After-hours enquiries: the evening and weekend gap

The nine-to-five assumption

Most small businesses still run their phones around the working day. It makes sense for the owner. But it's worth asking who it suits. Customers have jobs too, and plenty of them only get time to deal with the leaking tap, the will, or the kitchen quote once they're home.

What customers say they want

In 2026, the call-answering company Moneypenny published research carried out by Censuswide asking UK consumers when they would most like to contact a business for support. According to Moneypenny's write-up of the study, it surveyed 2,000 senior business decision makers and 5,001 nationally representative UK consumers.

The answers:

• Weekday 9am to 5pm: 40%
• Evenings, 5pm to 9pm: 26%
• Weekends: 14%
• Early mornings: 14%
• Any time, 24/7: 13%

So a working-hours phone line suits the largest single group, but not the majority. The evening slot was especially popular with people aged 45 to 54 and with households with children, where it reached 32% in each case. These are often people with homes, families and budgets: exactly the customers many trades and professional firms want.

Being available changes behaviour

The same research asked what difference out-of-hours availability makes. 27% of consumers said it would make them more likely to complete an enquiry or purchase. 24% said it would make them less likely to go elsewhere.

The same study found 70% of consumers say they are likely to choose the business that responds first. Only 23% said they would keep trying if a business didn't respond, while 77% of businesses thought customers would keep trying. That gap between what businesses assume and what customers do is the evening problem in a nutshell.

Why businesses don't cover the evenings

The businesses in the study were candid. 47% cited resourcing as a barrier to out-of-hours support and 46% cited cost. 25% said they believe the demand doesn't justify it.

Those are fair concerns. Nobody running a small firm wants to answer the phone at 8pm on a Sunday. The question is whether you can capture those enquiries without doing so.

Some trades feel it more than others

Some businesses get a lot more evening and weekend calls than others. A BrightLocal study of Google Business Profile data, published in 2019 and covering 45,264 local businesses in the US, Canada, Australia and the UK, looked at when calls came in from Google listings. This is international data, and a few years old, but the patterns are useful:

• Across all businesses, 94% of calls came Monday to Friday, with the busiest time 10am to 12pm on Mondays.
• Restaurants received 51% of their calls after 5pm and 32% at weekends.
• Locksmiths received 34% of their calls after 5pm, another 8% before 9am, and 31% at weekends.

If you are a locksmith, a mobile mechanic or a plumber taking emergency work, a nine-to-five phone line is leaving a lot on the table.

Covering the gap without working it

You have a few options:

1. Set clear hours, and say them. Put your hours on your website and Google listing, and in your voicemail greeting.
2. Check your own data. Look at your call log for missed calls after 5pm and at weekends. That's your evening gap.
3. Let something answer for you. An AI receptionist answers 24/7, including evenings, weekends and bank holidays. It takes the caller's name, number and what they need, and emails you a summary, then the recording and transcript. You reply when you're back at work, already knowing what they want.

You can divert your existing number after hours using our call divert guides for Vodafone, BT Mobile, Tesco Mobile, landlines and VoIP and other networks.

Sources

• Moneypenny, "Customer support beyond office hours", Sophie Weston, published 29 June 2026, updated 5 September 2026. Research carried out by Censuswide for Moneypenny, a call-answering company.
• Moneypenny, "The Customer Experience Divide: the hidden blind spots in UK businesses", published 21 April 2026, updated 22 September 2026. 2,000 senior decision makers and 5,001 nationally representative UK consumers. Commissioned by Moneypenny.
• BrightLocal, "Google My Business Insights Study", 15 July 2019. 45,264 businesses in the US, Canada, Australia and the UK; data from September 2017 to December 2018. International data.