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.

Set 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.

To set your Contact Center call routing, head to your Dialpad Admin Settings.

1. Select Ai Contact Centers
2. Select the desired Contact Center
3. Select 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.

Open or closed hours

Choose different routing options based on your hours of operation. 

• Open Hours Routing determines call routing options for the hours that your Contact Center is open. 
• Closed Hours determines call routing options for the hours when your Contact Center is closed.

Unless your Contact Center is set as open 24/7, you will need to configure both open and closed hours routing.

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. 
  • If an agent misses a call because they’re on another call, they will be moved to the bottom of the list — this is intentional and ensures the list order is maintained. 
• 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 sending calls to agents, you can also set how long calls ring out before defaulting to your second option, such as a hold queue.

Unanswered calls are 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 them to request a callback or leave a voicemail (if enabled) before being 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 a voicemail, a message, an IVR menu, or another team member or shared line.

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, office, contact center, or geo router: Choose another shared line 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 can choose one that is located in another office within the entire company.
  • By default, calls will end if the caller doesn't choose an option after the hearing the menu twice. To avoid this, 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, and 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.
• To an IVR workflow: Route calls through a customized IVR system. Learn more about IVR workflow in this Help Center.

Dial-By directories

Use Dial By directories to let users use the keypad to enter a name or an extension of a user. Dial-by directories can be set up for a specific Office, or across the entire Company.  

Welcome greeting

Set a welcome greeting for callers during open or closed hours. 

Choose to record your own welcome greeting, or upload your existing audio file. 

• To hear the existing greeting, press the play icon. 
• To remove a greeting, select the red X.

Ring duration

Set how long a call will ring before Dialpad assumes an agent is unavailable.
 

Changes here will be reflected in your open and closed hours. 

To set your ring duration, move the slider left or right. 

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. 

Adjust your Contact Center's hold queue by customizing key details such as queue size, hold music, and delayed greetings. 

Hold queue size

Determine the maximum number of people that can be in the hold queue at the same time. Dialpad limits a Contact Center's hold queue to 500 callers on the Advanced plan and 1,000 callers on the Premium plan.

You can also set the maximum time people can wait in the hold queue (choose from 10 seconds, all the way up to 300 minutes).

Hold greeting 

Select the greeting callers hear when placed on hold — this greeting plays once before the hold music begins. 

Choose to record or upload your own custom greeting, or use Dialpad's default hold greeting.

Use a Delay greeting to keep callers active while they wait in the hold queue. Choose how frequently the delay greeting message plays by adjusting the interval, the minimum time option is 30 seconds.

Advanced hold queue settings

Use the advanced hold queue features to further enhance the caller experience by turning on (or off!) the following settings.

• Allow callers to be placed in your hold queue when no agents are available: Callers will be placed in your hold queue even if no agents are on duty — don't forget to set a hold queue limit to avoid long wait times.
• Allow existing calls to stay in queue after contact center has closed: Allows agents to answer calls that were in your queue before the Contact Center closed. Don't worry, calls will still respect your defined maximum queue wait time, and will follow the closed hours fallback option if the call times out.
• Let callers know their place in the queue: Gives callers an idea of how long they might be waiting. 
  • This option is not available when a maximum queue wait time of less than 2 minutes is selected.
• Allow callers to exit the hold queue to voicemail: Lets callers exit the hold queue and leave a voicemail by pressing a specific number.
• Allow callers to request a callback when the queue has a certain number of callers: Lets callers request a callback when there are more than a specific number of callers in the queue. 
  • Connect to agent before calling back customer: The callback will first connect to an available agent before dialing the customer.

Hold music

Set hold music to entertain your callers while they wait to connect to an agent. 

Upload your own custom hold music, or select one of Dialpad's queue songs. 

Select the play icon to hear each song once you've selected it from the drop-down menu.

Voicemail greeting

Set a message (greeting) to play to your callers before they leave a voicemail. Choose to use Dialpad's default voicemail greeting, record your own greeting, or upload an mp3 file.

Voicemail greetings will only play during the hours that your Contact Center is open.  

Fallback options

Any calls that go unanswered will be routed to your fallback option.

Fallback options let you choose to send callers:

• Directly to voicemail: Agents receive notifications when voicemails are left.
• To a message (no voicemail): Default or custom message.
• To another department, office, contact center or geo. router: Choose another shared line to send calls to.
• To a team member, room phone, or external 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.