Setting business hours and after-hours behavior
Open / voicemail / closed — what each mode does and when to pick which.
You set a schedule for when you're 'open', and Milo automatically switches to the behavior you choose outside those hours — so callers always reach something useful, even at 2 AM.
The three modes
Milo supports three behaviors for after-hours calls:
Open — Milo answers and engages fully, exactly like it does during business hours. Use this if you want 24/7 live answering (for example, an emergency trade service or an online business with customers across time zones).
Voicemail — Milo greets the caller, explains you're currently unavailable, and offers to take a message. The message is saved to your dashboard and you can be notified by email or SMS. This is the most common after-hours setting for service businesses.
Closed — Milo plays a short recorded message (you write it in the script) and ends the call. No message is taken. Use this when you genuinely have nothing to offer after hours — for example, a walk-in clinic where after-hours calls should go to emergency services.
Examples
- A landscaping company open Mon–Fri, 8 AM–6 PM sets Voicemail for evenings and weekends. Callers can leave their name and job description; the owner reviews messages each morning.
- A 24-hour locksmith keeps Milo on Open around the clock. Milo takes down the caller's location and urgency and sends an SMS alert to the on-call tech.
- A boutique that closes at 8 PM uses Closed with a message pointing callers to the online shop.
What happens when you're closed
In voicemail mode, the message recording is transcribed and saved immediately. You'll see it in your dashboard under Calls. If you've enabled notification preferences, you can get an email or SMS as soon as a voicemail arrives — handy if you want to call urgent customers back the same evening.
Milo never drops a caller without at minimum offering to take their details. Even in closed mode, if the caller pushes back ("but it's an emergency!"), Milo is graceful about it.
Time zones
Your business hours are saved in the time zone you set on your account. If your business is in Dubai (GST, UTC+4), your hours are always evaluated in GST — regardless of where the caller is calling from. Check your time zone setting under Settings → Business if calls are switching to after-hours mode at unexpected times.
You can set different hours for each day of the week. Common setups are Monday–Friday with weekends off, or Monday–Saturday with Sunday closed. Holiday overrides are coming soon — for now, the workaround is to manually switch a day's hours before a public holiday.