Every call gets somewhere, even at lunchtime.
Calls do not arrive evenly. They arrive in a lump at 9:30, again while everybody is at lunch, and one at ten to six when the person who handles that has gone home.
For anyone whose number is on a website, an invoice or a van.
Four things that cost you, and what happens instead.
Every answer has a page of its own with the thing running on it. Follow any of them if you would rather see it than read about it.
Everybody calls at once
Three calls land together and two people are free. The third caller gets endless ringing or a busy signal and calls somebody else instead. You never find out, because there is nothing left behind to find out about.
A line, not a busy signal
Waiting callers get a greeting and then music, and you decide what happens when the wait runs long: another team, a mailbox, a cell phone, a different number entirely. A call never simply runs out of places to go, and nobody in the office has to notice it is happening.
See call queuesLunchtime and ten to six
Between 12:30 and two the floor is half empty and the phone has no idea. Same after closing, same on a public holiday. The caller just gets ringing, and there is no way to tell somebody who dialed at six that you open again at nine.
Closed is something the phone knows
Your opening hours are written down once, holidays included, and every line reads the same list. Out of hours the caller is told so and goes where you chose. Change the hours in one place and every number that uses them changes with it.
See business hours & holidaysPeople will not sit on hold
Hold music only buys you so long. After that they hang up, and if you are lucky you have a number on a screen. Nobody can say whether that person was ever dealt with or whether they went elsewhere that afternoon.
They hang up, you still have them
After a wait you set, the music stops and the caller is offered a way out: press a key, hang up, and go on a list instead. The callback keeps their number, their name and the queue they gave up on, and it is worked oldest first. Somebody calls them back, and the ones who are never reached can be picked up by an email that goes out on its own rather than quietly becoming nobody's job.
See queue callbacksThe same three people take everything
Whoever grabs it first answers, so three people take most of the calls and the rest of the floor barely rings. The quick ones get worn out, the quiet ones never get better at it, and at 9:30 it all lands on the same desks anyway.
You decide who gets asked first
Ring every phone at once, or go down the list one desk at a time, or hand the next call to whoever has taken the fewest so far. A call can also be held back for the people who actually know that subject, so it never rings somewhere it cannot be dealt with.
See ring strategiesWhat you would actually use.
7 of the platformPeople who read this usually read one of these.
By what you want to do
Watch a call arrive at half past twelve.
Tell us how your calls actually come in: the Monday morning lump, the lunchtime dip, the line nobody covers after five. We will show you where each of those calls ends up and exactly what the caller hears on the way there.
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