A letting agency's phone has two entirely different jobs, and they collide at exactly the wrong moments.

One is tenants, ringing about things that have broken — usually at night, because that's when you notice a boiler. The other is landlords, ringing to ask whether you'd manage their portfolio — usually in the evening, because that's when they do their admin. Both are urgent in completely different ways, and both tend to arrive when your office is dark.

The maintenance call that can't wait

Tenants don't report faults during office hours. They report them when they find them, which is when they get home, or when they get up, or at eleven at night when the shower won't turn off.

Most of it can wait until morning and everyone knows it. A dripping tap is not a Tuesday-2am problem. But some of it genuinely can't: water coming through a ceiling, no heat in February in a flat with a baby, a front door that won't lock, a gas smell. Those need somebody now, and "we open at nine" is not an acceptable answer — practically, or in terms of your obligations to that tenant and that landlord.

So agencies do one of two things. Either someone's mobile is the emergency line, and that someone slowly comes to dread their own phone. Or there's no cover, and you find out on Monday, by which point a small leak has become a ceiling and an insurance claim, and a landlord who's asking why nobody picked up.

The landlord enquiry that quietly goes elsewhere

Here's the one that actually costs you money, and it's invisible.

A landlord with four properties decides on a Sunday evening that he's had enough of his current agent. He rings three agencies from a search. Yours rings out. The second one answers.

You will never know this happened. There's no missed-call report saying "that was a four-property management contract." It just shows up as growth that didn't happen, and you'll put it down to a tough market.

That's the asymmetry: your tenant calls are a cost you feel, and your landlord calls are revenue you don't. The revenue ones are the ones ringing out.

Why voicemail is worse here than most places

For a tenant, voicemail after an emergency is a genuinely bad experience — they're standing in water and they've been asked to leave a message. That's the thing that ends up in a complaint, or a review, or a landlord's decision to move.

For a prospective landlord, voicemail says exactly what he's ringing to find out: how responsive is this agency? He's shopping for someone to handle his properties when he can't. You've just answered his question, and not in your favour.

Answering both, properly

Your number diverts, and RingSorted answers in your agency's name — at 11pm on a Sunday exactly as at 11am on a Tuesday.

It asks what you'd ask. For a tenant: which property, what's happened, how bad is it, is there water or gas involved, how do we reach you. For a landlord: how many properties, where, what are you looking for. You configure the questions, so a maintenance report and a new-business enquiry don't get treated the same.

Then a written message lands in your inbox with the details in it — not "call this number back", but something a property manager can act on at 8am with the whole picture already there.

The triage that makes it work

This is the bit that matters for an agency, because volume isn't your problem — sorting is.

On the Plus and Unlimited plans, RingSorted transfers callers who genuinely need a person straight through to a number you choose — whoever's on call tonight. So the flooding kitchen reaches a human being, and the eleven "the extractor fan's noisy" reports land as messages for the morning.

That's the difference between an emergency line that works and one your staff have learned to dread. The person on call gets rung for the things worth being rung about.

To be precise, because it matters: that transfer goes to you — your on-call phone. It isn't a call centre and there's no team of ours behind it. On the entry-level Lite plan there's no transfer at all; every call becomes a message. If what you need is a genuinely staffed out-of-hours desk with people making decisions on your behalf, that's TNS365, the company behind RingSorted, and it's a different service.

What it doesn't do

It won't dispatch a contractor. It won't decide whether something's an emergency in a way that has any authority — it asks the questions you set and passes on what it's told, and your on-call judgement is still your on-call judgement. It doesn't write into a property management system.

It answers the phone, finds out what's happened, tells you, and puts the serious ones through. For most small agencies that's the gap.

What it costs against one lost management contract

RingSorted is £39 a month for 30 answered calls, then 49p each after. Plus is £69 for 100 calls, then 39p. Unlimited is £99 with no per-call charge. All plus VAT.

An agency with a decent portfolio will want Plus or Unlimited — maintenance volume adds up. Set it against a single landlord who rang on a Sunday and got an answer: one four-property contract pays for years of this.

And per call rather than per minute matters here. A tenant describing a leak properly is a long call and a good one — per-minute billing makes your most useful calls your most expensive.

Better run, without a night shift

You don't need somebody awake. You need the tenant at 11pm to reach a business rather than a tone, the genuine emergency to find whoever's on call, and the landlord on Sunday evening to hear a real answer instead of proof that you're not there.

Ring 0330 9123 365 — our own line, out of hours if you like — and hear what your callers would get. Then start a free trial.