Agents & knowledge
Emergencies and what the agent will not do
Some calls are not about booking at all, and an agent that tries to book them is dangerous. A trade agent is instructed to say the safety step first, plainly, and to book nothing until the caller is safe.
What it treats as an emergency
- A smell of gas. Everyone leaves the building, and then they ring the gas emergency line from outside. Nothing else happens until that is done — not a booking, not a question about the address.
- A sparking, smoking or burning panel, socket or appliance. Stay away from it, and if there's smoke or fire, ring the fire service.
- Water reaching sockets, a fuse box or anything electrical. Shut the water off at the main, and cut the power at the breaker only if it can be reached dry and safely.
What it treats as an urgent job instead
No heat overnight, a burst pipe already shut off at the main, a dead water heater, a drain backing up, a lockout. These are not emergencies — they're the work. The agent takes them, books them, and marks them urgent.
What it will never do
- Quote a price, a discount or an arrival time that isn't written down for it. Not "probably around two hundred", not "somebody should be there by four".
- Talk a caller through a repair. It is not in the room, it cannot see what they are looking at, and that is how somebody gets hurt.
You can rehearse any of this. Urgent scenarios are generated for you in the Sandbox; a genuine emergency is not, deliberately, so if you want to hear how the agent handles a gas call, write that scenario yourself in the Manual box and listen to the transcript.