Routing Zendesk Talk calls to multiple agents at the same time
AnsweredWe need the ability to have calls routed to all available agents when they arrive, not just one person that is available. This is due to the fact we don't want customers waiting for an agent to accept or decline a call before bouncing to the next agent to decide the same thing. If the call was notified to all available agents, then the call would be answered much quicker and improve the customers experience of the system.
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Official comment
Update for 2022
Hi All,
The current strategy for our Talk Product's call routing is to integrate Voice seamlessly into our Omnichannel routing engine. This will not give customers the 'Hunt Group' functionality.
If you require hunt group functionality, there are a list of partners that might offer this. Our Marketplace can be searched using this link .
-- previous reply --
Hello,
Thanks for the feedback!
This functionality is not in our roadmap at the moment. It is in our backlog for future consideration.
Thanks
Product Team
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We also need this functionality. Our workflow and response time is greatly impacted by not having this feature. Please add this to standard Zendesk Talk capabilities!
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I also want to put my vote in the ring for this, pun not intended :). Having the ability to ring all available agents at once makes for a much quicker response to our customers.
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This is imperative if we are going to use this feature in zendesk. With a small team round-robin does not work.
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We function on fast response times on phones and tickets. We used a tool that allowed us to call all available reps and the quickest to respond got the call, improving our time to respond. Having a "Call All" function would allow us to keep response times to a time that keeps our customers very happy.
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Simultaneous call routing is necessary for my team as well. We are a small team with one primary support agent, who answers the majority of calls. 1-2 other team members are able to answer a call if the primary agent is on a call or working on something else when the call is received. And a manager is able to get a call if nobody else is available.
With only the round robin implementation, the other team members (including the manager) become the first agent in the call routing, since they would answer the least amount of calls, then the next tier, and finally it rings the primary support agent, who has been "available" the least amount of time because it is their job to answer the majority of calls. By this time the caller has been on hold for far too long. You can see how the round robin option causes major problems for small teams where there is a primary person to answers calls, with other team members also available to do so, but who should not be the first option for calls to be routed to.
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We used to have this functionality with aircall and it seems like a no brainer to us, its great to reduce waiting time and missed calls, it would be great to have on zendesk talk.
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Yes, this feature needs to be added. It's one of those no brainers!
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This is a must have functionality in order to reduce the waiting time and improve the customers experience.
By SLA we have 30 seconds to answer a call, so round-robin it's not an option... you can't even adjust the 30 second time to any inferior value ( let's say 10s).
This must have been a commercial decision, as we are charged for all the waiting time. More waiting time, more money to pay. Not even the welcome greeting or the IVR options are free.
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we need this on zendesk talk right away!
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Where do I sign for this? :)
This would be super helpfull for it would reduce our missed calls and is like having the whole CE team available for the customers not just one person.
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Necessary for our team too for the same reasons. It's a feature we're looking for in other solutions.
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You need to vote in order to be taken into consideration. Commenting it's not enough :( ... Learn how to vote here:
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I would like to put my vote in for this feature as well, as it would help greatly in our contact centre to reduce abandoned calls and wait times.
In fact I feel this should be a priority feature for Zendesk to implement.
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This should be a configurable setting. Let us decide if we want it as round robin or not.
Give us the option to adjust the 30 second waiting time to any inferior value if set as round robin and the let us decide the order of the agents if all available. Using the IVR is a solution to order those agents per departments.
Twilio, the Zendesk provider for Voice (Talk), does not limit you on this as Freshdesk use the same provider and they offer that option. So? As I mentioned before it must be a commercial decision. We will see how correct this decision was if the clients will migrate to the competition.
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We would like to see this functionality as well. With a small team, the incoming call is seen by every agent in the group at once instead of one by one, and the call would be answered quicker.
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I am in a trial, but will not be signing up without this feature. I was expecting a variety of routing options from a major company like Zendesk. Simultaneous is a must and should be the first priority to add, but others that would be nice are fixed order, and the ability to repeat the routing x number of times before going to voicemail.
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Agreed, simultaneous call routing is something required for small teams.
For example, we have one primary support agent, who answers the majority of calls with 2-3 other team members who are able to answer a call if the primary agent is on a call or working on something else when the call is received. And a manager is able to get a call if nobody else is available.
With only the round robin implementation, the Manager becomes the first agent in the call routing, since they would answer the least amount of calls, then the next tier, and finally it rings the primary support agent, who has been "available" the least amount of time because it is their job to answer the majority of calls. By this time the caller has been on hold for far too long. You can see how the round robin option causes major problems for small teams where there is a primary person to answers calls, with other team members also available to do so, but who should not be the first option for calls to be routed to.
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FYI, we have dropped Zendesk because of this and moved to an alternative,
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We have a small support team (2) and we would prefer our support calls to go to both if they are both available. That would allow one of them to continue their work if they are in the middle of something, it also supports faster response times.
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So, Zendesk, what's the deal? There is obvious usefulness to this feature, and a high number of people requesting it. Is a better customer experience and shorter wait times more important than your bottom line? So far, radio silence from ZD indicates the latter.
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THIS IS A NO BRAINER! It makes no sense that group ring is not available.
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+1 for this request as well. At the moment we're having to ask our developers to use the Talk API to automatically set our status to away when we lock or shutdown our computers since it doesn't currently seem to be able to do that.
We've also had to give all our agents the ability to set other people's status to unavailable when the other person gets up to talk to someone and forget to change their own status, even though they've locked their computer.
If there is one thing I believe would fix this issue for everyone involved, both big companies and small, is to be able to choose between round-robin and hunt-groups/simultaneous calling. This is bare-bones functionality and I'm surprised Talk has been around this long without even a foreseeable roadmap item to develop it. Simply adding this feature would significantly and directly increase Zendesk's revenue, so I find it hard to believe the effort wouldn't be worth it.
Is it possible there's some kind of hardware/software limitation between Twilio and Zendesk that actually prevents this feature from being built?
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FINALLY received an answer from ZenDesk as to why you cannot ring everyone's phones at once. Apparently Zendesk wants to run all of our businesses, and when we don't provide the best service I'm assuming they are going to reimburse us for lost revenue.
FROM ZENDESK TODAY:
I apologize for the frustration but there is reason for this. There is a best practice advisory for why we dont offer "hunt groups" where a single call rings multiple lines. This is a function of many older telephony systems and the reason behind the best practice of avoiding them is that it creates unequal work distribution on your team. For example. If John is a great agent and always picks up on the first ring then you may have agent Joe that will learn to only pick up on the 3rd or 4th ring because he knows John will pick up as soon as a call comes in. This can create agent burnout and a poor work environment. With Zendesk Talk we seek to avoid this and create agent accountability and transparency so that everyone gets an equal workload.
My response:
Respectfully, you don’t run my business, I do. Your position of your software dictating my business is really unbelievable and all the more reason that we will continue to evaluate other solutions. You have HUNDREDS of customers requesting this, if not THOUSANDS.
There are so many great reports that help us manage the situation and prevent burn out and a poor work environment. It is our responsibility and our dedication to our team, many of whom I have worked with for over 20 years, to manage our business. When your software forces each user to interact with their computer, go offline, sign out, whatever just to get up and get a cup of coffee rather than walk away knowing that everyone else’s phone will ring and a call won’t be missed, is the opposite of what your email suggests that Zendesk is doing to “help” us. We actually missed a call the other day because one of the team left their desk to work out in our company gym (in house, for free) and the call did not ring on anyone else’s system.
I know that we are all just dumb business owners and that we should rely on your best practices, but this response is amazingly short-sighted. Zendesk should listen to their customers, and there are many, who have asked for you to turn this on. I believe that you use 8x8 as your telephony host, and I know that their platform can support it.
I would compare this to a knife company only selling dull knives so that dumb people don’t cut themselves.
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Have you ever try other tools that have an integration on Zendesk to receive calls ? It was deal breaker for us too until we found SnapCall (maybe there is others ...). We’re using it for inbound calls and it works pretty well. When we receive a call, it is routing to all our Zendesk agents available at the same time. When we installed the solution, this feature was not available directly from the dashboard but if you contact their support they do it instantly.
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This is a good feature request Jeff, but if you have different agent shifts this might not work or you should complete it with something like this "the agent is not available at this time ...leave a message and you will be contacted shortly".
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We think we have found a work around on this. Hope it helps others...
We have 3 support agents and one agent we want to answer the phone 1st as he is best/most relevant person to speak to on the phone. Lets call him agent 1.
If we make 2 zen work groups, we will call them "1st line support" and "2nd Line support".
We want agent one in the "1st line group only." Put the other agents in 1st and 2nd line groups.
With these settings the agent in the 1st line seems to get the calls 1st if we have set 1st line as the default for telephones (under the phone numbers page if i remember correctly). If he is not available it then goes to 2nd line agents.
Hope this helps! Looking forward to feedback. :)
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How do we "vote" aside from ditching Talk for another VOIP product that can do something as simple as ringing all available agents? I've never owned a PBX or worked with a VOIP provider that couldn't handle such a simple task.
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Honestly, very disappointing that this functionality is not included in any package. There is also no work around to easily distribute calls the way you want. The poor UX design from a group sharing perspective is honestly making me consider cancelling my talk subscription as it isn't optimal for daily operations.
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