What is time-based call routing?

13 January 2022

Time-based routing is for people who want to offer their customers a better out of hours service.  Do your phones just ring at night or go to voicemail?  Time-Based Routing allows you to offer better and more efficient services to your customers, even when you are closed, and is an important part of your customer services strategy.

Time-based routing is the process of automatically switching parts of your telephone system on or off at certain times and is a useful way of offering things like out of hours menu systems or closing a particular department at different times to others.

Time-based routing (also called time management) uses logical timelines to open and close elements of your system.  

These are as follows-

  • IVR Menus
  • Groups
  • Announcements
  • Group Voicemail

This means that all of these elements can be switched on or off using a logical set of rules, specified using time.

Setting this up

Setting up and changing time base routing is simple.  In most cases, we will set up the time based routing for you, according to your system build profile that you submit to us when you first order your telephone system.  After this is done you can either call Customer Services free of charge on 100 and they can edit this for you, or you can use the customer portal to change your time management.

Time-based routing would normally be activated on the telephone system element that normally receives the calls when you are open, for example, the main menu or the main group.  You can check where this is by looking at your telephone numbers and seeing where these terminate.  You then create a set of exception rules by telling the system that from time A to time B on day C, send the calls to Z (the out of hours menu for example).

Overview

Time-based management allows you a high degree of flexibility when designing your telephone system, and even though most people only use this to turn on their out of hours menu at closing time.

Like what you’ve read? Give our team a call on 0800 8 303040. We’ll happily answer any questions you have.

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