Can I use an IVR menu to route calls after hours?

Question

Is it possible to automate the routing of calls to a particular phone number depending on the time of day? For example, can I have calls routed differently outside of business hours, for an on-call team?

Answer

If your account allows it, add an overflow number when business hours are configured. This way, if your customers call when all your agents are busy or outside business hours, you can automatically route overflow calls to an alternate number.

If you can't use an overflow number, then you aren't able to automatically route calls based on a specific set of business hours. Talk is set up so you can apply one set of business hours schedule to a phone number. Talk is also set up to automatically route calls to voicemail if a call is received outside of the applied schedule.

If you have a schedule set up for your business hours, within Zendesk, for example, 8:00 am until 5:00 pm, and apply that schedule to a specific Talk number, any calls that are received outside of this schedule route straight to voicemail for that number. For more information, see this article: Routing calls based on business hours.

As a workaround, update your greeting to include a message about your business hours, indicating something to the effect of the below.

Our normal business hours are 8:00 to 5:00.
If you're calling outside this timeframe and need immediate assistance, please press 3. 

From there, you can have that number route to a different number or forward the call to an external number. Below are some resources to assist with setting this up.

• Creating a custom greeting and assigning it to numbers
• Route incoming calls with IVR: Creating an IVR menu

Note: This workaround detailed above does not create a ticket for the calls diverted from the Zendesk IVR to an outside number.