Freshdesk’s built-in phone channel lets you set up support hotlines that are closely integrated with the rest of your support channels, in a matter of minutes. With this, agents can route and pick up calls from their desktops or mobile phones, without having to setup any hardware.

Phone channel is currently available for businesses in 41 countries. For a complete list of countries, click here.

 

Why use the built-in phone channel?


  • Completely cloud based: You do not require any hardware setup or software installation. It works completely over the internet and it is set up by default in your Freshdesk account. 

  • Local and toll-free numbers: You can purchase local and Toll free numbers which your customers can call for support. Your customers will be charged when they call your local number. Or you can let your customers call the toll free numbers with charges on the house. You can view the number purchase and call charges here. 

  • Increase first call resolution using call monitoring and barging: When your agents are in conversation with a customer, call center admins can discreetly monitor their calls. Simply view a list of calls that are in progress and join them. By default, you speaker button will be on mute and you can just listen to the conversation. Unmuting the speaker button lets you jump into the call and you speak simultaneously to the agent and the customer.

  • Add agents to an ongoing call: Assist customers on the spot by conferencing other available agents to the ongoing call. 

  • Expand your global footprint from a single location: Acquire and utilize local phone numbers from within your helpdesk to connect with customers from around the world. Buy phone numbers from countries and use them mask your local number. 

  • Deep visibility into the performance of every call: Report on metrics such as IVR time, queue time, ringing time, speed to answer, hold time, talk time, and more. You can export these metrics into an excel or CSV to perform further analysis.

  • Direct callers with Smart IVRs: You can create multiple levels of IVRs to collect inputs and streamline callers to the right team, agent or department. You can let your customers pick who they want to talk to using IVRs. 

  • Customize greetings and queues: When customers call in to your helpline, you can choose to greet them with a custom “hello”. You can record your welcome message, or just convert the text you enter into speech. You can also customize the length of your caller queue and maximum amount of time your customers will stay on hold.  

  • Transfer calls to agents and external numbers: You can transfer calls midway to other agents or any other external number you want. Call transfers are especially useful when callers need additional information, or calls need to be reassigned to a different department or agent.  

  • Answer via browser, or  take calls on a physical phone (mobile or landline): Your agents get the flexibility of taking calls from the browser, or answer support calls from their phones. Agents can even choose to be “on call” by answering urgent queries on their mobile devices even when they are away from their desks.  

  • Automatic call record: You can choose to automatically record all calls made and received in your support desk. While recording calls is a great way to ensure you don’t miss useful nuggets of your conversation later, it is considered slightly offensive in most places if you don’t inform your customers before hand, other than being illegal. 

  • Convert calls to tickets: You can choose to convert your recorded calls into Freshdesk tickets. At the end of every call, you have the option to “convert the call into a new ticket”, or “append it to an existing one”. Of course, if you just got a call about a new Credit Card offer, you might just as well ignore it and move on.  


  • Block calls: Promotional calls, prank calls or any number you wish to avoid can be blocked. You will not be notified when you receive calls from the blocked numbers. You can always go back to the logs and unblock them if you want. 


This tutorial video will help you set up your phone support channel on Freshdesk: