Knows it is closed
The clock lives on the number: New Zealand, the Chathams, or an Australian state, so a Brisbane line answers on Brisbane time. Public holidays are handled without anyone setting a flag.
After hours
Closed is a setting, not a silence.
The 7pm caller wanted to book and rang the next business. The 2am caller had a lift stuck and reached voicemail. The agent answers both, and knows which can wait.
What the agent does
Answers at 2am the way it answers at 2pm, then behaves differently
Trading hours live on the number. Outside them the agent still picks up on the first ring; what changes is what it offers, and what it does with an emergency.
Three behaviours
After hours, weekends and public holidays each get their own greeting and their own instruction: take a message for the morning, offer the first booking tomorrow, or escalate. The business writes each in plain English.
Books for the morning
A caller at 9pm who wants an appointment gets one. The agent reads the live diary and writes the booking in for tomorrow, re-checking the slot the instant before it saves.
The business defines urgent
What counts as an emergency is written by the business for its own operation: a site alarm, a tenant locked out, a server room losing power. A non-emergency waits for the next business day.
Works the ladder
App alert, text, then a call to tonight's on-call person. Voicemail never counts. If they do not accept, the next person is tried, then the owner, then a fallback number. See escalation.
Or skip the agent
Some businesses want the night phone to ring a person directly. The After hours card sends calls straight to the on-call person's own phone for named hours, with no agent in between.
How it goes for the caller
Two calls on the same Saturday night
- 9.10pm, a bookingA tenant wants a maintenance visit. The agent answers in the weekend greeting, offers Tuesday at eight and writes it in.
- 1.40am, a lift stuckThe agent checks the problem against the business's definition of an emergency, and tells the caller somebody is being found.
- The ladder runsThe on-call engineer gets an app alert, a text, then a call. They accept and are texted the details.
- The record is keptBoth calls are on the dashboard with their summaries, and every attempt on the ladder is logged for Monday morning.
What the business gets
A night that is handled, and a morning that starts informed
A text and email summary of every after-hours call within seconds, so the owner can glance at the phone and decide whether to act or sleep. Bookings are written into the connected diary overnight. Every escalation attempt is on the record, with who was alerted, how, and who accepted.
“Run a test” simulates an urgent job at any hour, so the ladder is proven before it is needed.
The after-hours agent is usually the same agent as reception with its after-hours behaviour switched on, rather than a second thing to buy. Diverting the advertised number on no answer, on busy and when the phone is off means the agent only picks up the calls that would otherwise be lost.
On-call alerts are the one exemption to the outbound calling window: the agent will ring a rostered staff member at 2am, but never a customer outside the hours the business is allowed to.
Sold through partners
The product for clients whose phone matters most when they are not there
Facilities management companies with an emergency line, property management groups, clinic networks that take bookings in the evening, and any business that loses work between five and nine. You set the price; Talkgate runs the platform. After-hours answering bundles with reception, the on-call roster is a sellable add-on on top, and the partner programme explains the rest.
Works with
The diary, the roster and the places alerts land
Direct connections, built and run by Talkgate. See all integrations.
Next step
Run a test emergency at an hour of your choosing
A partner briefing shows the after-hours greeting, a booking landing overnight, and the ladder reaching a person. See also escalation and on call and the phone channel.