After-hours answering service: AI that answers nights, weekends and holidays

What is an after-hours answering service?

An after-hours answering service answers a business's phone calls when the office is closed: in the evening, overnight, at weekends and on public holidays. A 24/7 answering service, also called a 24-hour answering service, does the same job around the clock. Traditional services use live operators who take a message and bill by the minute or by the call. Frontivo.io is an after-hours answering service run by AI: it holds the conversation itself, answers from the business's own information, books appointments on the real calendar and passes urgent calls to the business's own team.

How after-hours answering works in Frontivo.io

1. 1

   Frontivo.io connects a phone number for you after you subscribe: in the US, Canada, Puerto Rico and a few other countries it is connected in seconds; most other countries, including the UK, Australia, Germany and the Philippines, need business documents first, which takes 1-3 business days; in some countries you confirm a monthly local-number fee on the card first; and where no local number is offered you get a US (+1) number in seconds. You forward your business line to it, always or only when you don't answer, depending on what your phone provider supports.

2. 2

   Set your opening hours, and add your holiday closures and after-hours policy to the knowledge base. Changes apply straight away.

3. 3

   Say what counts as an emergency for your business, who takes those calls and on which days. Each person on your list has what they handle and when they take calls.

4. 4

   When a call comes in after hours, the AI answers in seconds with your greeting, which says it is an AI assistant unless you change it.

5. 5

   It asks what the caller needs, how urgent it is and where they are, and answers questions from your knowledge base. If the answer isn't there, it says so.

6. 6

   Routine callers are booked into the next open time on your calendar (built-in, Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar), or leave a message and are promised a callback.

7. 7

   Real emergencies are put through to your team on the days you chose, with a short spoken brief on who is calling and why. Anyone describing a danger to life is first told to call the local emergency number.

8. 8

   Your team is alerted straight away for each after-hours message, by text, email or desktop notification, and emergencies are marked URGENT.

9. 9

   In the morning every call is in your inbox with a transcript and a short AI summary, and the bookings are already on your calendar.