Gas smells and carbon monoxide alarms: how your phone should respond
For HVAC shops, these are the two calls where the right first move is to get people outside, not to book anything.
HVAC shops get two kinds of phone calls that are not about scheduling at all: a caller who smells gas and a caller whose carbon monoxide alarm is going off. How your phone responds in the first few seconds matters more than anything else on this list.
Why the first move is not a booking
Natural gas has an added odorant so that people can notice a leak. A strong smell inside a home is a reason to leave. Carbon monoxide has no smell at all, which is why alarms exist. An alarm that sounds is a reason to get everyone into fresh air.
In both cases the person on the phone is not in a position to judge how serious it is. So the response is the same every time: get people out and call the right emergency service.
What the safety message says
The wording we use for a gas smell is: leave the home now and call 911 or your gas company from outside, and do not use light switches or anything that could spark.
For a carbon monoxide alarm: get everyone out of the home into fresh air now and call 911, and do not go back inside until emergency responders say it is safe.
For smoke or a burning smell from equipment: turn off the equipment if it can be done safely, leave the home, and call 911 if there is smoke or fire.
Notice what is missing. No troubleshooting. No "have you checked the pilot light." No estimate of when a tech will arrive.
What happens next
After the safety message, the call still has work to do:
- Alert your on-call person right away with the address, callback number and what the caller said.
- Capture a callback number in case the caller moves outside and the call drops.
- Log the call so you can review it later.
Decisions that belong to you
Write these down before the first cold night, because a stressed caller at midnight is the wrong time to improvise:
- Who is alerted, in what order, and by what method.
- Whether your techs will go to a home before the gas company or the fire department has cleared it. Some shops choose not to.
- What you tell a caller who calls back later in the day, after the utility has been out.
Phone setups that fail
- Voicemail only. A caller who smells gas does not leave a message, and if they do, nobody hears it until morning.
- A greeting that says "press 1 for service". A caller in a hurry may hang up and dial 911, which is fine, but your shop should be reachable too.
- An on-call number nobody tested. Call it yourself, once a month.
Test the line
Ask whoever answers your phone, human or AI, to demonstrate the gas and carbon monoxide responses. Check that the words match what you approved. Check that your on-call phone actually rings.