It's 9:40 on a Tuesday night in Reservoir. A hot water system has let go and there's water across the laundry floor. The homeowner searches "emergency plumber near me", taps the first number, and gets your voicemail. They don't leave a message. They tap the second number.

That job — typically worth $300 to $1,000 for an after-hours emergency call-out — just went to a competitor. And you'll never know it happened.

Voicemail is where after-hours jobs go to die

Over 70% of callers who reach a busy line or voicemail hang up without leaving a message and ring someone else. For emergency work the number is worse, because the caller has a genuine problem right now. They aren't waiting until morning for a callback.

Run the numbers for a typical Melbourne sole trader or small crew:

  • Miss just two after-hours emergency calls a week.
  • At an average of $500 per job, that's $1,000 a week in work that never reaches you.
  • Over a year, that's more than $50,000 in lost revenue — before counting the repeat and referral work those customers would have brought.

You can't answer the phone under a house, on a roof or at the dinner table. But somebody has to.

Call centres vs a flat AUD retainer

The traditional fix is an answering service or call centre. Most of them bill per minute or per call, and many are built on top of third-party voice platforms that add their own markup — often 9¢ to 12¢ a minute — before the call centre adds its margin. The busier your month, the bigger the bill. And the operator usually can't book the job: they take a message, and you still have to call back.

EchoFoyer works differently. We run the AI directly on the underlying voice platform and bundle those costs into one flat monthly retainer in Australian dollars:

  • Starter — $350 AUD/month. 24/7 after-hours and lunchtime coverage, up to 250 inbound calls a month. It's a soft cap: calls are never cut off, and if you regularly go over, we'll move you to Pro/Growth from the next billing cycle — never a surprise overage charge.
  • Pro/Growth — $500 AUD/month. Full peak-hour and after-hours coverage with unlimited inbound calls (fair use), plus deeper integrations.

Zero per-minute or per-call markups on either plan.

What the AI actually does on an emergency call

  1. Answers on the first ring, day or night, in a natural voice.
  2. Triages the job — burst pipe or dripping tap? Power out to the whole house or one circuit? — using rules you set.
  3. Books it in. Jobs go straight into Google Calendar or Outlook on both plans. Pro/Growth adds ServiceM8 sync, so the job card is waiting in your system.
  4. Sends an instant SMS and email alert with the customer's name, address, the problem and a callback number, so you can decide in seconds whether to roll out tonight.
  5. Escalates true emergencies — gas smells, sparking switchboards — straight to your mobile or to 000 guidance, based on your instructions.

The one-job payback

A $350 Starter retainer is covered by a single after-hours job. Everything the AI captures after that first job each month is margin you were previously handing to the competitor down the road. Most trades find the maths isn't close.

Try it before you decide

Call our live demo line on +61 3 4052 7962 and pretend you've got a burst pipe at 10pm — see how it triages and books you in. Want to work out your own numbers first? Use our missed-call cost breakdown, or book a free 15-minute live audit.