Understanding Call Routing

Setting up your phone number for optimal success is a key step in getting your users ready for Aircall. While setting up your numbers, you can take a closer look at understanding Aircall routing through this guide.

What is Call Routing?

Call Routing is the system that dispatches incoming calls, based on the Availability status of users. By understanding and making use of Aircall's routing logic and different ringing rules, you will be able to set each number up to route calls to your Users or Teams based on pre-established criteria such as business hours or skill.

In Aircall, the routing is based on the following distribution criteria:

• Operational availability

• Routing principles & logic

• Ringing rules

Operational Availability

Calls will be routed through to your users based on the business hours of your numbers and the availability of the users assigned to each line. If your phone number is closed, or your users are unavailable, then the call will not be routed to them.

You can follow the set-up guidelines to establish your business hours for each of your phone lines so that the number will open and close automatically each day. Additionally, you will want to determine which messages you would like to enable so that customers can either leave a voicemail or call back when the phone number has opened again/there are more available agents.

Next, it’s essential that you have assigned users and/or teams in the call distribution of the phone line so that calls can be answered. As a best practice, we recommend that users utilize the availability feature (set up through their user profile on the phone) so that their availability will automatically change to Available and Do Not Disturb based on their schedule.

In the Aircall, a user can either be:

• Available

• In a call

• In Wrap-up time or After-call work

• Unavailable

• Offline

Please note that when selecting Unavailable, you will additionally need to select from the unavailable reasons listed below:

• On a break

• Out for lunch

• In training

• Back office

• Other

These possibilities are narrowed into three availability statuses which determine how calls are routed:

Available

• the agent is connected to an app (desktop, web, or mobile)

• or the user has a Forward-to-device activated

• the user is not in-call, in wrap-up time, in after-call work (mandatory tagging), outside of their set working hours, or set to Do not disturb

Busy

• the user is in-call

• or the user is in wrap-up time or after-call work (mandatory tagging)

Unavailable

• the user is set as Unavailable in the availability bar

• the user is outside of their set working hours

• the user is offline (the app is switched off, or the computer is in sleep mode/off)

The more users or teams you have assigned to a phone number, the more likely it is that your calls will be answered and you’ll experience fewer missed calls.

Let’s take a look at using that principle to your advantage.

Routing Logic & Principles

As soon as you receive an incoming call with an available user, Aircall will distribute the call to that user, which will ring to their Phone application. This includes all applications they are signed into, as well as any forwarding devices that are enabled on their user profile. The same status is showcased on all of the phones that you are logged into.

Calls are distributed in the order of first in, first out. This means that the older the call, the quicker it will be distributed to the next available user. If a user is a part of multiple teams or assigned to several lines, and is busy when other calls are ringing lines they are assigned to, they will be included back in each distribution as soon as they are available again.

This also includes when a new call comes in and a user was previously engaged in a call, in wrap-up time, or still in mandatory tagging. Aircall will include the user in the distribution once they have become available again, and they will then be able to answer calls that have already been waiting in the queue.

Keep in mind that if teams or users are busy and unavailable to take the call, the call will not be dispatched and will remain in the queue for the allotted queuing time until a previously busy user becomes available again (this also includes users that are offline). However, depending on your settings, there may need to be at least one user currently busy for a call to wait within the queue. By default, if no users are busy, and everyone is either Offline or Unavailable, the call will skip to the next position in the queue.

Depending on the workflow you’ve set up for your number, calls could go to the voicemail or absence message and then will appear as a missed call in the To-do section of the Phone for the users who are assigned to the line.

Ringing Rules for Teams

In Aircall, you’ll have three standard ringing options to choose from when utilizing a Team. If you have assigned one user to a phone number, you can customize how long a call should ring to the user, starting from a minimum of 10 seconds up to 3600 seconds. Please notice that any value outside of this range is not accepted.

Random

Aircall will select a random user within the team that is available as well as wait for any busy user (they will be added back into the distribution if they become available before the end of the team queueing time. The selected user will ring for 25 seconds before the call rings another random user. This repeats until the queue time has passed, or all agents are unavailable, depending on your settings.

Simultaneous

Aircall will ring to all available users, as well as wait for any busy user to become available again (they will be added back into the distribution if they become available before the end of the team queueing time).

Longest Idle

Aircall will ring, for 25 seconds, to the user who has been 'Idle' for the longest amount of time. Should that user not answer, the call will ring to the user with the next longest idle time.

Note for Mobile App users: Due to the mobile SDK restriction on Android and iOS, we can only ring users for 10 minutes on Android, and 1 minute on iOS, regardless of if the queuing time is set for longer.

If you need help troubleshooting a few scenarios, let’s take a look at a few routing examples:

Ringing Rules for Numbers

In addition to setting the ringing rules for your teams, each Aircall number has two additional options you can toggle on and off.

Respect Queuing Time (RQT)

Enabling the Respect Queuing Time feature for a number allows you to make sure calls stay in the queue for the full ringing time set for each of your teams assigned to the number, regardless of the agent status.

Priority Line

Enabling the Priority Line feature for a number allows you to prioritize calls to that number over calls from non-priority lines.

Using Additional Devices with Aircall Routing

Some users might frequently step away from their desks and use our mobile applications or our forward-to-device feature. In these instances, as long as the user is connected to the application and set as available, calls will ring to all devices connected in the same logic.

Keep in mind that using the forward-to-device feature is intended for those who do not wish to use the mobile or desktop applications, but rather to rely on their mobile carrier service. It will not be possible to use this feature with the mobile application activated at the same time.

Call Routing Variables

The efficiency of your call center can vary on a few overarching variables based on your specific use case:

• Number of agents staffed

• Specialized agents with specific skill sets (specializations, languages)

• Volume

It’s important to take a step back to look at the advantages and disadvantages of using teams vs. users, as well as utilizing the different ringing rules made available through Aircall.