Answer a few questions and this kit writes your storm greetings for when you are closed, running limited service and reopening, a call forwarding plan with your provider's codes, who takes urgent calls, and the messages to send customers. It sizes them to print on one letter page and warns you if your edits run longer. Everything runs in your browser and nothing is sent anywhere. The alert and evacuation zone links come from Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco emergency management.
The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30, and the National Hurricane Center puts its peak at September 10, with most activity between mid-August and mid-October. When a storm is on the way, the hours you would spend writing a greeting and a customer notice are the hours you need for your family, your crew and your building.
Ready.gov's guidance for businesses makes the same point: messages can be pre-scripted as templates with blanks to fill in when the facts are known, the people answering the phone should have scripts and a list of frequently asked questions so every caller hears the same answer, and contact lists should be compiled in advance and reachable during the incident. The Florida Division of Emergency Management asks every business to think through how it would operate if roads are closed or communication is limited.
The builder above does that drafting with you. It turns a few answers into the greetings, the forwarding steps, the urgent-call roster and the customer messages, and lays them out for printing on one letter page, using smaller type as the plan gets longer. Every greeting and message is editable, and the printout uses your version. If your own wording makes the plan too long for one page even at the smallest type, the builder says so before you print.
Sign up for the alerts of the county your business is in, and of the counties where your key people live, since an evacuation order for their homes changes who can answer. Ready.gov recommends several ways to receive alerts, and notes that Wireless Emergency Alerts and the Emergency Alert System need no sign-up. Then look up the evacuation zone of the business address itself, not just your home.
Next, decide where calls go if the office closes, and test it while the weather is calm. The call forwarding guide lists the codes each major provider publishes. The kit prints the on and off codes for your provider on the plan, so whoever is on call can switch forwarding without looking anything up. Keep phones charged and have backup chargers once a hurricane is in the forecast, as Ready.gov advises.
The Florida Division of Emergency Management's statewide Know Your Zone map covers every county. It says zones are designated from A to F, that Zone A is generally the most vulnerable and the most likely to be evacuated first, and that not all zones are ordered to evacuate every time. The three Tampa Bay county tools are below.
Write down, in your own words, what counts as urgent for your business. For a plumber it may be water running that the caller cannot shut off; for a roofer, water coming through a ceiling; for a dental office, the problems your dentist wants to hear about after hours. Everything else can wait for a callback or a booking after you reopen, and the greeting should say so.
Name a first person and a backup for urgent calls, with the numbers they will actually carry. Choose them with evacuation in mind. The Florida Division of Emergency Management warns that if officials order an evacuation and someone decides to stay at the business, emergency responders will not be able to respond to them during the disaster, so nobody should be sitting at an office in an ordered zone to answer the phone.
Every closed greeting the kit writes tells callers with a life-threatening emergency to hang up and call 911. Keep that line in whatever version you record.
The closed greeting names the business, says you are closed because of the storm, says when callers can expect the next update, and tells them what to do if the problem is urgent. The limited service greeting says which services are running and how urgent calls are handled, without promising a response time you cannot keep. The reopening greeting says you are open, how you are working through storm calls, and how to book.
If your calls are recorded, the recording notice belongs at the very start of each greeting. Florida requires the consent of every party before a call is recorded, and the business phone guide quotes the statute. None of the greetings quote storm prices. The hurricane season guide on our blog covers Florida's price gouging rules and what a phone script should never promise during a declared emergency.
Read each greeting aloud before you record it or load it into your phone system. The builder can read them in your device's voice so you can hear how long they run.
Ready.gov tells people to save phone calls for emergencies after a disaster, because phone systems are often down or busy, and to use text messages instead. Plan for customers who cannot get through by phone: the kit writes three short messages you can send by text or email: one before the storm about appointments that will move, one during the closure with how to reach you for urgent problems, and one when you reopen.
Send them only to customers who gave you their number for service messages, and keep promotions out of them. A storm notice is a service message, and the missed-call guide on our blog explains why Florida's telephone solicitation law makes that distinction worth keeping.
Switch to the reopening greeting, turn forwarding off or back to its normal setting, and send the reopening message. Then work the backlog in the order calls came in, with urgent jobs first.
The Florida Division of Emergency Management asks businesses to photograph or video all damage before making repairs, to contact their insurer right away, and to hire only licensed contractors. It also encourages businesses to complete the state's online Business Damage Assessment survey on FloridaDisaster.biz, which gives the state information about the economic impact. The Florida SBDC at USF offers no-cost consulting to help Tampa Bay businesses build a continuity plan tailored to them, and Ready.gov's business continuity page walks through building and testing one.
The same plan is what an answering setup needs from you. Chleb's receptionist plans support 24/7 answering in your greeting and handoffs under agreed rules. Confirm the recipient, no-answer fallback and which notes arrive. Recording and transcription depend on enabled settings and applicable notice or consent. Missed-call text-back is included on all three plans, with triggers, sender identity and delivery tested for your account. For storm season that means the three greetings, the urgent definition and the on-call names in this plan become its instructions.
Chleb does not publish an uptime commitment, and no phone system should be sold to you as one that cannot fail. Keep the manual fallback on this plan, such as forwarding the main line to a cell phone someone is carrying, and test it before the season.
The builder runs in your browser. Nothing you type is sent to Chleb or anyone else, and nothing is saved after you leave the page. Print the plan or save it as a PDF from the print dialog, copy it as text, or download a text file, and keep a paper copy with the forwarding codes somewhere you can reach without power.
No. The builder runs in your browser and nothing you type is sent or saved. Print it, save it as a PDF from the print dialog, copy it as text or download a text file.
The county the business is in, and the counties where the people who answer your urgent calls live. Alert Pinellas lets one account follow up to five locations, and Alert Pasco covers home and business phones.
In Hillsborough County, yes. The county changed its evacuation zones for the 2026 hurricane season and says more properties are now in a zone. Look up the business address in the county's HEAT tool.
Yes. They are plain text you can record as a voicemail greeting, read on a live answer, or give to an answering service or AI receptionist. Edit them first so they sound like you.