Do I need a new phone number for an AI answering service?

No. FireDeck provisions a number for you, but it is only the forwarding destination — your customers keep dialing the business line they already have. You set call forwarding on your carrier, then press Test forwarding to confirm it works.

Will callers know they are talking to an AI?

Yes. Recording is locked on, so every call opens with your spoken consent notice, and if a caller asks whether they are talking to a robot, an AI, or a real person, the assistant always answers truthfully that it is an automated assistant. A separate AI-identity announcement can be turned on under Answering & AI, Disclosures, Disclosure Settings.

What happens if someone calls after hours with a real emergency?

For a life-threatening emergency the assistant tells the caller to hang up and dial 911. For anything else urgent it works down your Escalation Chain, reaching each on-call contact by phone, text, or email for the ring timeout you set. If nobody acknowledges, FireDeck raises an urgent message and notifies the shop, and a caller still on the line is told the on-call team could not be reached rather than being hung up on.

Can the answering service transfer calls to my cell phone?

Yes. A transfer rule can point at any number you type in, including a cell. To pick a teammate from the dropdown instead, turn on their Reachable switch on Settings, Team — a phone number on file is not enough by itself.

What happens if we go over the minutes included in our plan?

The Usage tab shows minutes and text messages used against what your plan includes, and anything past that bills at the per-unit rate printed on the page. Text messages come out of one pool shared with the field app.

AI Answering Service

The Answering Service is an AI receptionist for your shop line. It answers, greets the caller, screens spam, warm-transfers to the right person, escalates emergencies to your on-call chain, takes messages, and can open a draft work order from the call.

The Answering Service is a paid module. When your shop has it, it appears in the sidebar under Answering & AI → Answering Service, with tabs for Calls, Messages, Callers, Usage, and Settings.

Get the service running

The Phone & Forwarding settings page shows a Setup checklist that tracks the six steps below and links to each one.

Go to Answering & AI → Answering Service → Settings → Phone & Forwarding.
Enter a 3-digit Preferred area code and click Provision number. Callers keep dialing your existing business line — this number is the forwarding destination.
Pick Your phone carrier. The page then shows the star codes for turning forwarding on and off, matched to your coverage mode.
Set up forwarding on your carrier, call your business line from another phone, and press Test forwarding. The badge next to it flips to verified when it works.
Set your greeting, add an on-call contact, and add a notification email or text number (see below).
On the Greeting page, turn on Answering service enabled.

Release number at the bottom of the page gives the number back.

Greeting and voice

On Settings → Greeting, write the Greeting the assistant opens with. Let the AI write the greeting composes a fresh opening each call instead of reading a fixed line, and Greet returning callers by name uses a recognized caller's saved name. Because call recording is locked on and the consent notice must be spoken verbatim, the AI-written greeting is suppressed and your written greeting is used. Four starter buttons — Apply starter template, Fire alarm, Extinguishers, Fire systems — fill empty settings with sensible defaults.

Settings → Voice lists the available voices with a play button for each sample; the choice applies on the next call. Settings → Languages controls which languages the assistant speaks and which it opens with.

Hours and coverage

On Settings → Hours & Coverage, choose when the assistant answers: All calls, After hours only, or Overflow (when you don't pick up). Your Timezone and Business hours are shop-wide settings shared with Shop Info; each day can take a second window for split shifts. See Shop and team settings.

Routing and escalation

Settings → Transfer & Routing holds your rules. Each rule has a Label, comma-separated Matches topics (for example quote, pricing, estimate), and a Transfer to number; a rule with no number is dropped when you save. The Teammate picker only lists people marked Reachable on the Team page — a phone number on file is not enough. Message recipients on a rule decides who gets the message if the transfer never completes.

Under When no rule matches, pick Take a message for a callback, Connect to the main line, or Ask the caller — the last two need a reception number. Connect the caller after a work order transfers the caller to a teammate once a work order is taken, during business hours only; the person answering hears a short summary first.

Settings → Escalation Chain is the emergency path. Add contacts with a name, phone, a How channel (phone call, text, or email), and a Ring timeout in seconds, then drag to reorder. The assistant works down the list until someone answers.

Spam, notifications, and disclosures

Settings → Spam Screening has Screen unknown callers, Block known spam, and Blocked keywords. You can also press Mark as spam on any call, or Block caller on a caller's page.

Settings → Notifications turns individual alerts on or off — emergency, new message, new work order, work order approved, call transferred, plus the noisier every-call and spam-blocked alerts — and sets the email addresses and text numbers they go to.

Recording is locked on. The spoken consent notice, the AI-identity announcement, express-consent mode, and recording retention live under Answering & AI → Disclosures → Disclosure Settings, which is owner/admin only and requires accepting a responsibility disclaimer first. Every disclosure event is recorded in Disclosure Logs.

Review what happened

Calls lists every call with outcome tabs, search, a date range, and a spam-only toggle; owners and admins can switch between All calls and My calls. Opening a call shows the recording, the AI summary, any messages taken, the escalation timeline, and the full transcript.

Messages groups messages by status (New, Read, Actioned, Archived); change a status from the dropdown on its row. Callers is the caller directory — open one to edit its display name, preferred language, and notes, or to block it.

When a caller who isn't already a billing customer asks for work, the assistant saves them as a lead with a note about what they wanted, and repeat calls roll into the same lead. Find them under Billing → Invoicing → Leads. Draft work orders taken on calls are reviewed under Work Orders.

Usage shows voice minutes and text messages for the month against what your plan includes, with the per-unit rate for anything over. Texts are a shared pool with the field app.