Ring first vs answer every call
Updated
In short
Answer every call: all calls go straight to Vocenya. Ring first: your phone rings, and only calls you don’t pick up go to Vocenya. Ring first uses a different kind of forwarding from your phone company.
There are two ways to send your calls to Vocenya. Both keep your business number.
Answer every call
Every call to your business number goes straight to your AI receptionist.
- Callers never wait or reach voicemail.
- You are never interrupted on a job. You get a summary after each call.
- The receptionist can still pass callers to you or your team when they ask for a person. See handing calls to a person.
This is what the codes in Vocenya and in our forwarding guide do.
Ring first
Your own phone rings first. If you don't answer, the call goes to Vocenya.
- You take the calls you can.
- Vocenya picks up the ones you miss, and when you are busy on another call.
- Callers hear your phone ring for a while before Vocenya answers.
Phone companies call this "conditional forwarding", or "forward when busy or unanswered". It uses different codes from forwarding every call.
How to set up ring first
If no ring-first codes are shown above for your phone company, call them and ask to forward calls to your Vocenya number when you don't answer or are busy. Some phone companies also let you choose how many rings before it forwards.
Then call your business number from another phone and let it ring, to check that it works.
Which should I choose?
- If you are often on jobs, driving or with customers, answer every call.
- If you like to pick up yourself and only need help with overflow, ring first.
You can switch later. Turn off one kind of forwarding before you turn on the other.