To connect incoming calls to a live person, Telerivet supports forwarding incoming calls to an external phone number -- for example, your mobile phone or your business phone system.
If you're primarily using Telerivet for SMS messaging with a virtual number that also supports voice calls, call forwarding allows you to seamlessly handle the case when one of your contacts calls your virtual number in response to an SMS.
If you configure Telerivet to forward calls to your mobile phone, your contacts would only need to know your virtual number and would not see your mobile number.
If you already have an IVR or auto-attendant implemented in another system, Telerivet's call forwarding feature would allow you to forward incoming calls to your existing system instead of implementing the IVR in Telerivet.
Simple Call Forwarding
The "Call Forwarding" service makes it easy to forward all incoming calls to one external phone number.
To set up a Call Forwarding service, go to the Services page, and add a new service. Select the Voice category, then click Call Forwarding.
Then, enter the phone number you want to forward incoming calls to:
Click Done to activate the Call Forwarding service. You can edit the forwarding phone number or disable the service at any time from the Services page.
Distributing Incoming Calls to Multiple Phone Numbers
To forward incoming calls to a different phone number depending on a key press or other criteria such as contact variables or group membership, you can use a Custom Call Flow service.
To set up a Custom Call Flow to forward calls to multiple phone numbers, go to the Services page, and add a new service. Under the Voice tab, click Custom Call Flow.
Forwarding Calls by Key Press
To forward calls to a different phone number depending on a key press, click Call Distribution in the Examples section at the top right. This will create a sample call flow that you can modify as needed:
To add an additional menu option:
- click "Add condition..." at the very bottom of the call flow
- on the left side of the new condition, select the [[vars.menu_option]] variable
- type the key on the right side of the condition
- click "Add action" in the new branch
- select the "Forward call" action
- enter the phone number you would like to forward the call to.
To replace the text-to-speech greeting with your own recorded greeting, click "Text to speech" above the greeting, then select "Record audio..." or "Upload audio file...".
Forwarding Calls by Contact Group Membership
To forward calls to different numbers based on group membership, start with a empty call flow, then:
- click "Add condition..." at the bottom
- click "is" in the middle of the new condition, and select "contact is in group"
- type the group name on the right side of the condition (for example "Employees")
- click "Add action" in the new branch
- select the "Forward call" action
- enter the phone number you would like to forward the call to
Repeat the above steps for each different phone number you want to forward calls to. You can add an "else" condition to handle calls from phone numbers that aren't in any of the above groups.
Call Forwarding with Cloud Script API
More advanced call forwarding scenarios can be implemented in JavaScript using the Cloud Script API. The Cloud Script API provides a function forwardCall(phoneNumber)which can be used at any point in a call flow. For example, you could forward calls to a certain phone number only during certain times of day or days of the week (see example).
Forwarded Call Records
A record for each forwarded call will be shown on the Messages page and in the conversation view for the contact:
Billing for Forwarded Calls
When a call is forwarded to another phone number, your virtual number provider (Nexmo, Twilio, or Telerivet itself) will charge you for both the original call leg (which is typically an inbound call leg), as well as the outbound call leg to the phone number configured in the Call Forwarding service, Custom Call Flow, or Cloud Script API service.
The price for each leg will depend on the the virtual number provider's rate for outbound calls to the country of the caller and the recipient.
To see the duration, rate, and price for each call leg, and the overall price for the call, click the date/time of the call on the right side of the Messages page.
Note that if your virtual number is provided directly by Telerivet, the price of the call is not included in the price of your monthly Telerivet plan. In this case, you will need to maintain a positive balance on your Telerivet account in order to send or receive calls. In addition, active calls may be terminated after a short grace period if your Telerivet account balance is negative.
Even though forwarded calls have two legs, each call only counts as one "message" towards the daily limit of your Telerivet service plan.