Question
What is the default routing when calls come into my Zendesk Talk account?
Answer
Zendesk routes an incoming call to an agent based on both of the following:
- The agent with the longest amount of time elapsed since they last answered a call
- Verify that agents appear online, from the live data dashboard
When agents log into Talk and go online, they will be prioritized for routing as they are the most recently available agents.
If an agent misses or declines a call, Zendesk routes the call to the next available agent. If all available agents miss or decline a call, the call routes to voicemail. Note that an outbound call affects the time elapsed since agents last answered a call.
The default wait time, before a call is routed from one agent to the next, is 30 seconds. Talk Enterprise customers can adjust the Call offering time limit. For more information about available Talk number settings, see the article: Managing Talk line settings.
If a caller exceeds the Maximum queue wait time set in your accounts settings, the call may route to voicemail before being offered to all agents. For more information on Talk settings, see the article: Enabling Talk and configuring general settings.
Finally, Zendesk doesn't route calls to all agents at the exact same time. Talk follows the routing rules outlined above. This is the case for all routing options, including the IVR. Routing options can be segmented by routing incoming calls to groups of agents, as well as routing incoming calls with IVR.
24 comments
Perla Rimmerman
I'm experiencing the same problem Shawn describes above. We have an agent that can go online for 40 min or so with or so without receiving ANY calls (we have calls waiting), and all calls are being routed to the other agents, skipping this one. So I have 3 agents frazzled and scrambling to keep up, and one not doing anything.
Is there anything that this agent may be doing for this to happen? What would be the things to check in this case?
2
Dion
Hi Perla,
We highly advise that you contact our customer support team so that we can take a look at the calls and see what availabilities there were in the system by the time this happened.
Regards,
Dion
0
Erin Lake
Seeing the same issue that Shawn is, where a person that has recently switched from offline to online will be the next person to receive an incoming call, despite other people that have been online for 30 to 40 minutes, without going away or to transfer mode, and have received no calls so far.
0
Anne Ronalter
Hello Erin,
It is indeed strange, that the calls do not seem to get routed correctly.
Therefore I have opened a ticket on your behalf in order to find out why this is happening.
0
Ksenia Shanyuk
Hello
Following from the above, could I please also get assistance with the same issue. One of my agents always gets the majority of the incoming calls. From what I understand after reading various articles available, I am not able to reroute calls to the agents from the same organisation.
Please advise if you require any further information
Many thanks
0
CX Automations
Hello,
I am having the same issue as those above. One of our agents tends to get the most calls while others sitting online will receive none. We have done testing and the calls will sit waiting in the queue until the top agent is available.
Thanks,
Sam
0
Shawn Dismuke
I guess my comment was wiped or aged out so just reposting that it's still an issue even now. We've found that setting ourselves Offline instead of Away tends to alleviate the issue somewhat. But we'll still see instances of someone who has been offline for awhile, immediately receive a call when they went online, when other people have already been online. I still say it would be nice to know which Agent is currently up next in the queue whether in the app or via API.
1
Jason Schaeffer
You can see your Agent activity within the Talk Dashboard which will show you your agents status and the length they have been in said status. That will give you an idea of how you can expect your calls to route:
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408831823514-Analyzing-call-activity-with-the-Talk-dashboard#topic_vqs_vgx_fv
I can also mark that as product feedback for you regarding the ability to see this via API or possibly a simplified way of knowing for a certainty which agent is the next to be served a call.
Thanks!
0
Sebastian Bornemann
Hi, we want to use talk starting in the next one to two weeks.
One problem, though: For tests, we have uploaded an 8 minute wait greeting (music with some spoken lines every few minutes).
When I call and choose the agent group via IVR, I hear the waiting greeting. Two agents are active in the group. First agent doesn't respond, second agent doesn't respond, and after that minute of waiting, the waiting greeting is cut off and the voicemail inactive greeting plays, and the call ends.
We want to circle that call around and try the agents again and again instead of ending the call when each one hasn't answered the first time. How do we do that?
1
Dekbi
Apparently, agents who already missed or declines a call will no longer receive that call as Talk will not offer it again to them. I've taken a look and found that other users are discussing similar needs here: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/4409222622106-Call-Routing-to-Agents-more-than-once
You can up-vote that original post and add your detailed use-case to the conversation. Threads with a high level of engagement ultimately get flagged for product managers to review when they go through roadmap planning.
Specific examples, details about impact, and how you currently handle things are the most helpful things to share to help our product teams understand the full scope of the need when working on solutions.
We truly value customer feedback and your voice and votes in the product feedback topics in the community help influence future Zendesk functionality.
0
Katie Gork
Hi Zendesk,
Can you please advise when we get a call how we get all team members 'zendesk talk' to ring and person who is available take the call - similar way to how the chat works?
Can you please advise?
Thanks, Katie
0
Dion
Zendesk Talk uses a round-robin cycle for calls which means that it is not possible to ring all agents who have Zendesk Talk access. You may check this article for more information: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408881889562-Can-I-route-Talk-calls-to-all-agents-at-once-or-to-specific-individual-agents-
It is also discussed in this article that incoming calls are routed to agents who have the maximum elapsed time since the last call.
Hope this makes sense.
Regards,
Dion
0
angela schiff
Does "last call attended," refer solely to inbound calls, or would an agent-initiated outbound call impact whether a call is routed to a specific agent?
0
Fab S.
Considering that, "an incoming call is offered to the agent who has the maximum time elapsed since the last call attended and is available to take a new call"
Let's say that an Agent was the next on the queue and had to make an outbound call, hence, this Agent would be out and the next with the maximum time elapsed since the last call attended will be the next on queue (Agents in Online status).
When the outbound call is finished and Agent is back online, the time elapsed should be reseted and the Agent would go back to the "end of the queue".
Hope this information helps.
Best,
0
Varsha
I'm also having this issue and I'm not seeing a viable solution. Has anyone figured this out?
0
Dekbi
I can see we have an ongoing conversation about this through your support request.
I'll send my responses to you via email.
Have a good day!
-1
Vaughan
Please clarify sentence 2 of paragraph 1: "If an agent misses or declines a call then the call is routed to the next available agent."
Does this imply the call is routed to the next agent "who has the maximum time elapsed since the last call attended and is available to take a new call"? Or does it route to the truly next available agent meaning not whomever may have the longest elapsed time?
0
Jupete Manitas
Hi Vaughan,
The call will be routed to the next available agent in a round-robin cycle. New calls are routed first to the agent that is available for the longest time, with the longest time elapsed since they last answered a call. If declined or missed, the call is then offered to the agent who is available for the next longest time since they last answered a call, and will continue like that until the call has been answered or ended. You may also see this here. We hope this clarifies!
0
PAUL STRAUSS
We have a unique scenario we're trying to solve for and can't figure out if there's any way to do this with Zendesk or with a third-party integration. We have certain enterprise clients who may warm transfer calls to us, and we want to figure out a way to alert agents that one of these calls is inbound and basically jump to the front of the call queue. If that is not feasible, is there any possible way to make all inbound calls alert all available agents, so whoever is available can grab it as fast as possible.
0
Dainne Kiara Lucena-Laxamana
Hi PAUL STRAUSS,
For a workflow where a call would jump at the front of the queue, you could create a workflow where one of your numbers would be set as a "priority number" & only for those priority calls.
More information can be found here. Specifically this section:
You could also set up a status for your Talk agents to be "transfers only" agents. That way they won't be notified for the normal calls and will be notified only for those transferred calls. I highly recommend checking out this article as well.
0
PAUL STRAUSS
Dainne Kiara Lucena-Laxamana this is great news. I didn't know this was a feature.
0
Chaimiao Wu
Finally, calls do not get routed to all agents at the exact same time but will follow the routing rules outlined above. This is the case for all routing options including the IVR. Routing options can be segmented by routing incoming calls to groups of agents as well as routing incoming calls with IVR.
>> Do you have plan to improve this? We really need to make all agents informed when an inbound call comes. Else, our customers have to wait for a long time in the queue.
0
Steven Peters
Do you have any plans to enable hunting, I have a default group then 2 or more additional groups but I need the system to try the default group first, then the 2nd group, then a 3rd group, etc...and not the default group first then anyone from the remaining groups.
This to me is a feature in Zentalk that many organizations would benefit from.
2
Dave Maher
For the benefit of Francis
0