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On-Call

The short answer

On-call means reachable outside your stated working hours, whether or not you meant to be. It is a choice you make on purpose for a priced emergency, not a habit you fall into by answering every message the moment it arrives.

What it means

Being on-call is a deliberate arrangement: you agree, in advance, to be reachable outside your normal hours for a defined kind of call, usually at a stated emergency price. That is different from simply answering a message at 9pm because it arrived at 9pm — the second one is not a policy, it is just the hours you have quietly trained clients to expect.

A cover arrangement is one specific form of being on-call: another trade standing in for you while you are away. Being on-call the rest of the time is a choice about your own ordinary week, not just about a single break.

For example

An electrician states normal hours of 8 to 5, and separately states that they are on-call for a genuine emergency at a fixed call-out premium. A client outside those hours knows exactly which of the two situations they are in before they call.

The mistake to avoid

Being on-call by accident — answering every late message without ever deciding to — which trains clients to treat your evenings as ordinary hours, with none of the emergency premium a real on-call arrangement would carry.

See also

Cover ArrangementResponse TimeOut-of-Hours Rate

Where this shows up

Guide

Working hours and boundaries — the hours you answer are the promise

A client cannot see your diary. They read your hours from when you actually answer, not from what you post. Set the hours you work and the hours you answer as two different windows, say both in the three places a client looks, price a genuine emergency in advance, and hold the line the first time it is inconvenient.

 Free tool

Working hours check

Type in the hours you intend to work, the hours you actually answer, and the admin hours outside both, and see the gap between the week you meant to run and the week you are actually running — plus what each one pays per hour.

 Templates

Working hours scripts, for saying when you answer

Six messages for setting the hours you work and the hours you answer as two separate things — the quote or booking-confirmation line, the voicemail message, the next-morning reply to a late message, a note to a client who always calls late, offering or declining a priced emergency route, and resetting the expectation with a client you have been answering at all hours — fill in your details once at the top of this page and every script below rewrites itself.

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