Water through a ceiling at two in the morning
In short. Almost everything on the out of hours line is one of about six things: an escape of water, communal heating gone in January, somebody in a lift, a fire panel in fault, door entry that has failed, a leaseholder who wants a demand explained. Enquiry 360 is an AI receptionist that answers all of them on your own number, asks which block and which flat, applies the test your out of hours policy already uses to decide what goes out tonight, and sends the job to the contractor who holds that contract. Every call becomes a structured record in your own Microsoft Dataverse, dated, with the block and the unit on it. From £99 + VAT a month, whatever January turns out to be like. You can ring 01905 918444 and hear the assistant take a call.
The caller is standing under a light fitting with water coming out of it, and has rung twice already. The person on the out of hours phone is asleep, and the flat above belongs to a leaseholder nobody has a number for.
The overnight list is shorter than it feels
The escape of water from the flat above is the classic, and it arrives at two in the morning because that is when somebody wakes up in it. After that: heating or hot water down across a whole block in January, a lift entrapment, a fire alarm activation, a gate or barrier stuck, and somebody who needs a fob before the contractor turns up. Six or so things. They sit on different contracts, and only two of them will not keep until Monday.
A midnight call-out ends up on the service charge
Every attendance somebody authorises at two in the morning is a line a leaseholder can query later, so the test of an out of hours line is how much of what it sends out actually needed sending. You set what counts as an emergency: which fault types, at which blocks, at what hour, whatever test your policy already uses. The urgent path is short and moves. A parking complaint gets the long one. Where a caller answers unclearly, the question is put again, because a guess here is a wasted attendance.
The job goes to the firm that holds that contract
Lifts, drainage, heating and door entry seldom sit with one company, and across a portfolio of any size they seldom sit with the same company from one block to the next. You configure which fault at which block goes where, and the job lands there while the caller is still on the phone. For a lift entrapment, where you have given the line a number, the caller is put through to the engineer, which is the only outcome anybody trapped is interested in.
Contracts move about more than rotas do. A lift maintenance contract goes out to tender, a drainage firm is dropped in March, twenty blocks arrive from another agent in the autumn with their own suppliers attached. Keeping the line current is an edit to your own configuration, and it's the kind of change a property manager makes between calls.
The block, the unit and the way in
A contractor sent to the wrong building at three in the morning is a wasted call-out and a second complaint by breakfast. It takes the block, the flat, who is reporting it, a number to ring back and how the contractor gets in, checking each value against the rule your form declares for it. Where the form asks, the details are read back before the call ends.
It answers in 66 languages. Plenty of these calls come from a subtenant or a visitor who has no relationship with you at all, and the details still have to come out right.
The insurer, and the leaseholder who queries the demand
Every call is a row in your own Microsoft Dataverse, so the numbers come out without a project behind them: out of hours volume by block, how much of it was genuinely an emergency, how many attendances went out overnight against how many waited until the office opened, how long between a call arriving and a contractor being told. Power BI and Excel read it like any other table. When a service charge line is queried, the faults reported behind it can be listed with dates and units against them.
Power Automate carries it onward, into the job system, a shared inbox, the duty manager's phone, a Teams channel the property team already sits in, or the accounting package when an attendance is rechargeable to a unit. It reaches over a thousand connectors. Sign-in is Entra ID and access follows your Dataverse roles, and the same record opens on a phone for a manager who is out on site.
An escape of water turns into an insurance claim months after the night it happened, usually once the drying is finished and the flat below is still not right. The call that started it is on file with the date, the block, the unit and what the caller said at the time, which is a steadier answer to an insurer than anybody's recollection.
Consents, fobs and Section 20 in the working week
Most of the week is nothing like an emergency and still has to be logged properly: consent to sublet, a licence to alter, the dog, a replacement fob, a leaseholder who wants a Section 20 notice explained. Whoever takes those in the office works through the same process on screen, in the same order, so what a manager reads on Monday looks the same whether the call came in at nine or at three. That part is the application, and it is sold separately from the answering.
Frequently asked
Can it tell an emergency from something that can wait until Monday?
It sorts them on the criteria you set: fault type, block, time of day, whatever test your out of hours policy already applies. The urgent ones take a different path through the questions and go out straight away. The rest are sitting there as a proper record when the office opens.
Can it put a caller straight through to the lift engineer?
Where you have configured a number for that contractor, yes, it transfers the caller. Otherwise it takes the entrapment details and sends them to whoever is on call. For a lift both matter: the person trapped needs the engineer, and you need the record of when it was reported.
How will it know which block and which flat?
It asks, working from your own list of blocks, and checks each answer against the rule your form declares for that field. Where the form asks it to, it reads the block and the flat number back before the call ends, so a wrong unit is corrected there instead of by a contractor standing outside the wrong door.
What happens with service charge and ground rent queries?
It takes them like any other enquiry: which unit, which demand, what the leaseholder is asking and a number to ring back, then routes it to whoever administers that account. Working out what somebody owes, and explaining it to them, stays with your people.
Can it take the out of hours calls on the number we already publish?
Yes. It answers on your own number, around the clock, so leaseholders carry on ringing the one already printed in the residents’ handbook and pinned up in the lobby. It answers in 66 languages, which matters in a mixed block where the person who found the leak is often the one who wants to report it.
Can this take over from our out of hours answering service?
The out of hours line is where this pays first, and the fair comparison is what you are holding the next morning. A message taken by somebody who has never seen your portfolio tends to arrive missing the detail the job turns on: which block, which riser, whether water is still coming through, whether the flat below is affected. Missing that, a contractor attends to find out, and the attendance lands on a service charge that leaseholders are entitled to question. This line asks your questions in your order, captures the same fields on every call into your own Dataverse, and sends the job to the right contractor before the caller has hung up. Months later, when an insurer or a leaseholder asks what was reported and when, it is on file. The price is flat, from £99 + VAT a month, and the worst week of the winter is charged at the same figure as the first week of July.
Can it take over from the answerphone on our out of hours number?
Yes. An answerphone takes a message and leaves somebody to listen through them all in the morning. This answers, works out whether it is a leak, a lift or a service charge question, takes the block and the flat, and puts a genuine emergency through to whoever is on call. What you read the next morning is a record rather than a recording.
Hear it handle one. Ring 01905 918444. It is a live line, not a recording, and it takes about a minute.
From £99 + VAT a month. Free setup, cancel anytime. Or read where your call data lives and how it compares to an answering service.