Put callers through to your team
List the people a caller can ask for, and your receptionist puts phone callers through to them.
- Sign in, open the Your business tab, and find Your directory.
- Press Add a person and fill in:
- Name, like Maria Ortiz.
- Role, in your own words, like "Office manager, billing". Callers can ask for the role instead of the name.
- Forward to, the number to ring: the person's cell or their own direct line.
- Ext., only for someone with no direct line. See Someone with only an extension.
- If no answer, try, who to ring next when this person doesn't pick up. See Give someone a backup.
- Press Save directory.
Your main business number can't go in on its own. It's the office phone under Your business, and it sends calls to Maggie, so a transfer would ring it, go unanswered, and come right back. Use the person's direct line or cell instead. A main number with an extension is different, as long as your phone system answers it itself; see Someone with only an extension. Your Maggie number can't go in at all, since that would put callers through to the receptionist they just talked to. If your office has a phone system, see Use it with your phone system.
To add several people at once, press Paste a list, paste from your contacts or a spreadsheet, and press Sort it out. It picks out extensions too, like "312-555-0100 x204". Check the rows it adds, fix any number it couldn't read, and press Save directory. Nothing is saved until you do. Pasted people start with no backup, so pick those yourself.
You can also change the list from your own phone: call your Maggie number and say "Add Maria to the directory" or "Take Dave off." It reads numbers and extensions back before it saves them.
What callers get
When a caller asks for Maria, or for billing, the receptionist asks once whether to put them through, then rings Maria for about 20 seconds. If she doesn't pick up, the caller comes back to the receptionist, which rings her backup if she has one, and otherwise takes a message for her.
- Transfers only happen on phone calls, not on your website.
- If Maria's voicemail answers inside those 20 seconds, the caller leaves a message there.
- The receptionist never reads a number or an extension out loud.
Give someone a backup
If an emergency call to your maintenance lead shouldn't stop at one phone, give that person a backup. In their row, pick someone under If no answer, try and press Save directory. The choices are the other people in your directory, and the default is Nobody. You can also say it on your own line: "If Mike doesn't answer, try Cris."
A backup is a person in your list rather than a second number, so the call uses whatever number and extension that person has at the time. Renaming them or changing their number keeps the link. If you remove them from the directory, anyone who had them as a backup goes back to Nobody.
When Mike doesn't pick up, or his line is busy, or the call fails, the caller hears one line, like "Sorry, Mike didn't pick up. Let me try Cris." Then Cris rings for about 20 seconds. That happens the same way on every call, and the caller isn't asked first.
If Cris misses it too, the caller hears "Sorry, Cris didn't pick up either. Can I take a message for Mike?" The message is for Mike, the person they asked for, and it says Cris was tried. The call's details show every attempt.
A backup can have a backup of their own. The receptionist stops when there's nobody left, when it reaches someone it already tried on this call, or after three people.
Two things end the chain early, because they count as answered:
- A voicemail that picks up inside the 20 seconds. The caller leaves a message there, and the backup never rings.
- A phone system answering for someone with an extension. See the next section.
Someone with only an extension
If your office has a phone system and Maria has no direct line, only "main number, ext. 204", put the main number in Forward to and 204 in Ext. You can type it as 204, x204 or ext. 204. Once the phone system answers, your receptionist waits about two seconds and dials 204 for the caller.
When your phone system needs more than the extension
Some phone systems want a key pressed before the extension, like "press 1 for the directory", or # after it. Others play a long greeting before they listen for digits. For those, type the keys into Ext. in the order they're pressed:
0to9,*and#are pressed as they are.wis a half-second pause.wwis a second,wwwwis two.
As soon as there's a w in it, your receptionist presses exactly what you typed, with no pause of its own in front, so start with enough ws to get past the greeting. For example, wwww1ww204# waits two seconds, presses 1, waits a second, then dials 204 and #. Up to 16 keys in all. Plain digits like 204 or 204# still get the two-second pause first.
The easy way to work it out is to call the main number yourself and count: how long until you can press a key, and what you press to reach Maria.
This only works if your phone system answers the main number itself, with a menu or by letting callers dial an extension. If every call to the main number goes straight to Maggie, the transfer comes right back, so give Maria's cell instead.
There's one tradeoff. With a direct line, your receptionist rings Maria for about 20 seconds, and if she doesn't pick up, the caller comes back for a message. With an extension, your phone system answers right away, so as far as your receptionist can tell, the call went through. If Maria doesn't pick up her extension, the caller lands in her voicemail on your phone system, not back with the receptionist. Her backup won't ring either, since the call already counts as answered. Make sure her voicemail is set up, or give her mobile instead if you'd rather the receptionist try her backup or take the message.
Didn't find it? See all the help pages, or email hello@xstep.ai.