Phone

Calls in the same inbox

Phone works like the other channels: a call becomes a ticket, on the same board, with the same customer and the same history as their emails and chats. Agents take calls in the browser, so there is no separate softphone to install and nothing to reconcile afterwards. How agents answer, transfer and place calls is in Taking and making calls.

Switch it on under Settings → Channels → Phone with Enable Phone Support. The numbers themselves come from us: ask and we will provision a local number for the market you need.

Each market, its own numbers

Phone is configured per number, and a market can answer on several. For each number (Add Phone Number, or Edit on an existing one) you set the market, the inbound phone number customers call, optionally the IVR flow that answers it, and its own overflow settings below.

An IVR flow is the menu and the routing: what the caller hears, which options they get, and where each one sends them. It can branch on whether you are open, so the 20:00 caller hears something different from the 10:00 caller. That branch reads your business hours, so set those up first. See Business Hours.

When nobody can take the call

This is the part worth configuring before you publish the number anywhere, because it decides what happens on your worst day rather than your best one.

• Overflow phone number ☎️ Where calls go when Zuzana cannot hand them to an agent. Your old support line, a mobile, an answering service.
• Queue timeout ⏱ How many seconds a caller waits before being forwarded there. Leave it empty and they wait.
• Auto-overflow outside business hours 🌙 Forwards automatically while you are closed, rather than ringing an empty office.
• Callback offer 🔁 The "press 1 to be called back" message comes from Offer callback in queue on the Queue step of your IVR flow, which the default flow has on. Untick it in the flow's Builder to remove the message.

How you sound

• Hold music 🎵 Pick a track from the library or upload your own. WAV at 8 kHz mono is best for telephony, MP3 works, 10 MB maximum.
• Brand pronunciation 🗣 Text to speech does not always get a brand name right. Give it a phonetic spelling, per market if your name is said differently in different languages, and the automated voice stops mangling it.

What you get after the call

The ticket is the record. A call is recorded onto it only when it passes a Record step in your IVR flow and the caller does not opt out, and transcribed only when that step has Also transcribe on. Only the talk with the agent is recorded, not the menu or hold music, and calls started from New conversation are never recorded. With both on, the next person to pick up the case can read what was agreed instead of asking the customer to repeat it, and you can review calls the same way you review written conversations.

Recording Retention, at the top of the Phone settings, decides how long recordings and their transcripts are kept: 90 days by default. Older ones are deleted every night.

Note: Recording customer calls carries obligations that differ by country, including telling the caller. Make sure your greeting says what your legal advice tells you it must say.

Voicemail the AI can answer

A voicemail node in an IVR flow can do more than take a message. The recording is transcribed, and if the node has AI replies enabled, the AI reads the transcript and answers by SMS to the number that called, as a thread attached to the phone ticket.

A customer who called at 21:00 about a delayed parcel can have a real answer on their phone before you open, without anyone listening to the recording first. It needs SMS enabled and a sending number for that market. See SMS.

Good habits

Set the overflow number on day one. The cost of getting it wrong is a customer hearing nothing, which is the one outcome a phone line cannot recover from.

Keep the menu shallow. Two levels of options is plenty. Callers who cannot find their case press zero, and if there is nothing behind zero they hang up.

Record the greeting in the market's own language, and check the brand pronunciation by calling the number yourself. It takes a minute and it is the first thing every customer hears.

Use the transcripts. Phone is where customers say the thing they never write down, which makes call transcripts an unusually good source of new articles and policies.