Missed calls at 02:00 on a locksmith van
Quick summary
- You are already at a door at 02:00. The colleague, if you have one, is cutting keys. That is when the van number rings.
- A person on a landing hangs up. So does the person who said a child is inside.
- The voicemail holds cylinder changes. The night lockout leaves nothing.
- The first split is someone inside, empty flat, or a booked visit. A lockout is a note and a ring to you.
- On Saturday night several landings ring at once. It answers every line at once.
- It never describes how to open a lock. It never invents how long you will be. ID is announced on the first call.
TL;DR
You are already at a door. The published number rings. The person on another landing will not leave a message. The person who said a child is inside will not leave one either. They open Google and dial the next locksmith. An assistant answers, asks who is behind the door, takes the address, and puts a night lockout on your phone. It does not describe how to open the lock. It says ID will be checked at the door. On Saturday night it takes several conversations at once.
Key takeaways
- Pull unanswered calls by hour from the provider, and mark Saturday nights and holiday weekends on their own.
- Do not judge the loss by the voicemail. A night lockout leaves nothing.
- Forward after a short ring so a free hand still takes the call. Shorten that after midnight.
- Tag lockout and cylinder separately. A child inside is not a key-cutting hour.
- Give it the sentence: it never describes how to open a lock, not even a hint.
- Re-count unanswered calls after four weeks. If Saturday nights have not dropped, the ring-time is wrong, not the greeting.
Already at a door, and the van number still ringing
This door is not finished. The published number rings. You cannot leave the landing. There is no second pair of hands in the van.
You let it go. A few seconds later the number is gone.
This happens in the hours Google says open. The listing says 24 hours, if that is what you run. The person calling already has two other names on the same screen. They wanted an answer. They hang up and dial that number.
You know which doors you opened tonight. The number you usually do not have is how many people tried to reach the van and could not. That number is in the provider’s log. Pull it. Mark the Saturday nights. Mark the holiday weekends.
Those nights are the ones you believe you are on the tools and busy. One pair of hands at a door. The number on the van is ringing. Nobody is free for a landing, and nobody is free for a child-inside flag.
Who hangs up
Three things happen when nobody picks up. They do not cost the same.
Someone whose cylinder is already in the book will often leave a message. They want to move Thursday. They want two extra keys. They will still be there in the morning. 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 on a landing at 02:00 will not leave a message. Someone who said a child is inside will not. A tourist 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 last Saturday, or whose search showed you never pick up after midnight, never rings again. That one is not in the log either.
The people who hang up are usually calling about a lockout. What they needed first was an answer. How long you will be is what you say when you know the street. Opening advice is not what they get from this phone.
Why the voicemail hides the landing
On a Saturday night you get two jobs on the same phone. When you open the voicemail at dawn 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 the cylinder anyway. The person on the landing has neither. They cannot quote a job number they have never been given. They cannot wait, because they are in the stair hall in the middle of the night.
So you finish the door, you open the voicemail, and you hear extra keys. You do not hear the fourth floor on Panormou. You do not hear the dog they said was inside. Those people never spoke into the box.
The calls also arrive together. Saturday night is not one missed call an hour. It is five in twenty minutes, and both hands are already at a door. A second person in the van takes the first two. The third still hears a busy tone.
A caller rings about a lockout and also wants the cylinder changed afterwards. That is a lockout note and a visit. If the note says only “Mr Giorgos, question”, both wait, and the cylinder half is the one that will go to another van in the morning — if they still ring.
Child inside, dog inside, night lockout: those cannot wait in the dawn list. They also cannot be finished by an assistant inventing opening advice to keep the caller on the line. Take the address. Flag a phone. Say ID at the door.
Saturday night, holiday weekend, Tuesday keys
These are not the same overflow. If you teach the assistant one generic “busy” label, it will treat a child-inside call like extra keys.
Saturday night is lockouts. By midnight, people have started ringing. You are already at the first door. The pad is already a list of streets. A lockout in that hour is a note and a ring to you. A cylinder in the same hour is a visit or a callback. If the assistant parks a child-inside call behind a key-cutting enquiry, the next van is already on that landing.
A holiday weekend is a larger version of the same hour. Tourist flats. Common doors after the intercom died. Tag them separately. The lockout is the address and who is inside. The cylinder is a visit with ID.
Tuesday is extra keys and shutter locks. The overflow is smaller. Do not set the Saturday night ring-time from a Tuesday.
August needs its own dates. Some of you close the day book and keep the night. The published number still rings. Set the closure dates. Do not let the assistant book a cylinder into a week when the van is on the island.
Lockout is a note. A cylinder is a visit.
The first question on the overflow is not when they are free. The first question is who is behind the door.
Someone inside. Child, dog, another person. Flag. Transfer. Address. ID announced. No opening advice.
Empty flat. Still a lockout. Still a ring at night. Still ID. Different flag.
Cylinder, extra keys, shutter, common door with the manager. These wait for the book. The assistant checks the hour. It does not quote from a photo of a door. It does not describe how a cylinder comes out.
A night lockout is not a Thursday hour. Mark them as different, or the overflow will fill the morning with people who only needed keys, while the person who needed you at 02:00 is already on another van’s pad.
Calls that cannot wait until you finish this door
Four calls on this phone do not belong in a digest you read at dawn.
A child is inside. Transfer. Name, number, address, while it is connecting. No method.
A dog is inside, they can hear it. Same transfer.
They are on the landing now, empty or not, and it is after midnight. Ring you. Do not invent twenty minutes. Do not describe an opening.
They refuse ID. Note it. Flag you. Do not argue a method as a substitute.
Everything else can wait for the transcript: extra keys for next week, a shutter, a garage remote, a common-door change the manager asked for on Friday.
What the assistant must do on the overflow
Answer. Nobody picked up. That is the loss.
Every answered call should already know the split: someone inside, empty, or a booked visit; address; ID announced; ordinary note or same-day flag.
It does not give opening advice. “How do I get it open?”, “the neighbour said try this”, “talk me through it” are written down and refused. The locksmith will come. ID at the door.
It books a cylinder you can actually keep, or it writes the request down. It checks the book before it offers a time. It never offers a key-cutting hour as a substitute for a night lockout. It confirms by SMS, in the language of the call — 70+ languages — always with the ID line.
It does not invent an arrival or a cylinder price. Child inside, dog inside, night lockout remain a flag to a phone.
What you set first
- Pull the call log first. Unanswered calls per hour and per night, a month back, with Saturday nights marked.
- Forward on no-answer, not always. A short ring in the day. Shorter after midnight. A call you pick up never leaves the van. See pricing.
- Whether you take night work. A van that is closed after 23:00 should say so on the first call, not after a promise.
- Require the inside-or-empty question on every lockout, then the address, then ID.
- Tag lockout-inside, lockout-empty, cylinder, keys, common door.
- Route child inside, dog inside and night lockout to a phone, not into an email digest.
- Enter the two kinds of visit. A cylinder or keys that need an hour, and a lockout that rings you.
- Re-pull the call log after four weeks and compare unanswered calls, not “calls the assistant handled”.
A quiet Tuesday is not the test
A Tuesday at noon is useful for checking that the greeting is right and that the assistant asks who is behind the door. It will not tell you whether you are still losing the landing at 02:00.
Saturday night is where the new job leak hides, because that is when you believe you are on the tools. Set the forwarding rule so the night is covered. If daytime goes to zero unanswered and Saturday nights do not, you have a ring-time problem on the burst, not a greeting problem.
Do not put a method in the notes. It will be read out.
How to read the provider’s log
Do this once, on paper, before you change the forwarding rule. Pull one Saturday night and read it against the pad. Count three things.
Count the unanswered rings after midnight, when you are already at a door.
Count the messages that came from people you already know. Those are the extra keys. They will still be there in the morning.
Count the numbers that appear once, for a few seconds, and never again. A lockout, a tourist, a child-inside call: all of those look the same when they hang up. The next Saturday, if the assistant took the overflow, those lines have a transcript and a lockout note.
The log will also show a number that rang four times in six minutes. That is usually someone still on the landing, or a child inside. Send it to a phone.
After you have those three counts, look at the forwarding delay after midnight. A short ring is right when you can pick up. It is too long at 02:00, when the fourth landing is already gone.
What changes after it answers
A person who would have hung up now has a lockout note with an address, or a cylinder on a time that is free, or your phone ringing because a child is inside.
It does not describe how to open the door. It does not invent how long you will be. Someone inside and empty flat are labels on the note. They are not a method.
It does not replace the call-out. A landing still needs you at the door. The difference is that you now call back a number written down at 02:14, instead of discovering at dawn that someone rang and said “lock”.
Finish a child-inside request first. Treat an empty lockout as a night note. A cylinder is a visit with ID. Extra keys are a short hour at the bench.
The value of a night job is yours to put in. A van that lives on lockouts and a van that lives on cylinders are not the same business. Put your own figure in.
Whoever takes the night lockout often takes the cylinder on Thursday. That is why a missed 02:00 call is not only a missed hour.
AI receptionist, in-house staff, or a call centre
| CITT | In-house | Call centre | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Answers at 02:00 while you are already at a door | Always | Only between jobs | Yes |
| Several lockouts on a Saturday night | Every line at once | One, then a busy tone | Depends who was rostered |
| First split | Someone inside, empty, or a booked visit | Yes, if they heard the start | Often jumps to what time |
| Opening advice on the overflow | Never — puts that call on your phone | Not on a recorded line | Must not; a script sometimes drifts |
| Invents an arrival | Never | Sometimes, to get off the call | Risk, if the sheet wants a time |
| Available at 02:14 | Yes | No, if already at a door | At a surcharge |
| Speaks the caller's language | 70+ languages | One or two | Whoever is on that shift |
What Saturday's voicemail hid from a one-van locksmith
Worked from these assumptions — change any of them and the answer changes:
- One van, a Saturday night, roughly 22 inbound calls between 22:00 and 04:00.
- About a third arrive while you are already at a door.
- Someone reaches 3 of those overflow calls. The other 5 ring out.
- Of the 5, 1 leaves a message about extra keys. 4 leave nothing.
- A night lockout that stays is worth about €160 — put your own figure in.
- This example treats 3 of those 4 silent calls as lockouts that then went to the next name on Google.
- The voicemail at dawn shows 1 person. That is the number the van believes.
- The provider's log shows 5 unanswered. The other 4 never left a word.
- 3 of those 4 were lockouts. 3 × €160 = €480 of first work, that night.
- Saturday nights, over a 46-week year — this example counts 36 such nights if you take them.
About €17,280 a year, from the same unanswered night — 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 the van is actually missing?
Ask the telephony provider for unanswered calls by hour and by night, before you buy anything, including this. Mark Saturday nights and holiday weekends on that list. Then open the voicemail for the same nights. The numbers that rang for a few seconds and left nothing are the landings.
Would another person in the van not solve this?
The calls do not arrive evenly. One person takes the first door. The second still hears a busy tone if you are both on the same landing. Adding a person changes how many can pick up by one. It does not change a Saturday night, when five lockouts ring in the same twenty minutes.
Does voicemail not catch them?
It catches the jobs you already have. Someone whose cylinder is already in the book will often leave a message. Someone on a landing at 02:00, and someone who said a child is inside, will not. They hang up and dial the next locksmith. So the voicemail under-reports the calls that open a night job.
What happens to the calls we do answer?
They stay on the van number. 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 how to open the door while I am at another one?
It must not. It does not describe any method, tool, or other opening. It puts the lockout on a phone you hold. A recorded opening sentence is yours even if you never said it.
How quickly can we tell whether it worked?
Four weeks, with the same call log you pulled at the start, split by Saturday nights, weekday days, and the rest. The measure is unanswered calls, not calls the assistant handled. A figure that only counts what the assistant did cannot tell you whether a landing is still ringing out while you are at another door.
