Urgent or routine: a call list your office approves

The decision to make first

Write down, per trade, the situations your company treats as urgent: for example no heat during a cold spell, water coming through a ceiling, or a garage door stuck open at night. Everything else is routine.

Separate urgent from dangerous

A gas smell, sparks, smoke or water near electrics is not a booking. Your approved wording should tell the caller to get to safety and contact the emergency services or their utility first. Ava does not give repair or safety instructions.

Suggested wording to approve

Example wording: “That sounds urgent. I’m sending this to the technician on call now. If anyone is in danger, please leave the property and call the emergency services.”

Test the difficult case

Call as someone who describes an urgent problem in unusual words. If the request goes to the routine queue, add the phrase to the list or route uncertain cases to a person.

Worked example

Fictional example: a caller says the furnace has stopped and it is very cold. The approved list marks this as urgent for heating, so the request goes to the on-call technician first and the office backup second, with the caller told that a person will call back.

Review it in operation

Each week, compare urgent requests with what the technician found. Adjust the list with your team; never let the assistant widen it on its own.

Check before you launch

• List urgent situations per trade.
• Keep danger wording separate from booking.
• Test unusual phrasing.
• Review the list weekly with your team.

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