Missed calls on a cooling van in a heatwave
Quick summary
- You are on a balcony. Both hands are in a split unit. That is when the published number rings.
- A person in a hot flat hangs up. So does the hotel that needs three units before Saturday.
- The voicemail holds annual services. The heatwave breakdown and the new indoor unit leave nothing.
- The first split is breakdown or service. A breakdown is an address. A service is a window in the book.
- After a heatwave, several people ring at once. It answers every line at once.
- It never tells them to add gas or how to open the unit. The technician looks at the split.
TL;DR
You are on a balcony with a split unit open. The phone rings. The person in a hot flat will not leave a message. Neither will the hotel that needs three corridor units before Saturday. They hang up and dial the next van. An assistant answers, asks breakdown or service, takes the address, and books a visit only if that hour is free. It does not tell them to add gas. It does not talk them through a repair. After a heatwave, it takes several conversations at once.
Key takeaways
- Pull unanswered calls by hour from the provider, and mark heatwave mornings on their own.
- Do not judge the loss by the voicemail. A breakdown and a new indoor unit leave nothing.
- Forward after a short ring so a free pair of hands still takes the call. Shorten that in a heatwave.
- Tag breakdown and service separately. A hot flat is not an annual clean.
- Give it the sentence: the technician will look at the unit. No gas advice, no repair steps.
- Re-count unanswered calls after four weeks. If August mornings have not dropped, the ring-time is wrong, not the greeting.
On a balcony, and the phone still ringing
The outdoor unit is open. The sun is on the wall. Both gloves are on the copper. The published number rings. You cannot let go. There is no desk. The person who would have answered is you.
You let it go. A few seconds later the number is gone.
This happens in the hours the listing says open. The van says open. The card on the fridge says open. The person calling already has the next cooling number in the same search. They wanted an address taken. They hang up and dial.
You know which units you opened this morning. The number you usually do not have is how many people tried to reach you and could not. That number is in the provider’s log. Pull it. Mark the heatwave mornings. Mark the Sunday the hotel plant died.
Those mornings are the ones you believe you are working and busy. Hands in a split. The number on the van is ringing. Nobody is free for a hot flat, and nobody is free for three corridor units before Saturday.
Who hangs up
Three things happen when nobody picks up. They do not cost the same.
Someone whose annual service is already in the book will often leave a message. They want Thursday moved. They will still be there this afternoon. These are the voices you hear when you open the voicemail, so these are the voices that shape what you think the problem is.
Someone in a hot flat will not leave a message. Someone who wanted a new indoor unit this week will not. A tenant who asked whether you work in English and heard a busy tone will not. They hang up. The provider’s log has a short ring. Your voicemail has nothing.
Someone who already tried twice after last week’s heatwave, or whose neighbour told them you never pick up in August, never rings again. That one is not in the log either.
The people who hang up are usually calling about a breakdown today, or a new install. Those are two different jobs. What they needed first was an answer. The gas, if any, is what you say when you have seen the unit.
Why the voicemail hides the job
On a heatwave morning you get two jobs on the same phone. When you open the voicemail you hear the wrong one.
The existing client has a visit in the book and a reason to persist. They leave a message, or they wait for Thursday. The person in the hot flat, and the person who wanted a new indoor unit, have neither. They cannot quote a job number they have never been given. They cannot wait, because the room is forty degrees. The next van is one search away.
So you finish the balcony, you open the voicemail, and you hear an annual service. You do not hear Kypseli. You do not hear the hotel. Those people never spoke into the box.
The calls also arrive together. A heatwave is not one missed call an hour. It is five in twenty minutes, and both hands are already in a unit. A second person on the van takes the first two. The third still hears a busy tone.
A caller rings about warm air and also wants a new split in the living room. That is a breakdown note and a visit. If the note says only “Mr Kostas, question”, both wait, and the install half is the one that will go to another van.
Warm air, water on the floor, ice on the pipes, a hotel plant before Saturday: those cannot wait in the evening list. They also cannot be finished by an assistant inventing a gas sentence to keep the caller on the line. Take the address. Flag a phone. Say the technician will look at the unit.
Heatwave, Sunday, and a hotel afternoon
These are not the same overflow. If you teach the assistant one generic “busy morning” label, it will treat a hot flat like an annual clean.
Heatwave is warm air. By eight, people have started ringing. You are already on a balcony about the first two. The pad is already a list of streets. A breakdown in that hour is an address. A service call in the same hour is a window or a callback. If the assistant parks the person who wants a new indoor unit behind the tenth warm-air report, that person rings the next van.
Sunday is a smaller version of the same hour, with fewer hands. The hotel plant dies before check-in. They will not leave a message. Shorten the ring-time before forwarding on those mornings. The third caller should not hear a busy tone.
A hotel afternoon is three corridor units and a manager who will not wait. Tag them as a visit, not as a lecture on filters. You look at the plant. The assistant does not.
This is not an electrician’s overflow. A dead board in January is someone else’s van. Do not let the assistant keep that caller on the line while the hot flat hangs up.
Breakdown is an address. A service is a window.
The first question on the overflow is not when they are free. The first question is breakdown or service.
Breakdown. Something already failed. Warm air, water, ice, no cold. The assistant asks for the address, the floor, indoor or outdoor, what they can see, then a name and a number. It writes that down. It does not open a gas question. It does not talk them through a filter. If you have marked heatwave jobs as a ring to the van, it rings you.
Service. Annual clean, three wall units before August, a new indoor unit, a hotel corridor. The assistant asks which of those they mean, then looks at the book. It does not invent a price from a description of a flat. It does not invent when you will arrive.
A ten-minute look at a remote is not a heatwave call-out. A new install is not an annual clean. Mark them as different visits, or the overflow will fill Thursday with people who only needed a remote, and the person who needed a half-day will be given twenty minutes on a balcony.
People remember the street. They do not remember the model. Ask for the address first. Indoor or outdoor. One identifier is enough. None is still a note, not a guess at gas.
Calls that cannot wait until you come off the roof
Four calls on this phone do not belong in a digest you read after the unit is closed.
Warm air in a heatwave, water on the floor, a hotel plant before Saturday, ice on the pipes. Take the address. Ring the van if you marked that. Do not give repair steps to fill the waiting.
A dark flat, a dead board, a smell of burning. That is not you. Say so. Send them on if you have a name. Do not book a fuse onto a refrigeration van.
Everything else can wait for the transcript: an annual service for next week, a new indoor unit that can look on Thursday, a move because they will not be in.
What the assistant must do on the overflow
Answer. Nobody picked up. That is the loss.
Every answered call should already know the split: breakdown or service; address; ordinary visit or same-day flag. No gas. No buttons. No “twenty minutes”.
It books a window the book can honour, or it writes the request down. It confirms by SMS, in the language of the call — 70+ languages.
It does not diagnose. Capacitor, leak, neighbour’s unit — written down as what they said, not as what is true.
What you set first
- Pull the call log first. Unanswered calls per hour, heatwave mornings marked.
- Forward on no-answer, not always. Shorter in a heatwave. See pricing.
- What you take. Cooling, not electrical.
- Require breakdown or service, then the address.
- The two refusals. No gas advice. No repair steps.
- Route heatwave and hotel plant to a phone, not into an evening digest.
- Re-pull the log after four weeks and compare unanswered calls, not “calls the assistant handled”.
A quiet Tuesday in March is not the test. August is. Set the forwarding rule so the burst is covered.
Rates live on the pricing section of the home page. They are not repeated here.
AI receptionist, in-house staff, or a call centre
| CITT | In-house | Call centre | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Answers while you are on a balcony | Always | Only if they can let go | Yes |
| Several callers in a heatwave | Every line at once | One, then a busy tone | Depends who was rostered |
| First split | Breakdown or service, then the address | Yes, if they heard the start | Often jumps to what time |
| Tells them to add gas on the overflow | Never — takes the address | Not on the first call either | Must not; sometimes does |
| Talks them through a repair | Never | Looks at the unit | Risk, if the script wants to help |
| Available on a Sunday when the plant dies | Yes, with the hours you wrote | If they can let go | At a surcharge |
| Speaks the caller's language | 70+ languages | One or two | Whoever is on that shift |
What an August-morning voicemail hid on a one-van cooling trade
Worked from these assumptions — change any of them and the answer changes:
- One van, an August weekday. You are on a balcony for a long stretch of the morning.
- About 14 inbound calls. Four arrive while both hands are in a unit. You reach 1 of those 4.
- Of the 3 that ring out, 1 leaves a message about an annual service. 2 leave nothing.
- A booked half-day that becomes work is worth about €180 here — put your own figure in first.
- A heatwave call-out, before parts, is about €70 here. Replace that with what you actually charge to walk in.
- This example treats 1 of the 2 silent calls as a breakdown that went to the next van, and 1 as a service that never came back.
- The voicemail after lunch shows 1 person. That is the number the van believes.
- The provider's log shows 3 unanswered. The other 2 never left a word.
- 1 breakdown and 1 service. €70 + €180 = €250 that morning.
- A morning like that once a week, 12 summer weeks — 12 × €250.
About €3,000 a summer, from the same August window repeating — and only if you accept the conversion above. Change it.
What it costs
CITT is pay as you go: no packages, no minimum, no contract. The current rates — the monthly fee per number and the per-minute rate — are on the pricing section of the home page, which is the only place they are published.
Frequently asked questions
How do I find out how many calls we are actually missing?
Ask the telephony provider for unanswered calls by hour and by day, before you buy anything, including this. Mark heatwave mornings and any Sunday the hotel plant died. Then open the voicemail for the same days. The numbers that rang for a few seconds and left nothing are the hot flat and the new indoor unit.
Would another person on the van not solve this?
The calls do not arrive evenly. One pair of hands takes the unit in front of you. The second still hears a busy tone if you are on a roof. Adding a person changes how many can pick up by one. It does not change a heatwave morning, when five warm-air calls ring in the same twenty minutes.
Does voicemail not catch them?
It catches the files you already have. Someone whose annual service is already in the book will often leave a message. Someone in a hot flat, and someone who wanted a new indoor unit this week, will not. They hang up and dial the next van. So the voicemail under-reports the calls that open a job.
What happens to the calls we do answer?
They stay on the van. The forwarding rule only sends a call onward when it has rung unanswered for the number of seconds you choose. A call you pick up is never forwarded. See [pricing](/en/#pricing) for how that is treated.
Can it tell them to add gas so they stop ringing?
It must not. It takes the address, what they can see, and a number. Whether anything needs refrigerant is a decision after you have seen the unit. The assistant does not answer a gas question to sound helpful, and it does not talk them through a repair.
How quickly can we tell whether it worked?
Four weeks, with the same call log you pulled at the start, split by heatwave mornings, Sundays, and the rest. The measure is unanswered calls, not calls the assistant handled.
