Discover how scheduling in the PATLive Flex Platform helps you control when and how calls are answered. Route urgent calls to a live receptionist and save time with voicemail or menus for others.
The PATLive Flex Platform gives you the power to control when and how calls are answered. Scheduling lets you define your business hours, create special schedules, and adjust call handling in real-time.
Instead of treating every call the same way, scheduling ensures the right calls reach a live receptionist, while others can be routed to voicemail or a call menu.
How Scheduling Improves Your Caller Experience
Scheduling is one of the most powerful features in the PATLive Flex Platform because it gives you complete control over your customer experience. It helps you:
- Deliver consistency — Ensure every caller gets a professional response.
- Maximize efficiency — Save live receptionist minutes by sending routine calls to voicemail.
- Prioritize what’s urgent — Route emergency calls to a receptionist while holding routine ones until business hours.
- Stay flexible — Adjust your setup anytime, without IT support.
How Businesses Use Scheduling Every Day
Here are a few ways small and growing businesses use scheduling to work smarter:
- Emergency vs. Non-Emergency Calls
Route urgent calls — like emergencies or after-hours customer issues — directly to a 24/7 live receptionist, while sending non-urgent calls to voicemail to be handled in the morning.
- Business Hours vs. After Hours
During the day, have all calls answered by a live receptionist. After hours, automatically route calls to voicemail or offer a self-service call menu.
- Special Schedules for Unique Needs
Running a special event? Short-staffed for a week? Create a temporary schedule to update call handling, then switch back to your standard setup when things return to normal.
How Call Menus and Scheduling Work Together
If you’re using a call menu (auto attendant) each one begins with a professional greeting. From there, scheduling determines which menu or routing rules are active at different times of the day or week. For example:
- During business hours — Greet callers with a branded message, then route sales calls to receptionists using a specific script and send support calls elsewhere.
- After business hours — Play a different menu that lets callers leave a voicemail or get quick answers to common questions (like business hours, directions, etc.) without using receptionist minutes.
Getting Started with Scheduling
When you join PATLive, our full-service white-glove onboarding specialists will configure your initial schedule based on your business hours and call handling preferences.
We’ll help you set up:
- Standard business hours
- After-hours call handling
- Special schedules for temporary needs
- Call menus and greetings that reflect your brand
You can start simple and expand as you grow, adding and self-configuring tools as needed without the need for IT support. Scheduling can be updated anytime from the web app, and our customer service team is always here to help fine-tune your setup.
If for some reason you decide not to take advantage of our white-glove onboarding services, you can always set up your schedules in the web app and apply them to your call flow by editing your phone number in the web app settings. For more information on that, please see the help file on setting up call flows.