Can agents use only one number when dialing out?

Question

I want agents to be able to use a soft phone when they work from home.

What happens with dialing out? Can my team still have a single number to dial out?

Answer

Yes, you can still have a single number to dial out. Here is how outbound calling works and how to keep it consistent with a single number.

Note: When agents use agent forwarding in Via Phone mode, they must initiate outbound calls from the browser interface. Agents dial out through the call console, which then connects to their desk phone or soft phone to complete the call. Agents cannot use the physical phone alone to dial out directly.

To keep a single outbound caller ID number, you can standardize on one number for all outbound calls regardless of whether agents are in the office or working from home. Here's how you can do this:

By default, agents can select from any outbound-enabled number in the call console drop-down. This means different numbers appear to customers.

To lock this to a single number, an admin can turn off outbound calling on all but one number, so agents must dial out from that single number.

This means every customer sees the same caller ID every time, no matter which agent calls or which mode they use.

Use either a Voice number or your own existing external number as the single outbound caller ID.

To set up:

In Admin Center, select Channels > Talk and email > Talk

Go to the Lines tab

Turn off outbound calling for all but one of your numbers. See Managing phone number settings.
All agents then see only that one number in their call console when they dial out

Note: Zendesk doesn't provide a dedicated public test number to test outbound calls. To test, see Testing your voice support setup.