Set Call Routing Rules for Contact Centers

Timezones, customer priority level and call volume all impact your Contact Center's availability. Set custom call routing rules to ensure that your calls are directed to the right agents, every time.

Let's get into the details of configuring your Contact Center's call routing. 

Configure Contact Center call routing

Once you've set your business hours for a Contact Center, it's time to configure the call routing rules for when your Contact Center is open and closed.

From Dialpad.com, navigate to your Admin Settings

1. Navigate to Contact Centers
2. Select the desired Contact Center
3. Navigate to Business Hours & Call Handling
4. Navigate to Call Routing
5. Select Edit Call Routing

If you've set specific (normal or split) business hours for a Contact Center, you'll need to go through some of these steps twice for both open hours and closed hours.

Route calls to agents

Dialpad offers 5 different ways to route calls to Agents:

• Longest idle: Agents are rung individually based on whoever has been idle the longest.
• Fixed order (same fixed order): Agents are listed in the order they should be rung every single time. The priority never changes.
• Round robin (rotating fixed order): Agents are listed in a prioritized order for which they should be rung. When a call comes in, the first agent that answers is moved to the end of that list. That way, the same agent isn’t always taking the calls.
• Skills-based: Agents are rung individually from highest to lowest skill level rank.
• Random: Agents are rung sequentially based on a list of all Agents that is randomized every time the list is completed.

By choosing to send calls to Agents, you also have the ability to change how long calls ring out to them before defaulting to your second option such as a hold queue.

Calls that go unanswered by any Agents will get routed to your fallback option. While Dialpad determines the next available agent, the call is sent back to the queue so that your callers are not stuck listening to endless ringing. While they wait, the caller will hear hold music and DTMF menu options that allow the caller to request a callback or leave a voicemail (if enabled in the hold queue feature) before they are routed to the next available agent.

To change this, please reach out to our Support Team.

Other routing options

Select Other Routing Options if you prefer to route calls to voicemail, an IVR menu, or another Contact Center or Voicemail.

Other Routing Options offers the following choices:

• Directly to voicemail: Agents receive notifications when voicemails are left
• To a message (no voicemail): Default or custom message
• To another Department or Contact Center: Choose another Department to send calls to
• To a team member/room phone/number: Choose another team member, room, phone, or number (including outside Dialpad; contact our Support Team first) to send calls to
• To an automated response menu: Options include dial by name directory (Office), dial by extension directory, dial by name directory (Company), forward to a Department/Contact Center/Office, forward to a person or number, leave a voicemail, recorded message, Operator, and disabled
  • If you forward to another Department or Contact Center using an automated response menu, you may choose one that it located in another Office within the entire Company 
  • Calls will end by default if the caller doesn't choose an option after the menu repeats twice, but you're able to set one of the options as the default instead; this also applies if you've set one of the options to ring Operators and the Operators do not answer
  • When using the automated response menu, the Recorded Message that plays is uninterruptible, all DTMF entries will be ignored. When the recorded message is completed, the call will return to the same automated response playing the initial greeting.

Only one general routing type per Contact Center is allowed. To customize, set up an automated response menu to offer greater flexibility to customers.

Contact Center is allowed. To customize, set up an automated response menu to offer greater flexibility to customers.

'Dial By' Directory

Using an automated response menu with 'dial by' directories? Dial by name, whether for 'This Office' or 'Company-Wide,' and dial by extension directories will prompt callers to enter the appropriate name or extension.

If dialing by name, they'll use the keypad number corresponding to the intended recipient's first name. If dialing by extension, they'll use the keypad to enter the exact extension.

Welcome greeting

Set a welcome greeting for callers during open or closed hours. It defaults to 'no greeting', and upon activating you have the option to record or upload an audio file to use.

Ring duration

Set how long Contact Center phones and devices ring before Dialpad assumes an Agent is not available. Agents can also set their ring duration to a length shorter than what's chosen here.

Hold queue

Set a hold queue for when all Contact Center Agents are busy on other calls. As Agents become available, calls will route to them. You can determine the hold queue's size, wait time, greeting, and hold music.

Hold queues for Contact Centers also allow delayed greetings and advanced settings including:

• Allow callers to be placed in your hold queue when no Agents are available
• Allow existing calls to stay in the queue after Contact Center has closed
• Let callers know their place in the queue
• Allow callers to exit the hold queue to voicemail by pressing [manual entry]
• Allow callers to request a callback when the queue has [number] or more calls by pressing [manual entry]

Dialpad limits a Contact Center's hold queue to 500 callers on the Pro plan and 1,000 callers on the Enterprise plan.

Use the default hold greeting, or upload your custom greeting. 

If you're using our default greeting, be aware that your Contact Center name will be read to the caller — if your Contact Center has an unusual name such as 'Calm Down Angry Clients' we recommend recording or uploading a custom greeting so that the Contact Center name does not play. 

Fallback options

Set fallback options to determine what happens to calls when no Agents are available or on duty during business hours. 

You'll only see fallback options if you selected 'Route Calls to Agents' as 'Other Routing Options' does not display it.

Fallback options are:

• Directly to voicemail: Agents receive notifications when voicemails are left
• To a message (no voicemail): Default or custom message
• To another Department: Choose another Department to send calls to
• To a team member/room phone/number: Choose another team member, room, phone, or number (including outside Dialpad; as before, this will require contacting our support team to enable it first) to send calls to
• To an automated response menu: Options include dial by name directory, dial by extension directory, forward to a Department, forward to a person or number, leave a voicemail, recorded message, and disabled

Voicemail greeting

Set a voicemail greeting if your fallback option is 'directly to voicemail' or 'leave a voicemail' as in an automated response menu. You have the option to record or upload an audio file to use in addition to the default greeting.