After Hours Answering Service · All Trades · All States
40% of trade emergency calls come in after 5pm and on weekends. These aren’t quote enquiries — they’re burst pipes, power failures, broken AC in a heatwave, storm damage, and lockouts. People who need someone right now and will pay your after-hours rate to get it.
Most answering services cover business hours only. That’s exactly when your most urgent — and highest-value — work comes in. The tradie who picks up at 9pm on a Saturday gets the job. The one who has an answering service that clocks off at 5pm gets a voicemail they’ll hear on Monday morning.
BackOnTools is a 24/7 AI answering service built specifically for Australian tradies. It handles after-hours calls with the same intelligence as business hours calls — because emergencies don’t care what time it is.
These aren’t hypotheticals. These are the calls that come in after the answering service has gone home.
Burst pipe — 10:30pm
When you answer
You quote the after-hours callout, confirm the address, and you’re on the way. Job: $400–$800. Customer: yours for life.
When you don’t
Call hits voicemail. They ring the next plumber. You get a message at 7am about a job that was booked at 10:31.
Power out — Friday 6pm
When you answer
You triage the issue, confirm it’s a job you can handle, book same-evening or first thing Saturday. Emergency rate applies.
When you don’t
Answering service is closed. Customer Googles “electrician emergency near me” and calls four competitors until one picks up.
AC dead — Saturday heatwave
When you answer
Premium same-day rate. Customer will pay whatever it takes. Job booked within 30 seconds of the call ending.
When you don’t
Voicemail. 62% never leave one. They’re sweating and anxious — they need someone right now, not a callback tomorrow.
Storm damage — Sunday morning
When you answer
Roof damage, broken windows, structural concerns. High-urgency job, often insurance work. You get it because you picked up.
When you don’t
Your competitor who has 24/7 coverage takes three calls from your suburb before you open on Monday.
Lockout — any night of the week
When you answer
Locked out with kids inside, or a business owner locked out before opening. Fast response, after-hours callout rate, grateful customer.
When you don’t
They ring four locksmiths in 90 seconds. The first one to answer gets the booking. If that’s not you, you’ll never know.
After-hours emergency work commands a premium. An after-hours plumbing callout might run $400–$700 where the same job in business hours is $250. Business-hours answering services don't miss average calls — they miss your most profitable ones.
A Monday-to-Friday answering service sounds professional. But your customer ringing on a Sunday morning doesn't know or care — they just hear voicemail. The gap between "we have an answering service" and "we're actually covered" is exactly where your competitors step in.
The callback window for a hot lead is five minutes. By the time you open on Monday and return a Saturday night voicemail, that customer has been booked for two days. Business-hours answering services capture after-hours messages that are already worthless by the time anyone reads them.
Always on.BackOnTools doesn’t have a shift. It’s live at 3am on a Tuesday exactly the same as it is at 10am on a Wednesday. No handover, no overnight team, no degraded service after hours.
Trade-trained urgency rules.During setup, we configure your emergency threshold. What’s a page-me-now situation vs a capture-and-schedule situation? You define the rules — we train the AI to follow them every time.
Emergency = page you now. When an after-hours call matches your emergency criteria, BackOnTools pages you immediately via SMS — caller name, number, address, and a brief summary. You decide whether to respond. No delay, no message queue, no morning briefing.
Non-urgent after-hours = capture and schedule. Quote enquiries, routine maintenance requests, non-urgent bookings — it captures everything correctly and books the job for your next available slot. The customer hangs up with a confirmed time. You don’t get woken up at 11pm for a quote request.
Includes Australian public holidays.Christmas, Easter, ANZAC Day, state-specific holidays — BackOnTools doesn’t know what day it is because it doesn’t need to. It’s answering every call regardless.
40%
Emergency calls after 5pm
Industry data — trade sector
$72,800
Lost/yr for a plumber
4 missed calls/wk at $350 avg
78%
Jobs won by first responder
Speed is the whole game
When 40% of your emergency calls come in outside business hours, “after hours coverage” isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s 40% of your emergency revenue waiting to be answered or lost.
For a plumber running $350 average jobs and missing four calls a week, the annual loss is $72,800. Push the after-hours rate to 40% of those missed calls — $250 average premium for after-hours — and the real number is substantially higher.
78% of jobs go to the first tradie to respond. After hours, this is even more pronounced — the homeowner with a burst pipe at 10pm is not comparing three quotes. They’re booking the first person who picks up. You either pick up or you don’t.
24/7 coverage is included in every plan. Not an add-on. Not a premium tier. All three plans cover all 168 hours of the week.
No extra charge for after-hours or weekend coverage.
Starter
$197/month
Setup free
Every call answered 24/7 in your business name. Caller details captured and texted to you immediately. Emergency triage — urgent calls flagged and paged. FAQ handling for your common services.
Pro
$297/month
Setup free
Everything in Starter plus full job booking into your calendar. Standard pricing quotes for your common jobs. Immediate emergency paging with caller details. Automated SMS confirmation to customers.
Premium
$497/month
Setup free
Everything in Pro plus custom after-hours call flows, monthly tuning, and priority support. Ideal for businesses with specific emergency dispatch rules or multiple operators on call.
We train BackOnTools on your emergency rules during setup. Typically: active flooding, total power loss, no hot water in winter, structural storm damage, lockouts with someone stuck outside. Non-urgent calls — quote requests, scheduled maintenance bookings — are captured and scheduled for next-day. You define the line and we train the AI to follow it.
Yes. 24/7 means 24/7 — weekdays, weekends, public holidays including Christmas and Easter. Trade emergencies don't check the calendar before happening, and neither does BackOnTools.
Included in all plans. There's no after-hours add-on, no weekend surcharge, no public holiday fee. The same plan price covers all 168 hours of the week. If a service charges extra for after-hours, you're paying more for something that should be standard.
You receive an SMS with the caller's name, contact number, address, and a brief summary of the job. You decide whether to respond. If you're unavailable, it can let the caller know you'll ring back shortly — or take a message and schedule a callback for business hours, depending on your rules.
Yes. During setup we configure your emergency threshold, your paging preference, and what happens with non-urgent after-hours calls. Some tradies want to be paged for everything after 5pm. Others only want to hear about genuine emergencies. You set the rules, we train the AI to follow them precisely.
After-hours emergencies don’t wait for business hours. Neither should your phone. BackOnTools is live around the clock from day one — no extra charge, no complicated setup, no overnight team to manage.
Seven days to set up · Cancel any time · 24/7 included in every plan