How are calls routed to my agents in Talk?

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

Note: When you have omnichannel routing enabled, routing happens differently. Omnichanel routing is the default routing experience for all accounts and trial customers of Zendesk Suite created after December 11, 2024. For more information, see this article: About omnichannel routing with unified agent status. If you enable custom unified agent statuses, calls are only routed to agents with permission to receive calls. You can also add a tag from specific IVR key presses into each ticket if you use omnichannel routing. 

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.

Tip: If you're using omnichannel routing, check out the Zendesk Omnichannel: Agent state dashboard to understand how your agents are spending their time.