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How to Set Up Emergency Guidance in Booking Windows

Emergency Guidance allows you to define specific criteria that determine when a customer’s issue qualifies as an emergency. The AI will strictly follow your rules instead of making assumptions, giving you direct control over when emergency slots are offered during calls.

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What Emergency Guidance Does

Emergency Guidance works with your Booking Windows configuration to help the AI determine:
  • When to offer emergency-only time slots (e.g., after-hours, weekends)
  • When to bypass capacity limits for urgent situations
  • When to trigger on-call notifications to technicians

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How to Set Up Emergency Guidance

1
Navigate to Booking Windows in your Avoca dashboard
2
Scroll to the Emergency Guidance section
3
Click “Add Guidance”
4
Write your emergency criteria as bullet points
  • Use clear, specific scenarios
  • Separate into “EMERGENCY” and “NOT EMERGENCY” sections
5
Click Save
Your rules are now active — the AI will use these criteria to determine emergency status on every call.

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Best Practices

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Be Specific and Scenario-Based

Instead of vague descriptions, use concrete situations: ❌ Don’t write:
  • “Heating problems”
  • “Urgent situations”
✅ Do write:
  • Consider Trade-Specific Rules and organize your guidance by service type
EMERGENCY:
[HVAC]:
- No heat when outdoor temperature is below 40°F
- No cooling when outdoor temperature is above 85°F
- Customer is a member AND has no heat or no cooling
- HVAC system recently installed (within 30 days) and not functioning
- Equipment is 10+ years old AND needs heating/cooling repair

[Plumbing]:
- Active water leak causing property damage
- No hot water AND customer has young children or elderly residents
- Toilet not working when it's the only toilet in the home
- Sewage backup into living spaces

NOT EMERGENCY:
- Routine maintenance requests
- Equipment less than 10 years old needing repair
- Estimate or quote requests only
- Minor leaks that can be contained

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Include Customer Verbally Requesting Emergency

If you want to allow customers to determine what is an emergency, for example when a customer explicitly states “I need an emergency appointment,” you can configure that to trigger emergency classification: 
EMERGENCY:
- When customer actively states "Emergency" or "Urgent"
This ensures customer intent is respected even without specific technical details.

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Account for Membership Status

Many businesses prioritize members for emergency service: 
EMERGENCY:
- Customer is a verified member AND has no heat or no cooling
- Customer is a member AND equipment is 7+ years old needing repair

NOT EMERGENCY:


- Non-member requesting after-hours service (unless safety issue)
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Last modified on February 19, 2026