How call routing works
Who Hank transfers a caller to, and how it decides.
When a caller needs a person, Hank transfers the call. Call routing is everything that decides who that person is: the people Hank can call, the order it calls them in, and which order applies to which kind of call at which time of day.
The building blocks
Routing contacts
The people Hank can transfer to. Each contact has a name, a phone number and an email, and chooses which call texts and emails they get.
Transfer routes
A named calling order of one to four contacts, such as Emergency team or Front office. Hank calls the first contact; if they don't answer, it tries the next. A route can also have an on-call rotation that decides its calling order by date and time.
Assignments
Each kind of call is assigned a route for business hours and a route for after hours. Change the assignment, and the next call of that kind goes to the new route.
Kinds of calls
| Kind of call | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Emergency | Active water, fire or storm damage that needs someone now. |
| Appointment | Callers who want to book or talk about a visit, when your team takes those before Hank books. |
| Appointment cancellation | Callers changing or cancelling a booked visit. |
| TPA | Partner programs and third-party administrators sending you work. |
| Outage | Who callers reach if Hank itself is unavailable. |
| Default | Everything that needs a person and has no more specific route. |
| Before Hank answers | Optionally ring your team first, and let Hank answer only if nobody picks up. |
| Out of area | Callers outside your service area. |
If a kind of call has no business-hours route, Hank uses the default route.
Business hours and after hours
Your office hours, lunch closure, holiday closures and timezone decide which of the two routes applies. A day with no hours counts as closed once any day has hours. Holidays and lunch count as after hours.
People callers ask for by name
- Employees are contacts callers can ask for directly. You choose what happens: ring them and up to three backups, send the call to a transfer route, or send it to someone else.
- Departments are teams Hank transfers to when the caller's need matches what you wrote, such as billing questions, each with its own calling order.
- TPAs are the partner programs Hank recognizes by name. While any TPA exists, TPA calls need both a business-hours and an after-hours route.
Companies with several locations
Each location has its own contacts, routes and assignments for emergency, appointment and cancellation calls. The organization holds the shared pieces: outage, before Hank answers, out of area, departments and TPAs. Default and TPA routes can be set at both levels; a location's route wins.
Callers are matched to a location by the ZIP code of the property. Each ZIP code belongs to one location. Out-of-area callers go to the nearest office or to the out-of-area route, whichever you choose.
Changes are live
Routing changes apply to the next call, whether you make them in the dashboard or through an AI assistant.