What does it mean to go hunting lines or hunting calls? This terminology refers to a very important aspect of taking calls at your business and is something you need to be aware of as you provide a great experience to your customers and partners.
What Is Line Hunting?
Line hunting is a strategy that businesses use to make sure that an incoming call does not go unanswered — or, at the least, give businesses the best chance of answering each call. The strategy is also called call hunting or call routing.
The process works by connecting a number of different telephones together in sequence. An incoming call goes directly to the first phone in the sequence, which will ring or issue a call alert. If this phone goes unanswered, the second phone in the sequence will ring, followed by the next one until all phones in the sequence have been tried. The call will go to voicemail if it has not been answered beforehand.
What Is a Hunt Group?
The hunt group is a feature that makes line hunting or call hunting possible. It is built into a phone system that can be used to create a group of telephones or numbers that will be sequenced during line hunting. With the hunt group in place, businesses can better manage the process by which calls are answered, making life easier for everyone concerned.
For example, the domain administrator retains control over who is included in the hunt group. Those in the group are known as members. They can be added or removed by the administrator as and when required. The administrator can also make changes to the call sequence or pattern so that operators know where they are in the sequence.
Different Line Hunting and Hunt Group Types
There are several different models you can deploy within your business.
- Simultaneous alerts
Within this type of model, the phones all ring at the same time, and the operator who picks up the phone first will be the one who answers the call. Each member of the hunt group is on an equal level here. There is no sequence, so there is no need for the domain administrator to set a particular pattern.
- Regular line hunting
Regular line hunting follows the pattern outlined in the “What Is a Hunt Group?” section. The domain administrator predetermines the sequence, and the first phone in this sequence rings whenever there is a call. If this phone is not answered, the second phone rings, followed by the third, until all the phones in the sequence have rung or the call has been answered. If it is not answered, the call goes to voicemail or another form of call divert.
- Longest idle line
In this type of line hunting, the system identifies which phone line has been left idle for the greatest amount of time and makes this phone the first in the sequence. This is a way to share the burden of calls more fairly across the team. If the call is not answered at the end of the sequence, it will go to voicemail.
- Circular
Circular line hunting follows the same model as regular line hunting, only there is no endpoint in the sequence. The first phone rings, followed by the second, third and so on to the end of the hunt group sequence. After the last phone in the sequence has rung and has not been answered, the call goes back to the first phone in the sequence and begins the circle again.
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