Closing Time Action: handling calls at end of day

At 5pm your phones close, but two callers are still sitting in line waiting for an agent. What should happen to them? If you do nothing, they keep waiting in a queue that nobody is staffing anymore. Closing Time Action is the in-group setting that decides their fate, so you are not leaving people hanging while your team logs off.

What closing time actually means

Every in-group can have a Call times schedule attached to it. The closing time is simply the end of that schedule for the day. So if your call time runs 9am to 5pm, then 5pm is the closing time. Closing Time Action only applies to a caller who is still waiting in the queue when that moment arrives. A call that is already connected to an Agent is left alone and finishes normally.

This is different from your after-hours handling, which catches calls that arrive once you are already closed. Closing Time Action is the gentler cousin: it handles people who got in line before you closed but did not reach anyone in time. If you are still mapping out how an Ingroup routes calls from start to finish, the inbound call handling guide walks through the whole path.

Your routing choices

By default Closing Time Action is turned off, which means waiting callers simply stay in the queue. Once you switch it on, you can send those callers in a few directions:

• To a specific dialplan extension, so they hear a message or land somewhere else in the system.
• To a call menu, if you want them to pick an option or hear after-hours information.
• To a voicemail box, so they can leave a message your team picks up in the morning.
• To another in-group, handy if a later-closing team can still take the call.

There are also press options. With one of those, the caller hears a short prompt and can press 1 to be sent on to the destination you chose, instead of being moved without warning. The friendliest of the bunch is the callback queue option, which keeps the caller's place in line and rings them back when they reach the front, rather than asking them to call again tomorrow.

Setting it up sensibly

Pick a destination that matches what your callers expect. A sales line might send closing-time callers to a callback queue so the lead does not go cold. A support line might be happier sending them to voicemail with a clear message. Whatever you choose, record a short, honest prompt that tells the caller what is happening. If you are using a press option, keep that audio file to ten seconds or under or the prompt can misbehave.

Remember that Closing Time Action leans on the call time schedule, so check that the schedule on your Ingroup reflects the hours you actually staff. It also pairs naturally with a callback flow, which keeps a waiting Lead from being wasted. For the early-close version of this same feature, see the Closing Time Now trigger. And if you are still sizing the server that runs all of this, our plans page lays out what you get.