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 a channel that is not All or Phone being selected at that time.
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.
Note: This does not apply to Messenger web/video calls, only Phone calls. When a teammate makes a Messenger web/video call, the status of the teammate does not automatically change to "Away" and there is no setting to change that at this time.
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:
Phone availability (channels set to “All” or “Phone”, teammate set to “Active”, Inbox is open in a tab).
Each teammate’s last conversation assigned date (Phone or any other conversation). Balanced assignment conversation count is not taken into account.
Whether or not a teammate is currently on a call, they are considered at their call assignment limit when they have one active call assigned to them.
Important:
Phone calls will always use balanced assignment, even if the team is set to another assignment method. This cannot be changed.
When a teammate misses or declines a call, we temporarily exclude them from being reassigned that same call for 5 minutes. During this time, they won't receive further alerts about the call. This cooldown period helps prevent teammates from being repeatedly notified about a call they've already missed or declined.
Balanced assignment will not work in TEST workspaces.
Automatically answer incoming calls without teammate intervention
If you want to automatically answer incoming calls without teammate intervention make sure to have it enabled in your Workspace under your Phone Channel 👇
Important: When Auto-answer mode is enabled, teammates cannot manually decline an incoming call. The call is automatically answered without requiring any teammate action, and the Decline option is not available. Auto-answer mode is designed to prevent call avoidance.
Note on decline events in the conversation log: Even with Auto-answer enabled, a "call declined" event may appear in the conversation log if a teammate switches their status to Away immediately before the call is assigned to them. In this case, the system registers the status change as a decline — but this is triggered by the Away activity setting, not by the teammate manually clicking Decline. This is expected behavior and does not indicate that Auto-answer was bypassed.
View and manage team availability
It is not possible to set a specific Teammate Permission to restrict or prevent Calls from being assigned-to/received-by an individual Teammate or Role. Teammates with an 'active' status that are eligible to receive Calls will be included in the Balanced Assignment process even if they have, for example, the "Can listen on calls" permission disabled for their Teammate profile.
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.
View team availability for past calls
You can view a snapshot of your team's availability at the exact moment a call was assigned. This helps you understand why a call was routed to a specific teammate or why it might have been missed.
Note: This setting Show team composition in conversation event log is disabled by default and must be manually enabled to begin capturing this data.
Enable team availability logs
Toggle on Show team composition in conversation event log.
Understanding the event log
Once enabled, you will see a detailed event in the conversation log showing:
How many teammates were Available.
How many were Away.
How many were active but not in the Inbox.
Explicit answer and decline events
The conversation log clearly distinguishes between manual actions and connection drops, so you can accurately track teammate behavior. Note that a decline event may also appear in the log when a teammate switches to Away status immediately before a call is assigned to them — even if Auto-answer is enabled and no manual decline occurred. This is caused by the activity status change, not a deliberate rejection of the call.
Explicit Decline: If a teammate clicks Decline, it is logged as a specific event. This confirms the call was manually rejected rather than dropped due to a connection error.
Explicit Answer: When a teammate clicks Answer, the event is logged immediately. This confirms the attempt to take the call, even if the connection fails shortly afterward.
Call log event types
Every call generates a timeline of events in the conversation. Here's what each event means.
Core call events
Event | What it means |
Call answered | A teammate answered the call. The teammate's name is shown. |
Call declined | Teammate deliberately pressed the Decline button. Appears as 'Call declined by [name] using the Decline button.' |
Call declined (busy) | Teammate was on another call (busy signal) or had a connectivity failure. Both appear as 'Call declined by [name]' without the Decline button qualifier — the exact cause is ambiguous from the timeline alone. |
Call missed | The call rang for the assigned teammate but timed out with no answer. Shown as "Call missed by [name]." |
Call ended before answer | The customer hung up while waiting in the queue or while the call was ringing, before any teammate answered. Shown as "Call ended by customer before a teammate answered." |
Call deflected | The system automatically deflected the call instead of placing it in the queue. Always includes a deflection reason — see below. Shown as "Call deflected because [reason]." |
Teammate joined | A supervisor uses the barge feature to join an active call for monitoring or assistance. Shown as '[name] joined the call.' |
Manual answer requested | A teammate claimed the call from the shared assignment pool before it was auto-assigned to them. Shown as "Manual answer requested by [name]." |
Abandoned call assignment | The system tried to assign the call after the customer had already hung up. Shown as "Started assignment after call ended without an assignee." |
Note: 'Call declined by [name]' without the phrase 'using the Decline button' is intentionally ambiguous — it covers both a busy signal and connectivity failures. Contact Intercom Support if you need to investigate the exact cause of a specific call.
Call deflection reasons
When a call is deflected, the event includes one of the following reasons:
Reason | What it means |
Queue full | The inbound queue reached the configured maximum size. Shown as "Queue is longer than [max] calls." |
No teammates available | No teammates were online and available to take calls at the time. |
Workspace out of office | The entire workspace was set to out-of-office or outside operating hours. |
Team out of office | The specific team the call was routed to was set to out-of-office. Shown as "[team name] is out of office." |
Hold timeout exceeded | The customer waited on hold longer than the configured maximum. Shown as "Customer has been waiting on hold for more than [X] minutes." |
Team availability log entries
When team availability logging is enabled on your workspace, three additional entries appear in the call timeline to show teammate availability at the moment the call came in:
Log entry | What it means |
Teammates away: N | N teammates were set to "away" status when the call came in. |
Teammates available but with no active phone client: N | N teammates were marked "available" but had their browser tab closed or backgrounded, meaning they couldn't receive the call. |
Teammates available: N | N teammates were online with an active phone client and ready to take calls. |
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. |
No answer | Inboxes dashboard: summary card & table | Calls where the teammate's phone rang but was not answered, or calls forwarded to an external number that went unanswered. |
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:
|
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.
Outbound calls that result in a voicemail on your customer's side are considered answered, as the outbound call system cannot distinguish between your customer answering the call and voicemail picking up.
Frequently asked questions
Why is there a ~40 second gap between 'Inbox Assignment' and 'Agent Assignment' for phone calls?
The ~40 second gap between the 'Inbox Assignment' and 'Agent Assignment' timestamps is expected behavior. The gap reflects the technical handshake between Intercom and our telephony provider, and is not caused by IVR settings, recorded greetings, or call routing configuration.
The ~40 seconds typically breaks down as:
~30 seconds — the ringing timeout, during which the system attempts to reach an available teammate
~10 seconds — standard processing time for routing logic and system timestamp updates
Note: The 'Inbox Assignment' timestamp is recorded when the call is first routed to an inbox. The 'Agent Assignment' timestamp is recorded once a specific teammate accepts the call. The gap between them is a normal part of the call routing flow.
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