Interactive voice menu
Press one for sales, two for service. Callers pick the department themselves and reach it first go, instead of being passed around.
Build it yourself in the portal, no technician required
Send every call to the right person, the first time they ring
A call flow is the set of rules that decides what happens to a call between the moment it arrives and the moment somebody says hello. You build yours in the customer portal, you change it whenever the business changes, and you never wait on a technician to do it.
Or talk it through with someone in Australia on 1300 881 662, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm AEST.
A flow, start to finish
What a call flow actually looks like
This is a fairly ordinary flow for a business with a few departments. Every box below is something you can add, remove or reorder yourself.
A customer calls
Your 1300 number, a local number, or a direct line
Call arrives
Are we open?
A time condition checks the hour, the day and your holiday list
OpenClosed
During business hours
Greeting and menu
"Thanks for calling. Press one for sales, two for service, three for accounts."
Caller presses a key
- 1SalesRings three handsets at once, plus Dan's mobile
- 2ServiceJoins a queue, with your hold music and a position announcement
- 3AccountsStraight to extension 204, no queue
Nobody answers in 25 seconds
Voicemail to email
The message lands in the right inbox as an audio file
After hours, weekends, public holidays
After hours message
Your trading hours, read out in a natural voice you typed in
Then one of two things
Voicemail to email
Picked up first thing in the morning
Or straight to the on call mobile
For the jobs that will not keep until Monday
- Where the call comes in
- A decision the system makes
- Something the caller hears or reaches
- Where the call ends up
That is the version most providers can build. Now here is the one they cannot
The Uniden Voice difference
Where it gets clever: know where the caller is, then hand them to an AI that knows the area
Any provider can put a menu in front of a caller. This is the part that is harder to copy. When someone rings your 1300 number from a mobile, the Australian networks hand over a MOLI code, a Mobile Originated Location Identifier, which narrows them down to a suburb or town before anybody says hello. We route on that. And the destination can be an AI agent briefed on that region.
A mobile rings your 1300 number
From a job site in Newcastle, say
Call arrives
The network hands over a MOLI code
Mobile Originated Location Identifier, accurate to a suburb or a town, on toll free numbers
Location known before the first hello
A Geo Route step matches the area
Hundreds of Australian location areas, from individual city zones to the outback
Area matchedNo location
The caller is in Newcastle
An AI agent for that region answers
Briefed on the Newcastle team, the local service area, your trading hours and your price list, in a voice you chose
And it can act, not only talk
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TransferPuts them through to the nearest branch or the on call tech
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BookTakes the appointment straight into the skill's calendar
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Take a messageName, number and what the job is, emailed to the right person
Every call comes back as data
Transcript, summary and a structured outcome
The fields you asked for, emailed to you and posted to your own systems by webhook
Landline, international or VoIP
The default route picks it up
Not every call can be located. A landline gives limited detail, an international call may give none, and a VoIP call can be plain wrong
So it takes the ordinary path
Your national menu or queue
Setting a default route is the one step we insist on, so no call is ever dropped for want of a location
Most precise
1300, 13 and 1800 numbers
MOLI codes from the mobile networks, down to a suburb or town.
Broader
02, 03, 04, 07 and 08 numbers
Matched on the number prefix, so state or territory level. 02 for NSW and the ACT, 03 for Victoria and Tasmania, 07 for Queensland, 08 for South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
No location
Landline, international, VoIP
Falls through to the default route you set, every time.
- Sydney, by zone
- Melbourne, by zone
- Brisbane
- Perth
- Adelaide
- Newcastle
- Wollongong
- Geelong
- Gold Coast
- Townsville
- Outback regions
- Norfolk Island
- and hundreds more
The pieces
Twelve parts, arranged however your business works
Every one of these is included in the plan, and every one of them can sit anywhere in a flow. Most businesses use five or six.
Time conditions
Different handling by hour, by day of the week, and on the public holidays you nominate. Set it once and stop remembering to divert the phones on Friday afternoon.
Ring groups
Ring several handsets together, or one after another in an order you choose. Mobiles can sit in the group alongside desk phones.
Call queues
Callers wait in order with your own greeting rather than an engaged tone. Pick from several ring strategies so the load lands where you want it.
Voicemail to email
The end of most flows. The message arrives in the right inbox as an audio file, so it gets dealt with between jobs rather than at the end of the day.
Forward to a mobile
Send a step in the flow to a mobile and it is invisible to the caller. Useful for the on call phone, and for the days when nobody is at the desk.
AI text to speech
Type the greeting and hear it read back in a natural voice, in a choice of languages. No studio booking to change your Christmas message.
Call recording
Record a whole flow or one step of it, for training, for quality, or because your industry requires it. Recordings are retrievable from the portal.
Location based routing
Send callers to their nearest branch based on where they are calling from, rather than making them work out which office to ring.
Blocked numbers
Drop the numbers you never want to hear from again before they reach a step in the flow, including known nuisance callers.
SMS in the mix
One way or two way texting from the same numbers, so a caller who could not get through can be sent an address or a booking time instead.
1300 and 1800 numbers
A 1300 number lets customers call you nationwide for the cost of a local call. An 1800 number makes it free for them. Both drop into a flow like any other number.
In the portal
You build the flow, and you are the one who changes it
Most phone systems turn a routing change into a support ticket. Here it is a screen in your own portal, so the person who knows the business is the person editing it.
Three common shapes
Flows that solve a problem you probably recognise
Three businesses, three different problems, three flows built from the same parts.
Nobody is in the office to pick up
Everyone is on a roof or under a sink, and the office phone rings out to voicemail that nobody checks until Friday.
- Call arrives on the business number
- Rings the office handset and two mobiles together
- Still unanswered after 20 seconds
- Voicemail to email, so it is read in the ute
Reception cannot answer three calls at once
Mornings are a wall of calls, patients get an engaged tone, and the ones who give up book somewhere else.
- Menu offers appointments, results, or accounts
- Appointments joins a queue with a position announcement
- Overflow rings the second reception desk
- After hours message with the on call number
Customers ring head office to ask about a store
One number on all the advertising, and every call about stock or trading hours lands on the same desk.
- One 1300 number across every advert
- Location routing sends the caller to their nearest store
- Closed stores fall through to the next open one
- Trading hours read out automatically on holidays
Ninety seconds
The whole idea, explained without a slide deck
Common questions
What people ask about call flows
Do I need technical skills to build a call flow?
No. The portal is built for the person who runs the business, not for a network engineer. You pick a destination for each menu key from a list, set your hours on a weekly grid, and save. There is no scripting and no config file. If you would rather we set the first one up with you, that is what the demo is for.
Can I change the flow myself once it is live?
Yes, as often as you like, and it takes effect straight away. That is the point of having it in your own portal. Stocktake on Thursday, a staff member off sick, a different mobile on call this weekend: edit the step, save it, done. No support ticket and no waiting for a technician's next available slot.
What happens to calls if my internet drops out?
The flow runs in the cloud, not on a box in your office, so it keeps running even when your office connection does not. Add a step that sends calls to a mobile and they arrive on the mobile network instead. Staff can also keep working on the mobile app over 4G or 5G while the office is offline.
How many levels can a menu have?
A key in a menu can lead to another menu, so you can nest them as deep as the business needs. Worth saying though: callers get impatient after the second layer. Most of the flows that work well are one menu, then a group or a queue, then voicemail. If you find yourself building a fourth level, a queue is usually the better answer.
Can calls ring desk phones and mobiles at the same time?
Yes. A ring group can contain desk handsets, the mobile app and an ordinary mobile number in any combination, ringing all together or one after another in an order you set. Whoever picks up first gets the call, and the caller has no idea which one they reached.
Can I keep my existing numbers?
Yes. Number porting is free and your existing number keeps working on your old service until the port completes, so no calls are lost in the changeover. You can also add a new local, 1300 or 1800 number and point it at a different flow, which is a tidy way to measure a marketing campaign. See business phone plans for what is included.
Does a flow work across more than one site?
Yes. One flow can reach handsets in as many locations as you have, and location based routing can send a caller to their nearest branch automatically. Each site can still keep its own hours and its own after hours behaviour inside the same flow.
Do I need to buy hardware to use call flows?
No. Flows can route to the free mobile and desktop apps, so you can be up and running without buying a handset. Most businesses do end up with desk phones at the places people sit, and the Uniden EVOC2 is plug and play when you want them.
Get started
Bring us your worst call handling problem
The flow in this page took about ten minutes to build. Book a demo and we will do the same with yours, using your real numbers, your real hours and your actual staff.