Getting started with call flows

OpenPhone helps you manage every aspect of your call and text communications. You can control every customer interaction from start to finish. In this article, we’ll share everything you need to have seamless call flows in your OpenPhone workspace. 

What are call flows?

A call flow is a roadmap of how incoming calls are directed within a business’s phone system. It’s a sequence of events that includes an initial greeting, navigation through an interactive voice response (IVR) menu, call routing to the appropriate department, and hold times or transfers. 

Call flows make it easier for you to handle incoming call volume as your business grows. In OpenPhone, you can control your call flows with four primary features:

• Business hours: Your main hours of operation for when you’re available to take incoming calls.
• Phone menu (IVR): A curated list of options callers can choose to reach different departments in your business.
• Ring order: Recipients for incoming calls among members of your shared number.
• Unanswered calls: Backup routing options for when your team is unable to pick up the phone during or after business hours

How to set up business hours

Business hours define when your team will accept calls from customers. Set a business hours schedule so that your team has a better work-life balance during the week.

To set up your business hours:

1. Go to Settings -> Phone numbers
2. Select the number to set up business hours.
3. Toggle the Enable business hours switch on. This will result in an expanded menu where you can edit your availability.

Note: OpenPhone currently only supports one, consecutive time period per day. You will not be able to add multiple time periods for one day.
Select the appropriate time zone and your (or your team's) daily availability by selecting the hours to the immediate right of Every day.
If your team is off on weekends, you can click into Every day to set your schedule to Weekdays instead — or if your hours vary depending on the day, you can select Custom. Then add in your business hours.

To add a business hours block to your default call flow:

1. Drag and drop the Business hours step after your Incoming call trigger.
2. After you add a business hours step, the canvas will automatically create a During hours path and a After hours path. These paths are based on your business hours configuration in the previous menu.
3. After adding your business hours step, you’ll need to add additional call blocks to map out your call flows further for where callers get routed during and after hours.   

How to set up your phone menu

The phone menu call step lets you add a phone menu to your call flow. You can adjust your phone menu greeting and keypad options in this call step.

Add as many menu options as you need. Callers can navigate the menu using voice commands or keypad options.

To add a phone menu block to your default call flow:

1. Drag and drop the Phone menu step into the canvas. You can either have a phone menu after an Incoming call trigger or after a Business hours condition step (during or after hours).
2. Select the Phone menu step and edit your custom menu greeting and menu options in the right panel of the builder.
3. Click Change greeting to set a greeting message. You can set the greeting by uploading an audio file, recording yourself, or doing text to speech. If you need inspiration on what to include check out our auto-attendant scripts guide!
4. Click Add keypad option to add up to 10 different options that callers can navigate by pressing a number on the keypad. To the right of each option, you can also enter a keyword so that callers can select an option based on that word.

Once you’ve chosen how many menu options you want, you can customize the path of each of these menu options. 

• To edit these steps, select them and click Replace step in the right panel of the builder to choose a different call step. You can choose from these other phone menu options: Voicemail, Ring users, Play audio and route to default action, and Forward call.

By default, if a caller stays on the call without selecting a phone menu option, the call flow builder will default to a Voicemail step. Select the Voicemail step and click Replace step in the right panel of the builder to replace this option with another default option, including Ring users, Play audio, Forward call, and Repeat the menu.

How to set up your ring order

Ring order and ring groups allow you to choose who receives incoming calls on your team.

Add a ring order to your call flows with the ring users block. You can set up your ring order type and duration in this block.

• Ring order type: Choose from simultaneous ring, random batches, custom ring groups, and single users.
• Ring duration: You can choose a total ring duration for simultaneous ring, a group ring duration, or a custom ring duration for each of your custom groups.

To add a ring users block to your default call flow:

1. Drag and drop the Ring users block in the canvas. Note: you can’t place it before the Incoming call trigger, Phone menu step, or Business hours step.
2. Select the Ring users step and select your preferred Ring order type in the right panel of the call flow builder. You can choose from All at once, In random batches, Custom ring groups, and Single user ring order types.

How to set up your voicemail call flow 

There will be times when all your team members are busy and can’t get to an incoming call. Add the voicemail block.

Here’s how to add the step:

1. Drag and drop the Voicemail step to the canvas. 
2. Select the voicemail step in the right panel of the builder to edit your settings.
3. Upload your voicemail greeting in the Voicemail greeting section:

• If you have an existing audio file you want to use, Upload a file. We support MP3 or WAV files.
• If you need to convert yours, try a free audio converter like this one.
• If you want to record your own audio, select the Record option and do it right in OpenPhone.
• If you have a voicemail script (or a rough idea of what you want to tell callers who get to voicemail), select Text to speech to turn text into a professional voiceover.

       4. Toggle the Transcribe voicemail switch on for voicemail transcriptions.

       5. Toggle the Profanity filter switch on to filter your voicemails for profanity.

To make your call flows work even smarter for your business, check out Sona, our AI agent. For Starter, Business, and Scale accounts, Sona is available as an add-on. It's simple to add to any call flow.