How do I set up call routing in Talk?

Question

How do I set up the routing for customers that call my Talk phone number?

Answer

Once you added a phone number within Talk, set up the routing for that number within Admin Center.

This article covers the following sections:

• Prerequisites
• Confirm you have a Talk number enabled and set up agent groups
• Manage your Talk line settings
• Select the agent groups that will receive calls
• Set up the greetings for your phone line
• Configure advanced permissions if necessary
• Verification steps and video walkthrough
• Additional resources

Prerequisites

• You must have a Talk Team plan or higher. If you need to confirm your plan level, contact the owner of your account and have them view the plan subscription.
• You must be an administrator in the account.

Note: Confirm you're using Talk instead of Sell Voice. Talk is the voice function within Support that allows your customers and agents to place phone calls within support tickets. Sell Voice allows you to call leads and contacts directly from Deals in the Sell product. See article: Enabling Sell Voice for more information on setting up Sell Voice.

Confirm you have a Talk number enabled and set up agent groups

Set up at least one group of agents who will serve calls in the account. See the articles below for more information:

Enabling Talk and configuring general settings Creating groups Adding and removing team members from groups

Manage your Talk line settings

Configure the permissions for your phone line. Open Admin Center, click Channels > Talk and email > Talk, and Open Lines. Click into the phone line you want to set up and configure the settings. For instructions on how to configure each of these settings, see the article: Managing Talk line settings.

On higher plan levels, use an IVR to allow callers to choose their call destination by presses a key when they call in. You can also add a tag from specific IVR key presses to each ticket if you use omnichannel routing. Here is an example of how an IVR allows customers to choose between multiple options when they call in:

If you wish to set up an IVR instead of routing calls directly to groups of agents, see the article: How do I set up an IVR?

Select the agent groups that will receive calls

Choose which agent groups will receive calls. For more information, see the article: Routing incoming calls to groups of agents. If you have a Professional plan level or higher, configure an IVR menu to allow users that call in to route themselves using key presses. For more information, see the article: Routing incoming calls with IVR.

Note: For call routing on an Enterprise plan with omnichannel routing enabled, you can create your own unified agent statuses for agents to receive Talk calls.

Set up the greetings for your phone line

Record and set the greetings for your phone line. For more information, see the article: How do I add a new greeting?

Configure advanced permissions if necessary

If your plan allows, route calls based on business hours and practice transferring a call, including a warm handoff. You can also choose to serve calls on a personal phone rather than from your web browser. For more information, see the article: How do I take calls on a personal or desk phone?

Verification steps and video walkthrough

Have your agents set their Talk agent state to Online and perform a test to route a call to them by calling your Talk number.

Note: If you have omnichannel routing enabled, the call routing and agent status behavior is different. For more information, see the article: Using omnichannel routing to route calls.

See below for a video demonstration of the steps listed above:

For an example of how to escalate a call between agents in Talk, see the video:

Additional resources

• Getting started with Zendesk Talk for voice
• Zendesk Talk resources for voice
• How are calls routed to my agents in Talk?