The furnace dies at 11pm and your phone rings out
Nobody leaves you a voicemail when the house is four degrees. They dial the next company on the list. GreetKeeper picks up, books your first morning slot, and texts whoever you have on call.
Caller
“My furnace quit about an hour ago, the house is down to four degrees and my daughter is two. Can anyone come tonight?”
What happened next
- Booked Wednesday 7:00am, first stop of the route
- Marked urgent: no heat overnight, infant in the house
- Texted Dave the address and the thermostat model the caller read out
Demand arrives in a spike, and it arrives after hours
The first freeze of the season, the first ninety-degree week, a storm. Your phone does a month of ringing in two days, and most of it lands outside the hours you have anyone at a desk.
During a cold snap every company in your county is buried. Whoever answers the phone wins the job, and after nine at night that's nobody. An answering service costs you per call and puts a stranger on the line who knows nothing about your trucks.
The calls ringing out at midnight are also your best-margin work. A dead furnace in February isn't a price-shopping call. That homeowner will pay your after-hours rate, and they'll take your replacement quote in March if the visit goes well.
GreetKeeper answers at eleven, at two, on Sunday. It tells your caller when a tech can be there, puts the job in the first slot on your route, and sends the address to the phone in the truck.
Triaging a no-heat call without a dispatcher awake
Emergency or morning is the only decision that matters overnight, and you write the rule that makes it for you.
Heat, cooling, or neither
No heat below a temperature you set, or no cooling in a heat advisory, trips your emergency path. A noisy blower or a thermostat question waits until your office opens.
Ask what the thermostat says
The reading, the model if your caller can see it, and whether the breaker has tripped. Your tech reads that before the van moves, which sometimes saves you the trip entirely.
Quote the callout, not the repair
It states your after-hours callout fee, because that's a fixed number you gave it. It never estimates a repair cost down the phone, where a wrong figure becomes an argument in your customer's driveway.
Wake the right person
One text to the tech on your rota with the address, the fault and the callout time. Nobody else's phone buzzes at midnight.
How the job reaches your dispatch board
Your field-service software is where the honest answer matters, and nothing here writes a native work order except a calendar.
| Tool | How it connects | What that means |
|---|---|---|
| Google Calendar | Writes directly | Direct write. The morning slot appears on the shared route calendar. |
| Outlook Calendar | Writes directly | Direct write, same behavior. |
| ServiceTitan | Through Zapier | Through Zapier, which catches our webhook on a paid Zapier plan. The call arrives as a record your dispatcher turns into a job. ServiceTitan's Zapier app is an open beta, and you register your tenant first. |
| Housecall Pro | Through Zapier | Through Zapier, as a new customer only. Its Zapier app has no job action, so your office creates the job. |
| Jobber | Through Zapier | Through Zapier. Customer and request fields map; the visit is created by your team. Jobber offers Zapier on its Connect and Grow plans. |
| FieldEdge | Not yet | No verified path. The call is captured and someone books it manually. |
Priced per call, which matters in a cold snap
Per-minute billing punishes you exactly when your phone is busiest. A six-minute no-heat call costs you the same here as a forty-second one.
| Plan | Monthly | Calls included | After that |
|---|---|---|---|
| StarterFor a single location taking calls one line at a time. | $49 | 200 | $0.45 per call |
| ProfessionalBooking, routing and transfers included, not an add-on. | $149 | 750 | $0.35 per call |
| ScaleFor busy phones and longer opening hours. | $349 | 2,000 | $0.25 per call |
Starter runs $49 a month for 200 answered calls with 45 cents a call after that. If you're two trucks taking overflow and after-hours, you'll usually stay inside it until the season turns. A busy season pushes most companies onto Professional at $149 for 750 calls, then 35 cents.
Goodcall bills by unique caller with unlimited minutes, which genuinely beats us if your calls run very long, as of September 2026. Read both against a real week of your own call log rather than the headline price.
Where it stops and a human starts
What owners ask before forwarding the line
Can I send it only the calls we miss?
Yes, and most shops start there. Forward after five rings, keep your office answering during the day, and let GreetKeeper take your evenings, weekends and the overflow when everyone's on a call.
How does the on-call tech find out?
A text with the address, the fault as your caller described it and the slot that was booked. You choose who gets it by day of the week, so your rota stays your rota.
Will it quote a repair price?
Only the fixed numbers you give it, your after-hours callout fee or a diagnostic charge. It doesn't estimate a repair down the phone, because a wrong figure costs you more than a missed call.
Does it book straight into ServiceTitan?
Not natively. ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro and Jobber run through Zapier, and only your Google Calendar or Outlook takes a direct write. The matrix on this page says which is which.
What happens in a storm when fifty people call at once?
Calls are answered in parallel rather than queued behind one line, and every one lands as a transcript with a timestamp. You still have to staff the trucks, but you stop losing the callers who'd have hung up.
Other trades on a rota
Hear it take a no-heat call
Your callout fee, your rota rule, two minutes.