Talk - Forward to external number during certain hours
AnsweredWe have an answering service that handles early morning calls (3a - 5a). Once our team arrives in the morning, they begin picking up calls.
为了解决这个问题,我尝试以下:
- OVERFLOW ROUTING
I've set the answering service number as the overflow number during operating hours (which I've set from 3a - 5p). We did this to prevent overnight calls from being routed to this number.
Issue: During standard hours, if all internal agents fail to pickup a call, the call will be unnecessarily forwarded to our answering service. - FAKE AGENT SEAT
We setup a placeholder agent with a call forwarding # set to the answering service number. We manually toggled all agents offline and turned this account on.
Issue: If the call isn't picked up within 30s, it is routed to voicemail.
Are there any other tricks we might be try to forward calls to an external number only during select hours?
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Hey Danny!
My suggestions for this workflow require Zendesk Support (Professional or Enterprise) and Zendesk Talk (Team, Professional, or Enterprise).
Please make sure you have configured your Talk Number settings under Admin > Channels > Talk > Numbers > (expand the Number settings) Routing > Schedule to use the business hours schedule you have configured for your account.
Please ensure you have Voicemail disabled for the Inside Schedule and/or Outside Schedule for the option that aligns with your desired workflow under the Voicemail tab in the Numbers settings from the above screenshot.You can then enable/disable Overflow routing for only the Inside/Outside Schedule you want calls to be routed to your Overflow Number for. If you have disabled Overflow for Inside Schedule then you will not see calls forwarded to your answering service if an internal agent fails to pickup a call.
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Thanks, James. Appreciate the suggestion.
This gets us most of the way there. However, if a user calls outside of business hours (ie 5p - 6a), those calls will always be routed to our answering service provider. We're looking only to send calls to that number during a very narrow window (3a-5a).
Your suggestion may work for now. Curious if there might be another way to hack this.
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Hey Danny!
My apologies for the misunderstanding!
Can I ask what you'd like to happen to your calls between 5pm - 3am?
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No problem at all. During 5p-3a, we'd ideally like calls to go to VM. If that's not an option, we'd like for them tonotbe forwarded to the overflow line.
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Hey Danny!
I think I've got a solution for you then but it would require the Zendesk Support Enterprise plan to make this work.
My suggestion here would be to create a new schedule to use just for your Talk routing. This schedule would be 5am-3am so that the 3am-5am window you wanted calls routed to your Overflow number would be considered "outside" the business hours. You can leave Voicemail On for Inside Schedule routing and only have that off for Outside schedule so that you'll get Voicemails during your desired timeframe and calls routed to your answering service during your desired window.
When your team has set themselves to Offline for Talk at the end of their regular shifts your calls would go straight to Voicemail based on there not being any Agents available to take those calls.
This suggestion could require other adjustments such as Triggers to set the Schedule that would be applied to tickets created from Talk if you have SLAs or other configurations that rely on your "normal" schedules.
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James,
Thanks for the additional suggestion. I think that setup might work for us. Very much appreciate your help!
Please ensure you have Voicemail disabled for the Inside Schedule and/or Outside Schedule for the option that aligns with your desired workflow under the Voicemail tab in the Numbers settings from the above screenshot.
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