How Inbound Calls Route

When someone calls a careCycle number, the dialed number first identifies its owning campaign. careCycle then uses the caller record, campaign kind, number service, business hours, and attached destination to decide whether AI, a human agent, or terminal handling takes the call.

Main Number Routing

Your main number belongs to the Receptionist campaign, but a known caller can be answered in a more specific context.

If careCycle selects an active campaign that has no suitable AI assistant, it retries the Receptionist campaign rather than leaving the call unanswered.

Campaign Number Routing

A non-main number normally keeps the call in the campaign that owns that number:

• A known customer reaches the number's campaign.
• For a Voice AI campaign, a new caller reaches that campaign when it has a new-customer assistant. Otherwise the Receptionist is the fallback.
• For an agent-first campaign, careCycle creates a record for a new caller and routes the call through the attached agent pool during business hours.
• A number assigned directly to a specific AI assistant stays with that number's campaign and assistant.

Sales, Revenue, and agent-first campaigns manage their own number pools rather than borrowing the organization's main number. A returned call therefore enters the campaign that placed it.

Campaign Kind and Number Service

Campaign kind and number service have different jobs:

• Voice AI campaign on an AI-serviced number: the campaign's AI answers.
• Voice AI campaign on a softphone-serviced number: human agents ring. If after-hours routing to AI is enabled, the campaign's AI answers outside business hours instead.
• Agent-first campaign: its attached softphone destination rings during business hours. Outside business hours, careCycle speaks an after-hours TTS greeting and hangs up.

An agent-first campaign is created as either an Outbound dialer or an Inbound desk, and that direction cannot be changed later. Direction controls the campaign's primary workflow, not whether its numbers can receive calls. Both directions need an attached softphone destination before activation, and both route inbound calls through it. An outbound dialer also requires Pulse before activation; Pulse is optional for an inbound desk.

Agent-First Inbound Sequence

During business hours, an inbound agent-first call uses the exact enabled softphone destination attached to the campaign. That destination owns the agents, ordering, timing, screen behavior, callback policy, and greetings.

Only eligible Available agents enter the sequence. Priority rules can put the customer's assigned agent or most recent softphone agent first. The destination then orders the remaining pool with Linear, Balanced, Weighted, or Grouped routing. Regardless of strategy, agents ring one at a time. Each agent can ring for 5 through 30 seconds, and the whole sequence can wait 10 through 120 seconds. The overall limit can end routing before every agent is tried.

Auto Answer immediately joins a routed call for an Available agent when the agent enabled it or the organization enforces it. It bypasses the normal need to click Answer or Claim, so the ring timers do not delay that call.

If nobody is eligible, fallback begins immediately. If agents are eligible but nobody accepts, fallback begins when the pool or overall wait limit is exhausted.

Voice AI and Agent-First Fallbacks

Softphone destinations contain two separate fallback sections. They are not interchangeable:

Outside business hours, an agent-first campaign skips agents and the callback offer. It uses the destination's after-hours greeting. If a destination greeting is blank, careCycle uses the matching organization greeting and then the built-in greeting.

Callback Offers

An inbound agent-first caller can be offered a callback only when all eligibility checks pass: the campaign is active, the exact destination and routing configuration are still enabled, callback offers are enabled on that destination, the call is inside business hours and outside the closing buffer, the callback number and customer are valid, the customer is not on Do Not Call, and no callback is already pending for that campaign and number.

The caller gets two 7-second opportunities to press 1. Declining or giving no input continues to the TTS greeting and hangup. After acceptance, careCycle rings an agent first and dials the customer only after the agent accepts. This accept-first callback exception does not use AMD. Normal outbound agent-first Pulse calls remain dial-first and always use AMD before any agent rings.

See Inbound Callbacks When Agents Are Busy for eligibility, timing bounds, and retry behavior.

Receptionist Modes

For the main number, the Receptionist page provides two common topologies:

• AI Receptionist uses an AI-serviced number, so Cora answers.
• Direct to Agent uses a softphone-serviced number, so your configured human pool rings. When after-hours routing to AI is enabled, Cora answers outside business hours.

See Configure Your Receptionist and Business Hours and Holidays for those settings.

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