Skip to main content
All CollectionsChannelsPhoneManaging
Manage phone availability
Manage phone availability

Manage your phone availability and monitor teammate call handling from the Inbox.

Beth-Ann Sher avatar
Written by Beth-Ann Sher
Updated over a month ago

Manage your availability

You’ll need to set your channel availability to All or Phone when you’re ready to accept phone calls.

If you see calls coming through and you are unable to answer, it's due to neither All or Phone being selected.

Set your channel availability by clicking on your avatar in the bottom left, then click Availability and specify if you’re available for:

  • All: includes any conversations and phone calls.

  • Conversations: only chat, email, WhatsApp, SMS, Facebook, Instagram.

  • Phone: only inbound phone calls.

If your status is active in the Inbox and you’re available for phone or all channels, you’ll be notified about calls that get assigned to your inbox. You can then choose to:

  • Answer - Accept the call and connect through to the customer.

  • Decline - Leave the customer on hold and notify another teammate to answer the call.

  • See details - View the call in the inbox, including the customer’s details and options they selected in the workflow.

Learn more about handling calls from the Inbox.

When you’re on a phone call, your status will automatically be toggled to Away with the reason "On a call". You can also toggle Reassign replies on which will reassign conversation replies while you’re busy on a phone call.

When you or the customer end a call, you may be given wrap up time to finish handling the conversation in the inbox (depending on your workspace phone settings).

While on wrap up time, your status will be updated to Away with the reason "call wrap up". ​​You can select Switch to active to end wrap up time early and make yourself available for new incoming calls.


Balanced assignment

To find the eligible teammate to assign a call to, Phone balanced assignment looks at:

  1. Phone availability (channels set to “All” or “Phone”, teammate set to “Active”, Inbox is open in a tab).

  2. Each teammate’s last conversation assigned date (Phone or any other conversation). Balanced assignment conversation count is not taken into account.


View and manage team availability

Monitor teammate status in real time, or change teammate’s channel availability (All, Conversations or Phone) from the Inbox dashboard.

This dashboard gives insights on how your team is handling calls in real-time, with phone metrics which show calls in the queue, active calls, voicemails, callbacks etc.

The team table also has rows which are related to Phone, which you can customize to quickly see only the metrics you’re interested in.

If you switch to the Teammate tab, you’ll see the “Teammate talk time” metric.

And, if call queues are long, you can make more teammates available to receive calls by changing their Channel availability to Phone or All.

Call metrics and definitions

Use the following table to find specific call metrics and definitions.

Name

Location

Definition

In queue inbound calls

Inboxes dashboard: summary card & table

The total number of inbound calls waiting on hold in the queue

Active inbound calls

Inboxes dashboard:

summary card & table

The total number number of calls currently ongoing in the active state. This include calls that are in progress (actively talking) and call that have been place on hold by a teammate.

Completed inbound calls

Inboxes dashboard: summary card & table

The total number of inbound calls that were answered by a teammate and successfully completed.

Abandoned inbound calls

Inboxes dashboard: summary card & table

The total number of inbound calls that were missed because the customer has abandoned the call while routing, in queue, on hold, or in voicemail.

Voicemail calls

Inboxes dashboard: summary card & table

The total number of calls with a voicemail. This doesn’t include calls that have been abandoned in voicemail.

Call duration

Inboxes dashboard: summary card

The total duration of a call for an customer from when the call is placed until the call has ended.

Inbound call duration is from the time customer initiates the call until it ends (this includes routing and queueing time).

Outbound call duration is from the time customer answers the call until it ends.

Call answer time

Inboxes dashboard: summary card & table

The duration from the moment the customer places the call to the moment the call is answered by a teammate initially.

This includes the time the customer spends having the call routed in the IVR workflow and waiting on hold in the queue once the call is assigned to a team.

Number of teammates available for phone

Inboxes dashboard:

summary card & table

Number of teammates that are available for phone calls or actively handling phone calls.

Teammate is available for phone if:

  • Teammate’s channel availability is set to Phone or All.

  • Teammate is not away, or is away but away reason is either On a call or Call wrap up.

Team call in queue time

Inboxes dashboard: table

Duration that a customer spent in queue for the assigned team.

Each team queue segment is counted separately. For example if the same call is transferred multiple times to the same team those queue times are counted separately (not summed up per call).

Team call talk time

Inboxes dashboard: table

Duration that all teammates spend talking during a call, while assigned to a team.

Teammate call talk time

Teammate dashboard: summary card & table

Duration individual teammates spend talking during a call.

Channel availability

Teammate dashboard: table

Indicates the channel availability for the teammate at the time: All channels; Conversations only; or Phone only.

Get even more insights from the Calls report or create your own custom report using call metrics.


💡Tip

Need more help? Get support from our Community Forum
Find answers and get help from Intercom Support and Community Experts


Did this answer your question?