No heat is an emergency. A dripping tap is not.
Everything expensive about your maintenance sits in the gap between those two sentences. This is about writing your definition down so everyone applies it the same way, every time.
Caller
“The radiators have been cold since this morning and the boiler's showing a code. It's supposed to go below freezing tonight and I've got a baby here.”
What happened next
- Matched rule 2: no heating, outdoor temperature below the threshold, occupied
- Escalated to same-night dispatch rather than the morning queue
- Recorded the boiler code and the household detail the tenant volunteered
- Transcript marked which rule fired and at what time, for the file
Six people apply one rule six ways
You almost certainly have an emergency definition already. It lives in your management agreement, and it gets applied inconsistently, because it gets applied by whoever is awake.
At 3am your definition drifts. Your tired on-call person sends a contractor to a blocked toilet because the tenant was insistent, then leaves a genuine no-heat call until morning because it sounded calm. Both mistakes cost you money, and one of them costs you a habitability argument.
Then there's your tenant's side of it. A resident you tell at 9pm to wait until Monday needs to hear why, in terms matching what you told them last time and what you told their neighbor. Inconsistency is what turns your maintenance delay into a complaint.
GreetKeeper applies the rules you wrote, in the order you wrote them, and your transcript records which rule matched. That last part is what lets you audit your definition rather than merely file it.
The definition, written so a rule can match it
Vague words are what break your rules at 3am. Habitability and urgent mean nothing to a matcher; a temperature, a containment test and a time window do.
| Vague version | Testable version | Why it works |
|---|---|---|
| Serious leak | Water the tenant cannot stop, or water reaching another unit | The tenant can answer it, which is the only test that matters on a call |
| Loss of heat | No heat with an outdoor low below your stated temperature | Removes the argument about whether October counts |
| Electrical problem | Total loss of power, burning smell, or exposed conductor | Separates a dead socket from something about to catch |
| Security issue | An entry door, window or lock that will not secure | Rules in a broken street door, rules out a sticky handle |
| Sewage | Backup with no second working bathroom in the unit | The second bathroom is the difference between tonight and Monday |
| Appliance failure | Refrigeration failure where the landlord supplies the appliance | Food loss is real; a broken oven is not an emergency |
| Anything a tenant calls urgent | Not a rule. Logged, with a reason given | Urgency is a feeling. The rule has to be a fact. |
How a rule gets matched on a live call
The sequence matters to you. A frightened caller leads with the wrong detail, so the questions run in the order that resolves your rule fastest.
Ask the containment question first
Can you stop it, and is it reaching anywhere else. One question settles the water rules and it's the question a tenant can actually answer standing in a hallway.
Test the threshold, do not judge it
It asks the facts the rule needs: is there any heat at all, is there a second bathroom, does the door lock. It doesn't weigh how bad the situation sounds, which is precisely what drifts at 3am.
Say the outcome out loud, with the reason
A caller who waits until Monday hears your wording for why, including your response window. That sentence being identical every time is most of what stops a complaint.
Record which rule fired
The transcript notes the match and the time. When an owner or an attorney asks why a contractor was or wasn't sent on the night of the fourteenth, you have the answer rather than somebody's memory.
The cost of getting the definition wrong
Both directions cost you. An unnecessary night dispatch burns a premium callout on a fault that could have waited; a missed genuine emergency costs you the repair, the damage below it and sometimes a habitability claim. Consistency is cheaper than either.
The plans are $49 a month for 200 answered calls at 45 cents after, $149 for 750 at 35 cents, and $349 for 2,000 at 25 cents. Booking and routing are on all three rather than behind the higher tiers.
A rule is only as good as the person who wrote it
What comes up when a portfolio writes its rules down
What happens when a call doesn't match any rule?
It escalates to a person rather than deciding. That default is deliberate, and we'd recommend you keep it: the cost of an unnecessary escalation is one phone call, and the cost of a wrong no is a flooded unit.
Can the rules differ by building?
Yes. A property with a shared boiler, a building with elderly residents and a block of studios all justify different thresholds, and the rules are held per building rather than once for the portfolio.
Does the tenant get told which rule applied?
They're told the outcome and your reason for it, in the wording you wrote. The rule number is for your record, not for the caller, because a tenant wants an explanation rather than a citation.
Will it argue with a tenant who insists it's urgent?
No, and it shouldn't. It repeats your wording once, logs the call as urgent from the tenant's point of view, and routes it to a person if your escalation setting says to. Arguing at 3am is not a feature.
How do we know it applied the rules correctly?
Read the transcripts for your first two weeks against your own list. That's the only honest verification, and it's also how you'll find the two rules you wrote ambiguously.
Hear it match a no-heat call
Your thresholds, your wording, two minutes.