Many businesses that receive incoming calls from Prospects or Clients want those calls answered as quickly as possible to avoid voicemail/callbacks.

Avoiding phone tag and answering on the first incoming call improves customer experience and increases loyalty.

This is where using Groups + Simultaneous Ring in your Call Flows can be incredibly helpful.

Typically, Groups are assembled based on functional expertise. You might have a group for Sales, for Customer Support, for Billing, and so on. When an incoming call is routed to the Group and Simultaneous Call is selected, everyone in the group will have their smrtPhone account ring, on all devices/platforms that they are set as available/active - Call Forwarding.

Whoever answers first handles the call. This way, the caller reaches the first available person as quickly as possible and does not have to go through several rings as the Dial Applet tries the Group members in order.

Using the Dial applet from your Flow Editor, smrtPhone gives you the option to call a group of people simultaneously or sequentially.  This option can be found under the name of "Simultaneous Call".

If you enable this option, all members within the group that you selected in the "Dial" box will be called at the same time, on all smrtPhone platforms where they are set available (web app/browser, mobile app, and/or chrome extension.)

You also have the option to call multiple (external, non-smrtPhone) phone numbers at the same time by adding the phone numbers in the "Dial Phone Number" box. This option is in fact, Call Forwarding. It is important that each call forwarding phone number is placed on a separate line for this feature to function properly.

Note: Simultaneous call works through the Web Application, Chrome Extension, or Mobile App. Wherever your User is marked "available", it will ring.

If you choose to disable the Simultaneous Call option, the system will call all members of the group, but based on the order they appear within the group (in your Users section of your Admin menu.)

As soon as the call is marked as missed by the first user, it will move to the next user in the group. You can alter the order of group members in the Users & Groups section of the admin panel.

The same principle applies to the numbers added in the "Dial Phone Number" box. The system will call each number sequentially according to the order of the number in the box.

Please, keep in mind that this feature does not work with physical VoIP phones.

Note: Simultaneous calls add an extra cost as the system is making multiple calls at the same time.

Learn More About Inbound Communication Settings Options: