Hours & coverage

The AI answers 24/7 regardless of your hours — but how it handles a call depends on whether you're open. This page is where you tell it the difference.

Where to set it

Settings → AI Receptionist → Hours section.

Step 1 — Set your weekly hours

For each day of the week, pick: Open (with start/end times) or Closed. Holidays + custom one-off closures can be added later.

Typical patterns:

• Trades (HVAC, plumbing, electrical): Mon-Fri 7am-6pm, Sat 8am-2pm, Sun closed.
• Dental / Medical: Mon-Thu 8am-5pm, Fri 8am-3pm, weekends closed.
• Insurance: Mon-Fri 9am-5pm.
• 24/7 services: every day 12am-11:59pm.

Step 2 — Pick after-hours behavior

When a call arrives outside your hours, the AI can:

1. Answer + capture the lead — most common. AI handles the call, books for next business day, records the urgency.
2. Answer + page the on-call tech — for trades. Routes emergencies (water leaks, no heat) to the on-duty technician's cell.
3. Answer + politely defer — "We're closed; please call back during business hours." Use only when you don't want any after-hours engagement.

The default is option 1. If you want option 2 (emergency routing), see the After-Hours Rescue bundle features.

Step 3 — Set the timezone

Critical: your business hours are in your local timezone. Set the timezone on the same page so the AI doesn't think 5pm Pacific is 5pm UTC.

Save + sync

Same as the other config sections — click Save, ask your operator to Sync (live), and the AI uses the new hours on the next call.

Verify it works

The simplest test: temporarily set today's hours to "closed", save, sync, then call your number. The AI should detect that you're closed + apply the after-hours behavior you chose. Switch back when done.