CAPE — Call Answering & Prospect Engagement. It's the employee who answers your phone when your team can't. Nights, weekends and holidays, and any hour of the workday when every line is already ringing and nobody can get to it. It's available on any plan for $197/month.

The name is the middle of escape, which is the point of it: the phone stops being the thing that owns your evenings.

What it does

Answers the phone — an actual conversation

When a call comes in that nobody picks up, CAPE answers it. Not a voicemail box and not a menu — it talks to the customer, works out what's wrong and how urgent it is, and handles it from there.

It covers two different jobs, and the second one is the one shops underestimate:

  • After hours — evenings, weekends and holidays, when a good share of emergency calls actually come in.
  • As backup during business hours — any time all your lines are lit, everyone's on another call, or the office is short-handed. You don't hand over the calls you want to take; CAPE only picks up the ones that would otherwise ring out.

Answers texts on the same number

When a lead texts in — or a missed call fires the text-back — CAPE picks up the conversation there too. Same knowledge, same answers, one number.

Books the job while they're still on

It asks the right follow-ups ("Is the system cooling at all? When's a good time for us to come out?") and books the appointment then and there — on the call or in the thread. At 2 p.m. or 2 a.m.

The booking lands on your calendar and dispatch board like any other job. Your office opens to appointments, not voicemails.

Answers what customers actually ask

What you charge, what you cover, whether you come out that far, what's included in a plan. It's built from your real information, so the answers are yours — not a generic script.

When someone says "I need to move my Thursday appointment," CAPE recognises it and sends the link to reschedule or cancel — self-serve, no office relay. The calendar and reminders update automatically.

Replies to your Google reviews

Every Google review gets a response — thanking happy reviewers and responding professionally to critical ones. An attended-to review page signals a shop that cares, and it's one more office chore gone. (How reviews get generated in the first place is covered in How review requests work.)

Where the humans stay in charge

  • Your team can jump into any CAPE conversation just by replying in the inbox — the thread is right there, fully visible.
  • CAPE books appointments. It doesn't quote custom work, negotiate prices, or make promises about a diagnosis. Those conversations get handed to your team.
  • You decide when it picks up. After hours only, or after hours plus overflow during the day — your call, and it can change.

Getting it

CAPE is an add-on to any plan — no rebuild and no downtime on the rest of your system.

It is built, not switched on. CAPE is assembled by hand around your business: your hours, your service area, your pricing, your services, and how you want it to sound. That build is what makes the difference between an employee and a generic bot, and it's why there's real work behind the $197 rather than a toggle. Contact Escape support to start it.

How it's billed: $197/month for CAPE itself, plus its talk and text minutes on usage — see What costs extra. Worth knowing before a busy season: CAPE earns its keep by booking jobs at 2 a.m., but it does meter while it works.