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

Claire Miller
  • Edited
Zendesk Customer Care

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.

Note: The Support mobile app does not allow call functionality within the app. For more information, see the article: About the Zendesk Support mobile app.

Agents using Agent forwarding need to be logged into Zendesk and available Via Phone. If you are 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 that is displayed next to the status bar of the Talk dropdown.

Browser_setting_for_

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

Note: When calls are forwarded to an external phone, the caller-ID displays the Zendesk Talk number, and not the original caller's phone number. This is to help agents identify which incoming calls are coming in through Talk. Charges occur 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.

Video walkthrough

Additional resources

If you are new to Talk and configuring settings for the first time, see the articles:

Note: 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.
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6 Comments

  • Alec Lively

    The requirement to be logged in on a browser is a major bummer. It basically kills our on call rotation.

    1
  • 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
    Zendesk Customer Care
    Hi Erin,
     
    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
    Zendesk Engineering

    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. 

    1
  • 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

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