Inside Halcyon

Nobody answers alone at 3 a.m.

Halcyon’s support team covers every hour of the day from Lisbon, Toronto and Singapore. This is how the handovers work, and why nobody on the team works nights any more.

Daniel Moreau, Head of Support
Oct 8, 2026 · 5 min read

Clinics book appointments at all hours, and when something goes wrong it is usually at the worst one: a receptionist in Auckland opening up at 7:40, or a night nurse in Calgary moving a whole ward’s appointments. For our first three years we answered those messages with a rota of volunteers and a pager.

It worked until it didn’t. In March 2024 a calendar sync failed at 2 a.m. in Lisbon, and the engineer on call spent forty minutes trying to wake a colleague who could approve a rollback. After that night we wrote down one rule: nobody should be the only person awake when something breaks.

Today the day is split three ways. Lisbon covers 07:00 to 15:00 UTC, Toronto 15:00 to 23:00 and Singapore 23:00 to 07:00. Each hub has at least four people on shift, and one engineer who can ship a fix.

We chose the three cities for their clocks, not their rents. Each one starts its morning as another ends its working day, and each already had clinics nearby that we could visit.

The handover is the part we practise most. Fifteen minutes before a shift ends, the outgoing hub writes a short note: what is open, what is waiting on a customer, and what might wake someone up. The next hub reads it aloud on a call, so questions get asked while the people who know the answers are still there.

The numbers moved faster than we expected. The median first reply outside European hours fell from 3 hours 20 minutes to 11 minutes, and satisfaction in those hours rose from 81% to 94%. Nobody on the team has worked a night shift since June 2024.

We still keep the pager. It has gone off twice this year, both times in daylight somewhere.

See open roles in Lisbon and Singapore

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