Inbound Call Center

If inbound calling is enabled, you will have the ability to configure “Agent Skills” that define where inbound calls should be routed.
Configuring skills on Inbound Numbers and Supervisors/Dispatchers is optional. Using skills is required when you need to prioritize who gets a call or control when a supervisor gets a call while they are handling another call in progress.

Here’s how it works:

When no skills are configured on an inbound number (default behavior).

All logged in supervisors who are not on an active call are selected to receive the next inbound call and all their phones will ring for them to accept the call.

If all logged in supervisors are on active call, then the system will send the call to all logged in supervisors. This allows someone to place their current call on hold and accept the new inbound call (default behavior before skills based routing was available). If you want to ensure that a supervisor is only allowed to handle one call at a time then you must enable skills based routing.

When no supervisors are logged in or no one accepts a call, the call is routed to Voicemail if configured otherwise a message is played out that no Dispatchers are available and please call back at a later time.

Even if you configure skills on all your supervisors, these are ignored when the inbound number does not have a skill and thus calls route to all supervisors regardless of supervisor skill configuration.

When Skills are configured on an Inbound Number.

When a call arrives at number configured with one or more skills, only logged in supervisors who are assigned one or more of those skills are selected for call routing.

When a skill is assigned to a supervisor with no priority (default) they will always be selected to receive a call regardless of how any other supervisor is configured. Don’t set a priority on a skill for a supervisor you always want to be able to answer a call for a skill.

When a priority for a skill is set for one or more supervisors on a skill, only those highest priority are selected before those with lower priorities. The highest priority is 1, while the lowest is 10. For example if one supervisor ABC is skilled at priority 2, and others at 5, then a call is only sent to the one supervisor ABC if they are available and the other supervisors will not get a call. If supervisor ABC is not available (not logged in or on active call) then the system will select supervisors at priority 5 to receive calls. Thus you can have up to 10 tiers or levels of call selection. Only supervisors at one priority will receive calls and those with no priority configured for a skill.

Always routing a call to a supervisor by default is disabled. This means when a supervisor is on an active call (either inbound, or Click to Call Outbound), they are never selected to receive another call. By setting “Always Route Call” to “Yes” for the skill, the supervisor will continue to get calls delivered to their number. This allows the supervisor to potentially put one call on hold and answer the second incoming call. This is useful when you have a low number of agents and call volume and want to handle another call while one is already in progress.

When no supervisors can be selected, the call is routed to Voicemail if configured otherwise a message is played out that no Dispatchers are available and please call back at a later time.

Ensure that when you add a skill to an inbound number you also configure supervisors with the skill as well or the call can never be routed to a supervisor and will always be sent to Voicemail.

Use Cases:

Simple Call Center with a couple agents who should always be able to receive all calls. Calls will always ring agents even if all agents are on an active call.

Do not configure skills based routing

Simple call center with the need for always enforcing one active call per agent

Create one skill

Assign skill to your inbound number

Assign skill to all your supervisors (do not set a priority or set always route to yes)

Call center with 2 groups or supervisors where group 1 should get calls first, and if no one is available in group 1, only then route to group 2.

Create one skill

Assign the skill to inbound phone number

Assign the skill to all supervisors in Group 1 with a priority of 1

Assign the skill to all supervisors in Group 2 with a priority of 2

Optionally configure a supervisor to always receive calls along with those selected from priorities

Assign skill to supervisor with no priority set

Call Center with 2 inbound numbers (additional numbers added by contacting support at TTS) where some supervisors will handle calls from one or both numbers.

Create two skills, Skill 1 and Skill 2

Assign Skill 1 to one inbound number

Assign Skill 2 to the other inbound number

Assign one or more skills to each supervisor based on whether they should receive calls for any one or both of the skills.

Call center with Custom IVR menu that uses language selection (contact support at TTS)

Two skills will be created by TTS (English and Spanish) and assigned to your inbound number

Assign Spanish skill to your Spanish speaking supervisors with a priority of 4

Assign English skill to your Spanish speaking supervisors with a priority of 5 if you want them to be able to also take English calls as well

Assign English skill to your English only supervisors with a priority of 3. This will ensure they will be selected for a call before the Spanish speaking supervisors who also speaks English.