After-hours and lunch cover

How to set 2care to answer your evenings, weekends, lunch hour and holidays, what callers get in those hours, and how urgent calls are routed.

3 min read

What callers get

Outside your staffed hours, every call is answered on the first ring, in under 2 seconds, 24 hours a day. Callers get the same service they would get from your front desk:

Bookings. New appointments, reschedules and cancellations, written into your schedule during the call.
Answers. Opening hours, insurance accepted, what to bring, parking and directions.
Intake. New patient details captured and confirmed aloud before anything is saved.
Requests. Refill and result requests taken down and passed to the queue your team works in the morning.
Escalation. Urgent calls routed to the person you name for those hours.

Each booking is confirmed by text, so the patient has the details before they hang up.

Terms

After-hours cover. 2care answers every call outside the hours you set as open.
Lunch cover. 2care answers during a daily closure you set, such as a lunch hour.
Out-of-hours contact. The staff number or on-call service that receives urgent calls when your practice is closed.

Setting your hours

List your open hours. Give us your opening hours for each location and each day, including any lunch closure.
Add closures. Tell us about public holidays, training days and other closures ahead of time.
Choose your out-of-hours contact. Name the number that receives urgent calls when you are closed, and the hours it covers.
Set forwarding. Your phone system forwards calls to 2care outside open hours, as described in forwarding your number.
Test each period. Call in the evening, at lunch and at a weekend time, and check the agent answers and knows you are closed.

What the agent tells callers

The agent knows your hours, so it can tell a caller when you are closed and when you reopen. It still books the appointment there and then against your live schedule, so the caller has a time before they hang up.

Urgent calls out of hours

Urgent calls follow your escalation paths at every hour. Emergencies are routed to a person in 3 seconds, and clinical questions go to your nurse or provider queue in 4 seconds. Red-flag detection covers chest pain, stroke signs and severe bleeding.

The agent routes these calls and gives no clinical advice. See how urgent calls reach a person.

The morning after

When your team arrives, the overnight work is already in place:

What arrived overnight	Where it is in the morning
Bookings	In your schedule, at the right provider, visit type and location
Cancellations and reschedules	Updated in your schedule, with the freed slots open
Refill and result requests	In the queue your team works, with the details attached
Other requests for staff	In your queue, each with a transcript and summary

Questions

Can the lunch cover change by day?

Yes. Each day and each location can have its own lunch closure. Send us the pattern and we set it up.

Can we use a different greeting out of hours?

Yes. Your greeting is yours to set, and many practices mention that the office is closed while still offering to book. See customising greetings and answers.

Does after-hours cover work across time zones?

Yes. Each location's hours are set in its own local time, so a group with sites in different time zones is covered correctly at each one.

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