Question
How can agents 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. You can then forward incoming calls to the forwarding number using the Via Phone ( ) setting. For detailed instructions on how to forward calls to your personal phone, see the article: Setting up your browser or phone for calls.
Agents using Agent forwarding need to be logged into Zendesk and available Via Phone. If you're not logged into Zendesk and online in a browser, calls don't flow through to agents. If your network is unstable, this may 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.
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 the article: 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 the article: 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 are new to Talk and configuring settings for the first time, see the articles:
8 comments
Alec Lively
The requirement to be logged in on a browser is a major bummer. It basically kills our on call rotation.
2
Erin Sherman
I have call forwarding set up to my cell phone - but the clients phone number doesn't appear, just the service number. Is there a way to get the client number to show on my cell so I can know who is calling?
0
Dekbi
Apparently, there isn't a way to have the caller's phone number appear when you forward calls on your personal phone. It is mainly to know that the call is from your Zendesk Talk number.
For your reference: Setting up your phone for call forwarding
I hope this helps!
0
James Persson
Is it possible to have two forwarding numbers and toggle between them? For example personal phone or when busy to 3rd party receptionist phone number.
0
Dane
Hi James Persson,
As it turns out, agent forwarding is limited to one phone number.
I'd recommend creating a Community post separately for that with your use case to help get more visibility and votes on the idea. Then, others can share their use cases to further drive demand for that feature.
2
James Persson
Done I'd encourage anyone interested in having more than one number for forwarding to go support my post below with a comment and bump.
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/4564383785114-Agent-forwarding-is-limited-to-one-phone-number-
0
Santhosh Balasubramanya
If a customer is using Zendesk Talk and Support and if we use the call forwarding to a 3rd party number and use a voice bot to triage the conversation. If we need to transfer call to available agent how do we achieve it as Zendesk does not support SIP.
0
Destiny
As of the moment, Zendesk Talk does not directly support SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), which makes call transfer to an external system more challenging.
If you're using a voice bot combined with call forwarding and wish to transfer the call to an agent available in Zendesk, you'll want to use a setup that involves forwarding the call back to Zendesk Talk so that it can be routed appropriately.
Here's a broad outline of how it could work:
To set this up, you would need:
a. A third-party voice bot system that can accept forwarded calls, perform the triage, and then forward calls as needed.
b. Two different Zendesk Talk lines: one that the initial call comes into, and which forwards calls to the voice bot; then a second one that the voice bot uses to forward calls back into Zendesk. This is an important part, as this second line is where you configure your routing for agents.
Please note this is a high-level outline and the specifics will vary depending on the specifics of your Zendesk setup and voice bot capabilities. Hope that helps.
0