Who answers enquiries at the weekend? Four options compared

A weekend enquiry can be answered by the owner, an on-call employee, an auto-reply or an AI agent. For many small businesses the most practical setup is a combination: an AI agent sends the first reply within a minute, and a person takes over anything that needs a decision. Each of the four options has its own cost and its own limits. Here they are, without the gloss.

Why the weekend is a problem

Enquiries don't only arrive between 8am and 4pm. People look for a plumber when the tap starts leaking on Saturday morning. They book a hairdresser on Sunday evening from the sofa. They ask for a quote for new windows when they finally have time. That is often the weekend.

Many Slovenian businesses wrap up the working week on Friday afternoon. On Saturdays only some services are open, and Sundays and public holidays are mostly closed. Add long weekends around holidays and the collective summer or year-end break, and you get a lot of days when nobody is watching the inbox.

Research shows why that's expensive. A Harvard Business Review study (2011) of 2,241 US companies found the average time to first response was 42 hours, while 23% never replied at all. Companies that tried to reply within the first hour were nearly 7 times as likely to qualify the lead as those that tried an hour later. The MIT and InsideSales study from 2007 found that calling within 5 minutes instead of 30 made contact 100 times more likely and qualification 21 times more likely. The details are in our piece on speed-to-lead research.

A simple calculation: an enquiry that arrives on Friday at 6pm and gets a reply on Monday at 9am waits 63 hours. That's longer than the 42-hour average from the study.

The four options

1. The owner replies from their phone

This is a common setup in small businesses. The owner knows the prices, the schedule and the customers, so they can reply right away and specifically.

The problem is that it doesn't last. Replying on Saturday evening means you're never really off. When you're at a wedding, on a trip or on holiday, the enquiry waits again. The response time depends on what kind of day you're having.

2. An on-call employee

Employees take turns and one of them watches enquiries at the weekend. The reply is human. If the employee is well briefed, it's also consistent.

But being on call isn't free. ZDR-1 doesn't regulate pay for on-call time, though your sector's collective agreement may. Under Article 128 of ZDR-1, an employee who works on a Sunday or a public holiday is entitled to a supplement, and the amount is set by the sector-level collective agreement. Check yours. It also often happens that the employee isn't allowed to confirm a price or a slot, so they just tell the customer "we'll get back to you on Monday". Then you've paid for on-call time to send a reply an auto-reply could have sent.

3. An auto-reply

You set it up in a few minutes in email and in most messaging tools. It's instant and almost free.

It tells the customer the message arrived. It doesn't answer their question. It doesn't give a price, doesn't suggest a slot and doesn't ask anything that would help you on Monday. A customer who wrote to three providers will carry on with the one that gave a specific answer.

4. An AI agent

An AI agent reads the enquiry and replies like a member of your team: with a price from your price list, free slots from your calendar and a question that moves the conversation forward. When the customer is serious, or when the question goes beyond the rules, it hands the conversation to a person along with a summary.

This option has downsides too, and it's fair to list them:

• It's only as good as its data. If the price list is old or the calendar isn't up to date, the agent will confidently give wrong information.
• It needs setting up. Someone has to write the rules: what it may say, what it mustn't and when to call a person.
• It doesn't decide on exceptions. Discounts, non-standard work and complaints stay with you.
• Some people want a human. Under Article 50 of the EU AI Act, from 2 August 2026 people must be told they're talking to an AI, unless it's obvious. They have to be told no later than the first message. The regulation doesn't require you to offer a person, but the agent should do it anyway.
• It costs money every month. The tool, the model and maintenance are an ongoing cost.
• It processes personal data. You need a data processing agreement with the provider and a clear agreement on where the data is stored.

Comparison table

Option	Cost	Response time	What it can't do
Owner	No direct cost, you pay with your free time	From a few minutes to a few hours, depending on the day	Can't keep it up for months; on holiday, there's no reply
On-call employee	On-call pay and Sunday and holiday supplements	Usually within an hour	Often isn't allowed to confirm a price or a slot
Auto-reply	Almost free	Instant	Doesn't answer the question, offer a price or a slot
AI agent	Initial setup and a monthly cost	Within a minute	Doesn't decide on exceptions; gets things wrong without fresh data

The combination that works for most small businesses

No single option covers everything. For many small businesses this split makes the most sense:

1. The AI agent replies to every enquiry in the evening, at weekends and on public holidays, within a minute and in your tone.
2. It sends urgent cases straight to the phone of the person on call or the owner. You decide in advance what counts as urgent.
3. Everything else waits for Monday, but the customer already has a price, a suggested slot or at least an answer to their question.
4. On Monday morning the team gets a list of conversations with a summary and the next step for each.

That way the owner isn't on call every weekend, the employee isn't replying empty-handed, and the customer doesn't wait 63 hours.

How to decide

Before you buy anything, answer four questions:

• How many enquiries arrive after hours? Go through the last three months and count the ones that came in after 4pm, at weekends and on public holidays.
• What is an average job worth? With a few enquiries a month and low value, an auto-reply with a clear deadline is perfectly fine.
• Are your enquiries urgent? For repairs and healthcare, a weekend response matters more than for a furniture quote.
• Are your price list and calendar in order? Without them an AI agent can't give a specific answer, so start there.

You can get a rough idea of what manual replying costs you with the calculator.

How we set up a first reply within a minute, including evenings and weekends, with a clear handover to a person, is described on the speed-to-lead page.