What an after-hours answering service is
An after-hours answering service answers your business line when the office is closed: evenings, nights, weekends and holidays. You keep your number and forward it when you lock up; the service answers, takes the details, sorts the urgent calls from the ones that can wait, and hands the result back in the morning or pages someone the same minute. The old kind is a call centre; Pickwick is software that does the same job, says so in its first sentence, and costs the same per minute at 2 am as at 2 pm.
What callers say after 5 pm
No heat in January and no cool in July. Water where it should not be. A noise that was not there yesterday. A smell. "Is anyone open?" "What does a visit cost tonight?" Some are emergencies, most are not, and one or two a year are dangerous. A good after-hours service is judged on the handful of calls where the difference matters, which is why the fuller checklist on this site is written for the hardest trade: what an after-hours HVAC answering service should do.
What Pickwick does on a night call
- Answers at once, says it is automated and that the call is recorded, in English or Spanish once the caller has chosen.
- If the caller names a hazard (gas, carbon monoxide, smoke, sparking), says a fixed 911 line before anything else and flags your shop the same minute.
- Takes the name, number, address and problem, and reads the number and address back.
- Sorts it: urgent to the people you list now; routine into the first open window from your hours, penciled in, not booked.
- Quotes your diagnostic fee only in the words you gave it, and promises an arrival time only if you set an after-hours number for someone who is actually on call.
- In the morning, the list is waiting in the dashboard app: each job with its recording and transcript, one tap to confirm. If you have chosen to let routine jobs book themselves, they already have; emergencies always waited for a person.
Forward only after hours, and switch back yourself
Most shops start here: the line rings the desk all day and goes to Pickwick at closing. One code from your phone forwards it, another brings it back, and some carriers and phone systems (RingCentral, Google Voice for Workspace) switch by schedule. The codes, carrier by carrier, are on forward your line; which of the three kinds of forwarding fits which shop is on the forwarding guide.
What it costs
The After-hours & overflow plan is the one most shops start on: $149 a month for 600 minutes (about 200 three-minute calls), then $0.49 a minute; $349 for 1,000 minutes; $749 for 2,500. No setup fee, month to month, Spanish included, and the first 14 days on your own number are free with no card. The numbers are on the pricing page, and the billing models of the market are compared in what an answering service costs.
What it will not do, at any hour
- No pretending. It says it is automated in its first sentence and never claims to be a person.
- No invented prices or times. Your fee in your words, or a callback; an arrival window only from your hours and bookings.
- No repair advice beyond checking a thermostat or resetting a tripped breaker.
- No selling past a hazard. A caller who names gas, carbon monoxide, smoke or sparking hears a fixed 911 line before anything else.
Which trades, and what each gets
Each trade page says what its callers say at night and what the agent does with each: HVAC, Plumbing, Electrical, Garage doors, Roofing, Appliance repair. The maintenance line for property managers has its own page.