Set up emergency contacts
Choose who gets the urgent alert, who gets the live transfer, and what counts as an emergency for your business.
- About 8 minutes
- No technical skills needed
- For: Owners and managers. Do this before you forward any real calls.
8 steps in this guide
Before you start, have these ready
- The cell numbers of your owner, on-call person, and office
- Agreement from each of them to be contacted
- Your dashboard sign-in
Step 1: Open Escalation
Sign in, open Playbook, and choose the Escalation section.
What you should see
A list of contacts and a list of emergency triggers from your template.
Step 2: Add your contacts
Add a number for each role you use: owner, on call, and office. Set whether each one applies during business hours, after hours, or at any time.
This is your responsibility
Alerts and transfers go to the numbers you enter. If a number is out of date, the alert goes to the wrong person. Update this the same day anything changes.
Step 3: Review the emergency triggers
Read the list for your template. For trades it includes a gas smell, a carbon monoxide alarm, active flooding, sparking or a burning smell, and no heat in very cold weather.
Add any trigger that is specific to your work.
Step 4: Choose what happens on each trigger
For each trigger choose an urgent alert, a live transfer, or both. The scripted safety line is always spoken first.
Live transfer is available on Pro. On Text-back and Receptionist, emergencies send an urgent alert.
Step 5: Decide what happens when a caller asks for a person
Choose to transfer during business hours, to transfer at any time, or to always take a message.
Step 6: Publish and tell your team
Publish the playbook. Then tell everyone on the contact list what an alert looks like and what you expect them to do when one arrives.
Step 7: Run a drill
Call your business number from another phone, let it forward, and say that you smell gas.
What you should see
You hear the safety line straight away, and your on-call contact receives an urgent text within seconds.
Step 8: Put a reminder in your calendar
Check the contact list on the first of every month and whenever your on-call rotation changes.
Note
Ringhero is not an emergency service. It gives the scripted line and alerts the people you name.
This guide was written for the beta. If a screen is named a little differently from what you see, the steps still apply in the same order.