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Getting started
Getting Started is the topic to read before you forward anything. It walks the five things every new account does, in order: create your account and verify your email, meet your agent (the default name is Riley, and you choose the name, the greeting and the voice), add your business facts, make a test call, and forward your line. The business-facts step matters most, because the agent answers only from what you wrote there: your service fee, your service area, your hours, whether you charge more on Sundays, whether you do water heaters. The test-call article shows what to listen for and what should appear in the portal about a minute later. The forwarding article explains conditional versus unconditional forwarding and why we recommend starting with after-hours or overflow calls only. Read this topic first: your own test call is what switches the number on, and it does not count against your 3-day or 150-minute trial allowance.
3 articlesCall handling
Call Handling covers what the agent says and why. Start with the article on what the agent says, which walks a routine call line by line: the opening sentence that says the call is answered by an automated assistant (and may be recorded, when recording is on), the greeting, the questions it asks in order (name, address, then two questions about the problem), the phone number it gets before booking, the read-back, and the close. The next article explains how a call becomes an emergency: the agent matches the caller's words against the keyword list you wrote, and a gas smell, smoke, fire or a CO alarm always gets leave the building and call 911 before anything else. You will also find what happens when a caller asks whether they are talking to a person (it says it is your automated assistant and offers a callback), what it does with a question it cannot answer from your business facts, and how spam screening works: when it is on, robocalls and telemarketers are hung up on, and a screened robocall counts as one minute.
3 articlesScheduling
Scheduling is about the board the agent books into and the rules around it. It covers arrival windows (why the agent offers a window such as 2 to 4 rather than an exact time, and how wide to make windows for your trade), business hours (which also decide when a call counts as after hours), service areas (how the agent uses the address to decide whether it can book at all), and the board itself: how to read it and how a change you make there shapes what the agent offers on the next call. Nothing is held back for emergencies; an emergency follows the emergency action you chose: book and alert, transfer, or take a message.
1 articleIntegrations
Integrations is the honest status page for everything that connects to DispatchLine. What works today: forwarding your business line from your carrier or VoIP system, the appointments board in the portal, a CSV export of your call history, and the weekly report email every Monday. What is in development: Google Calendar sync, so a booking the agent makes appears on the calendar your crew already looks at, webhooks and an API for sending each call or booking to a system of your own, and a Jobber connection. What is planned: Housecall Pro and ServiceTitan. The articles here say which of those states each connection is in and what in development means for you, which is that you should not forward your line expecting it. Read the forwarding article first, because it is the only connection you need to start; the rest describe how to get by until the sync you want arrives, usually by working from the appointments board.
1 articleBilling
Billing answers the money questions in the order owners ask them. How minutes are counted: live minutes on calls the agent answers, with a screened robocall counting as one minute. The free trial: 3 days and 150 live minutes, with your card on file and nothing charged until day 4; canceling during it ends the trial at once and the agent stops answering. What each plan costs and what it includes: the plans article lists each price, and the pricing page compares the plans. Invoices: month to month, with renewal canceled any month from the billing page. The first-month guarantee is covered by the refund policy, which this topic links to rather than restates.
1 articleCompliance
Compliance covers the rules that touch a recorded, texted, booked phone call. Call recording: the agent announces at the start of every call that it may be recorded whenever recording is on, and that announcement cannot be switched off separately, though recording can be turned off entirely in the portal. The state-by-state article explains why the announcement is there: some states require consent from everyone on the line and most require consent from one party, and a business that takes calls from across a state line has to plan for the stricter rule. Texting: the TCPA rules on consent, the STOP instruction every text carries, why the agent asks permission before texting in words the caller can refuse, and the toll-free verification the shared messaging number needed, and has passed, before any account could text. Data: where recordings, transcripts and summaries are stored, who on your team can see them, and how to request deletion. Read the recording article first if you serve more than one state.
2 articlesPlaybooks
Playbooks are season-by-season guides for the weeks when your phone rings more than your crew can answer. Each one is written for a specific stretch of weather and a specific trade, and each ends with the exact changes to make in the portal before the week starts. The heat-wave playbook is for HVAC shops in the first week the temperature stays in the 90s: which keywords to promote to the emergency list and what the agent should say to a caller with an elderly parent in the house. The first-freeze playbook covers the night the temperature drops below freezing, for plumbers and HVAC: frozen pipes, no heat, and the safety line about shutoffs. Read the playbook for your trade a week before the season, not the morning of.
2 articlesTroubleshooting
Troubleshooting is organized by symptom, so start with the one you are seeing. A forwarded call reaches your old voicemail: almost always the carrier's forward did not take, or the no-answer ring count on the forward is longer than the delay before your voicemail picks up, so voicemail wins the race; the article shows how to check the forward from your handset and how to shorten the ring count. The agent misheard a detail: the transcript shows exactly what it heard, the read-back is the safeguard, and the fix is usually adding the spelling of tricky street names or your unusual service names to your business facts. A text did not arrive: check first that Text customers a confirmation is on under Agent, Booking, because with it off no text is sent at all; then whether the caller declined, replied STOP, or gave a landline number. The article ends with what to send us by email if the fix did not work.
1 articleRecently updated
Call Recording Laws by State: A 50-State Business Guide
The rule for recording a phone call in all 50 states and DC, with statute citations, which law applies across state lines, and what to say first.
Forward your business line to DispatchLine
Conditional and unconditional forwarding, with the dial codes and app steps for the major US carriers and VoIP providers.
SMS compliance: what we send and why it's allowed
Transactional texts, the shared sending number, carrier registration, STOP handling, and what you should never ask the agent to text.
Arrival windows, hours and emergency slots
How the agent turns your working hours into bookable windows, and what changes when a call is an emergency.
Jobber, Housecall Pro and ServiceTitan
None are live yet. Jobber is in development, and Housecall Pro and ServiceTitan are planned: what will sync when each ships, and how to work from the board until then.
The agent isn't answering forwarded calls
A troubleshooting order for when calls to your business number ring out, reach your old voicemail or never get to the DispatchLine agent.
What the agent says, and how to change it
The fixed opening sentence, then your greeting, triage questions, fee sentence, "are you a robot" answer and close, and what you can edit.
Plans and minutes
How minutes are counted, what happens when the trial minutes run out, what a busy month does to your bill, and how to change plans.
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Request demo informationGlossary
Call forwarding, warm transfer, A2P 10DLC, arrival window: the terms you'll see in the portal, explained.
Browse glossaryNew field guides by email
Guides for home-service businesses on answering calls, call triage and after-hours coverage: the title, a short summary and a link for up to six of the newest guides on this site. At most one email every 30 days.