What Is Unconditional Call Forwarding? Benefits, Setup & Best Practices

Jane’s sales team had built a solid pipeline, but they kept losing potential clients to competitors whenever a rep was out of office. Calls went to voicemail, and by the time someone followed up, the lead had moved on.

Missed calls don’t just hurt sales. In tech support, for example, unanswered calls can lead to low customer satisfaction and high churn rates. Businesses across industries struggle with this—banks miss 49% of calls, and insurance companies miss 39%.*

Unconditional call forwarding solves this by ensuring every inbound call is routed to an available team member. In this article, we’ll cover how it works, when to use it, and how to set it up with CloudTalk’s phone system.

Key takeaways: 

• Unconditional call forwarding will always forward all incoming calls to a different number. 
• It may be used temporarily to address short-term business needs, high call volumes, or team members’ time off. 
• CloudTalk’s customizable call flows and user-friendly interface make it easy to adjust call forwarding and routing at any time. 

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Unconditional Call Forwarding Explained

Unconditional call forwarding is the practice of automatically having all incoming calls to one number always forwarded to a different number. 

If your office uses landlines, for example, you could always have your work phone automatically send incoming calls to your cell phone number. 

How Unconditional Call Forwarding Works

Unconditional call forwarding is simple to set up, especially with a virtual phone system:

• You adjust your phone’s settings to forward all calls to a new number.
• When an incoming call is made to the primary number, the call is forwarded.
• You’ll receive the call on the secondary number. 

Key Differences Between Unconditional and Conditional Call Forwarding

The main difference between the two types of call forwarding is: 

• Unconditional forwarding: Redirects all calls automatically
• Conditional forwarding: Only redirects calls under specific conditions

Use conditional call forwarding if you want to:

• Forward calls after a certain number of rings
• Send after-hours calls to a contact center
• Redirect calls when a line is busy

Meanwhile, you may want to use unconditional call forwarding if you need to direct all incoming calls to a different number. This may occur if there’s a system-wide outage, a service disruption impacting certain teams, or an employee takes extended time off or leaves the company altogether. 

Business Benefits of Unconditional Call Forwarding

When used in the right circumstances, unconditional call forwarding can significantly improve the customer experience by preventing missed calls and delayed responses. It can simultaneously improve your own team’s workflows, offering three essential benefits: 

1. Ensure No Missed Calls and Continuous Availability

Unconditional call forwarding features can be used to ensure that your team isn’t missing any calls, potentially providing 24/7 customer service to callers.

Sales teams, for example, can ensure that all incoming inquiries are first routed to an answering service that qualifies leads. After a lead is qualified by the contact center, the prospect’s information is passed to sales reps for more personalized and intentional follow-up. 

This streamlines internal workflows by preventing high-performing reps from spending time on low-intent leads while still ensuring that no potential customer is missed. 

2. Improve Customer Experience With Seamless Call Routing

Customers don’t want to struggle through a long IVR customer service menu and wait to talk to someone, only to be told the call needs to be transferred. In fact, a HubSpot study found that 66% of users said that long hold times and needing to repeat themselves were their biggest frustrations with support calls. 

Fortunately, unconditional call forwarding can ensure that calls to specific business numbers are automatically and seamlessly routed to the right destination the first time. 

Let’s say your financial institution’s phone app has a temporary glitch preventing users from accessing their account. You expect a higher-than-average number of calls, so you redirect incoming calls from the technical support line to the customer support line. 

Customer support can express empathy and provide updates while passing critical issues to tech support experts, so they can remain focused on the most urgent cases.

3. Support Remote and Hybrid Workforces

A large percentage of the workforce values at least some remote work, with 48% of job seekers looking for hybrid roles and 26% wanting fully remote jobs. This can present a technical challenge for businesses that previously relied on in-office phone lines. 

Now, however, unconditional call forwarding allows team members to automatically send all calls made to an office number to their VoIP phone line or cell phone. 

They can work whether they’re in or out of the office, allowing for improved productivity without facilitating call quality management.

How to Set Up Unconditional Call Forwarding

Now you’ve seen how unconditional forwarding can impact your workflows and customer experience, here’s how to set it up with both cell phones and VoIP phone systems: 

Set Up Unconditional Call Forwarding With Android Devices

You can set up call forwarding on your Android phone by following these steps:

• Open your settings menu.
• Access “Call Settings” or “Supplementary Services.”
• Click “Call Forwarding.”
• Enter the phone number you want to redirect calls to. 
• Click to save. 

Alternatively, you can dial *67 before entering the designated number you want to redirect to. 

Set Up Unconditional Call Forwarding With iPhones

Follow these instructions to set up call forwarding on iOS devices:

• Open the Settings app.
• Click on “Apps.” 
• Select “Phone.”
• Select “Call Forwarding.”
• Enter the phone number you want to redirect calls to. 

Alternatively, you can dial *72 before entering the phone number you want to redirect to. 

Set Up Unconditional Call Forwarding With CloudTalk

Setting up call forwarding with CloudTalk is exceptionally easy.

CloudTalk’s Call Flow Designer allows you to customize and adjust call flows. You can direct (and redirect) incoming calls to specific team members, ring groups, voicemail, or external numbers. 

This makes it easy for managers to adjust unconditional call forwarding in a few quick clicks.

Common Setup Mistakes to Avoid 

Call forwarding can ensure that you’re delivering outstanding and timely support to all callers, but only when it’s set up correctly. 

When setting up your unconditional call forwarding, avoid these common mistakes: 

• Forgetting to deactivate your call forwarding settings when they’re no longer needed
• Failing to set up voicemail on the forwarded number
• Not testing the call forwarding settings to ensure they work
• Using unconditional forwarding when conditional forwarding is more appropriate, resulting in inefficiencies or more complicated call flows
• Overlooking potential call forwarding limits or additional charges from the service provider. 
• Discounting call deflection options, which can route customer service needs to other digital channels and reduce overall incoming call volume if needed

Best Practices for Clear and Effective Call Forwarding

Call forwarding can be highly effective when used strategically to optimize your call flows and better service your customers. For best results, consider the following:

• Check that business contact details reflect the correct forwarding setup so callers know who they’ll reach. 
• Ensure your team understands when and why calls are forwarded to prevent confusion.
• Monitor customer feedback to catch inefficient call flows or incorrectly set up call forwarding quickly. 
• Inform callers about call forwarding if relevant, especially if they were expecting to speak to a specific team member. 

Use Unconditional Call Forwarding to Stay Reachable and Reduce Missed Opportunities 

Whether callers need to reach sales, IT support, or general customer service teams, their questions feel urgent. If they aren’t able to reach the right team member quickly, there’s an increased risk of churn. 

Unconditional call forwarding is a simple way to ensure that your business isn’t missing any important calls or potential business opportunities. 

CloudTalk’s customizable call flows make it easy to forward calls based on your team’s needs—whether a manager like Jane wants to keep sales calls from going to voicemail or you need to route support inquiries to the right team instantly.

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Sources:

Martech, 2023.