Hunt Groups are a feature often provided on old-fashioned hardware PBX systems, where a call comes in and your extensions ring in turn until someone answers.
This may sound great in theory, but in practice most callers will hang up long before all the extensions in your hunt group have been tried.
Call groups are included in all of our monthly plans. They're also available on Voipfone Flex for only £1 per month
With Voipfone's Group Divert feature, you can have functionality similar to a hunt group, but with a far greater chance of the call being answered before the caller gives up.
In your Control Panel, go to Virtual PBX → Call Groups and set up a group containing the extensions of your 'first responders' - the people who will normally answer incoming calls.
Next, create a second call group, containing all the extensions from the first group, plus the extensions of people who will handle the overflow when the first group are all busy.
Under the Virtual PBX → Call Diverts section of your Control Panel, select the 'Groups' tab and set the first group's 'When Busy' and 'No Answer' diverts to go to the second group.
Now you need to set the number of seconds that the first group will ring before the incoming call is diverted to the second group. This is done using the Voicemail Timeout for the first group, under the Voicemail → Configure Voicemails section of your Control Panel.
Finally, set an inbound number to point to the first group.
When a call comes in, all the extensions in the first group will ring. If all the extensions are busy (already on another call, or set to Do Not Disturb), then the 'When Busy' divert will kick in and the second group of extensions will start to ring. Otherwise, the extensions will ring for the number of seconds you set in the group voicemail timeout, after which the 'No Answer' divert will be followed.
Because whole groups of extensions are ringing together, there is far more chance of the call being answered before the caller hangs up than if the extensions were to ring one at a time.
You can create as many groups as you like and chain them all together using the Group Diverts feature.
If all of this sounds overly complex, don't worry. We did say at the start that hunt groups are an old-fashioned feature.
You should really consider using a Call Queue instead. The call will be answered immediately by the queue system, and your caller will have the reassurance of knowing that if they wait, they will be answered in turn.
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