Answering service for UK locksmiths

Locksmithing is the trade where answering first wins outright

Most trades lose work to a missed call. Locksmiths lose it in about ninety seconds.

Somebody standing outside their own front door in the dark is not gathering quotes. They are working down the search results ringing numbers until a human being picks up, and they will book the first one who does. Price barely enters into it. Availability is the entire proposition.

Around 85% of callers who reach voicemail never call back, and roughly 80% will not leave a message at all. For an emergency trade those numbers understate it. Nobody locked out of their house leaves a voicemail and waits.

The bind is obvious. The reason you cannot answer is that you are already on a job, and the busier you are the more work you lose.

What a locksmith answering service does on a call

Voco answers in your business name, in a voice you choose, and works from what you have configured rather than improvising. On a typical call it will:

• Establish what the job is: a lockout, a lost key, a broken key, a snapped cylinder, a burglary repair, a lock change or a scheduled security job
• Take the address and postcode, and confirm it is inside the area you cover
• Take the caller's name and number, spelled back and confirmed
• Establish whether they are safe and whether anyone is shut inside or outside the property
• Ask what you have told it to ask, such as the door and lock type, whether it is a UPVC or timber door, and whether there is any damage
• Give whatever call-out information you have configured
• Follow your emergency rules and put genuine emergencies straight through to you
• Send you the whole thing by SMS and email within seconds

Where it does not know something it says so and takes details rather than guessing. It will not quote a price you have not given it, and it will not promise an arrival time you cannot make.

Emergency lockouts, straight to your phone

The whole value of this for a locksmith sits in one setting: what counts as urgent enough to interrupt you.

You write the rules. A lockout with a child or a pet inside. Anyone shut out in the middle of the night. A property left insecure after a break-in. A vulnerable person unable to get into their home. Anything matching rings your mobile immediately, even mid job, because those are the calls worth stopping for.

Everything else is captured in full and waiting for you when you finish, sorted by priority rather than by the order it arrived. A lock change quote and somebody standing in the rain are not the same call.

Jobs outside your area, filtered before they reach you

Emergency search results are geographically loose, and locksmiths get a high volume of calls from well outside their patch. Every one of those is time spent explaining you cannot help.

Voco checks the postcode against the area you cover and tells anyone outside it plainly, rather than taking details you will never use. That alone removes a meaningful share of the calls that currently interrupt you for nothing.

Auto locksmith call handling

Vehicle work brings its own set of questions, and the details you need before setting off are different from a domestic job.

Voco can capture the make, model and year, whether it is a lockout or a lost or broken key, whether the vehicle has a spare, whether it is keyless entry, and exactly where it is parked, including whether it is accessible and whether it is in a car park with height or access restrictions. That is the difference between arriving able to do the job and arriving able to look at it.

The calls that are not jobs

Locksmiths get a particular volume of calls that go nowhere: sales calls, insurance chasers, people wanting a price for work nobody could price down the phone, and callers who want general advice about their door.

Those are handled the way you specify. Sales calls are ended politely and logged, so you can see how many you are getting. Price questions get whatever position you have set, whether that is a call-out fee, a range, or that it needs seeing first.

Proof of what was agreed

Emergency work is done at speed, often at night, sometimes with a distressed customer, and afterwards the details get disputed. What was quoted. What time you said you would arrive. What the caller said about access.

Every call is stored with a transcript and a recording, timestamped. For a trade where a chargeback or a complaint tends to come down to what was said on the phone at two in the morning, that record is worth having.

Call data is stored in UK and EU data centres, encrypted in transit and at rest. Voco Digitals Ltd is registered with the ICO, and retention periods are configurable.

Fitting around how you work

Nothing to install and no new number. Calls forward from the number already on your van, your website and your listings, and you choose when: only when you do not pick up, only outside your hours, or every call.

Voco books into a connected calendar where you have enabled that. Otherwise the job arrives with everything already captured, ready to put into whatever you use.

Getting started

You can be live in minutes. Signing up walks you through a short setup flow covering your business details, the work you do, your hours, your area and the questions you get asked most.

Setting your emergency rules properly takes around an hour and is worth doing carefully, because for a locksmith that setting is the whole product. Decide exactly what interrupts you and what waits, then test it on your own phone before you forward anything.

There is no setup fee, no contract, and a 30 day money-back guarantee. Plans start from £49/month.

Related: answering service for tradespeople, plumbers, how call handling works, work out what missed calls are costing you.