emergency call-outs vs daytime jobs.
Source: UK plumbing and locksmith operator interviews
< 60 sec
window before an emergency caller redials the next firm on Google.
Source: Field observations, UK trades operators
01 / Three-tier triage
Wake you only when it's worth it.
The AI agent listens for the keywords that decide whether a call is a real emergency or a routine enquiry that can wait until morning. Each tier has its own response so the customer always gets help and you stay rested.
01
Tier 1, Genuine emergency
Burst pipe, no heat in winter, electrical fault with smell of burning, lockout. Direct dial to your mobile with full transcript and the prospect on hold ready to connect.
02
Tier 2, Same-day urgent
Dripping leak, intermittent boiler, partial-loss-of-power. Booked into your earliest available slot and confirmed by SMS. No call to you overnight.
03
Tier 3, Routine enquiry
Quote requests, gas safety certificates, planned-work questions. Captured, qualified, and booked into the diary. Brief lands in your inbox by 7am.
Kelso AI Assistant
● Online
02 / Built for these trades
Trades whose customers can't wait until Monday.
Plumbers
Burst pipes, blocked drains, no hot water. The classic Sunday-night call.
Open plumbers matrixElectricians
Loss of power, tripped consumer unit, sparking sockets. Safety-critical, time-critical.
Open electricians matrixBoiler engineers
Cold-night boiler breakdowns. Customers are stressed, urgent, and decisive on the phone.
Open boiler engineers matrixLocksmiths
Lockouts, broken keys, snapped barrels. Cannot wait. Will take the first answer.
Roofers
Storm damage, sudden leaks, slipped tiles. Insurance jobs flow from quick response.
Open roofers matrixEmergency-trade generalists
Any trade with a 24/7 promise on the van. Hand the promise to the AI, keep the sleep.
03 / Day vs night
Two rotations, one inbox.
Daytime (08:00 – 18:00)
You handle calls as normal, the missed-call text-back and auto-call routing layer back you up. The reception layer takes overflow and lunch breaks.
- You answer the calls you want to answer
- Text-back fires on anything you miss
- Overflow handled in your business name
Out of hours (18:00 – 08:00, weekends, bank holidays)
AI agent picks up every call in your business name. Triages by the three-tier logic above. Only genuine emergencies reach your mobile, the rest are booked, the rest are summarised.
- Sleep without missing emergency revenue
- Routine enquiries booked into Monday
- Morning brief with every call summarised
Cost of missed calls
How much are missed calls costing you?
Most UK trades miss 3-5 calls a week. The average job they lose is worth between £200 and £1,000. The maths gets ugly fast.
Your numbers
UK average for owner-operator trades is 3-5
Plumber callouts £150-£800, install jobs £500-£5,000
Industry studies: 30-50% if you respond within 5 minutes
48 is a typical UK trade year after holidays
What it's costing you
Revenue lost every year
£28,800
≈ £2,400 a month, in jobs you never even quoted on.
With Kelso AI Follow-Up (~70% recovery)
+£20,160
£1,680 a month, on average, recovered.
Get the follow-up stackIndustry benchmarks: AllDayPA put the UK average at £26,000/year lost. ConstructionX clocks £20,800. JPAutomations £24,000. Your number will be different. The pattern won't.
FAQ
Common questions before you switch the night line on.
What stops the agent waking me for nothing?
The three-tier triage. Only Tier 1 (genuine emergency by your definition) triggers a direct call to your mobile. Tier 2 books into the morning, Tier 3 books into the diary. You set the keywords.
Can I take the night off completely?
Yes. We can set a "fully covered" mode where Tier 1 still escalates to a partner number or duty engineer instead of you. Useful for holidays or a planned weekend off.
How does this differ from a normal answering service?
Most answering services take a message and leave you to call back. The Kelso layer is wired into your calendar and your CRM, so the booking is already in your diary by the time you read the brief.
What about WhatsApp and SMS at night?
Same coverage. Inbound SMS and WhatsApp threads are picked up by the AI agent on the same triage logic. You wake up to a tidy thread, not a chase list.
Will the AI agent send a tradesperson to a job?
Only if you allow it. The default behaviour is to capture, qualify, and book. Dispatching a person stays a human decision unless you explicitly enable auto-dispatch for specific job types.
How quickly can it go live?
Inside one working week. Discovery, triage scripting, calendar sync, then a quiet test night before flipping it live.
Hand the night shift to the system.
The out-of-hours layer plugs onto your existing number and into your AI SEO and ads inbox. Emergency revenue stays yours, sleep stays yours.