How do I take calls on a personal or desk phone?

Question

How can I set up call forwarding from Zendesk Talk to a personal, mobile, or desk phone?

Answer

To receive calls on an external phone line, you must have access to Talk as an Agent or Team lead for your agent role and a functional Agent forwarding number.

Agent forwarding number setting.png

Activate incoming calls to the forwarding number using the Via Phone () setting. If you don't have a forwarding number set within your agent profile, you'll see a grayed out setting and the message Via Phone: Not configured.

Not configured.png

For detailed instructions on how to forward calls to your personal phone, see Setting up your browser or phone for calls.

Agents using Agent forwarding must sign in to Zendesk and remain available Via Phone. If you aren't signed in to Zendesk and online in a browser, calls don't flow through to agents. If your network is unstable, this can also cause issues for forwarded calls.

To determine if Talk is configured to take calls Via Browser () or Via Phone (), use the corresponding icon displayed next to the status bar of the Talk dropdown.

Via Phone setting.png

Calls forwarded using agent forwarding are still recorded in Zendesk. When placing outbound calls using your personal phone, you still need to dial out from the browser to connect with your phone before the call connects with the customer.

Call forwarding limitations:

The Support mobile app doesn't allow call functionality within the app. For more information, see About the Zendesk Support mobile app
When calls are forwarded to an external phone, the caller ID displays the Talk number, not the original caller's phone number. This helps agents identify which incoming calls are coming through Talk. Charges apply when forwarding calls to an external phone. For more information about the charges applied per country, see Zendesk Talk number availability and pricing
If you have omnichannel routing enabled, the call forwarding behavior changes. If call forwarding is enabled and the status of an agent is automatically set to offline because the agent has been disconnected, calls to that agent will no longer be forwarded to the agent’s phone.

Note: Omnichannel routing is enabled as the default routing experience for Zendesk Suite accounts created after December 5, 2024.

Additional resources

If you're new to Talk and configuring settings for the first time, see: