Telecoms glossary • H
Hunt groups
The cheapest way to stop a department call dying on one unattended desk. Also the feature most often left half-configured.
What is a hunt group?in business telephony
1. A hunt group is a set of extensions that the phone system rings on your behalf when a call arrives for a department or a main number. Rather than one desk phone ringing out to voicemail, the system hunts through the group until somebody answers or the timer runs out.
2. A hunt group has no queue. If nobody in the group picks up, the call goes straight to the overflow destination instead of waiting for someone to become free, which is the single feature that separates it from an ACD queue.
The ring strategies, and which one to use
Two strategies are on every platform. The rest vary by vendor, and on some systems the distribution options are only available once you move from a ring group to a queue, so check the feature list rather than assuming.
- Sequential hunt
- Rings the members in a fixed order, moving down the list each time nobody answers. Suits a structure with a named owner and a backup: the account manager first, the assistant second, the department third.
- Ring all
- Rings every member at once until someone picks up or the ring time expires. Fastest to answer, and it works only while the group stays small. Past six or seven phones the noise trains everyone to let someone else take it.
- Round robin
- Rotates which member is rung first so the work spreads evenly over the day. Useful where the call itself is the revenue and order of answer decides who earns.
- Longest idle
- Sends the call to whoever has gone longest without one. The fairest option for a support team, and the one most likely to sit behind a queue licence rather than a hunt group.
Whatever the strategy, set the overflow destination deliberately. Voicemail, a second group, or a mobile are all reasonable; leaving it at the default is how calls disappear.
Hunt group or ACD queue
These are not two grades of the same feature. They answer different failures, and buying the wrong one is expensive in opposite directions.
| Hunt group | ACD queue | |
|---|---|---|
| Caller waits | No, the call moves on or ends | Yes, held with position and music |
| Agent state | Not tracked | Logged in, available, on a call, wrapping up |
| Reporting | Basic call records | Service level, abandonment, talk and wrap time |
| Skills routing | No | Yes, by language or product |
| Cost | Usually in the standard plan | A per-agent licence on a higher tier |
| Fits | A team that misses calls | A team whose callers are waiting |
That last row is the decision. If your problem is that calls ring out unanswered, a hunt group solves it for nothing. If your problem is that callers hold on and hang up, no ring strategy fixes it and you are buying a queue, measured against the standard service level of answering 80% of calls within 20 seconds.
Where hunt groups go wrong
Four faults account for most of the calls that vanish inside an otherwise working phone system.
- A mobile in the group
- The worst one. A mobile in the ring list will send the call to its own voicemail the moment it is busy or out of coverage, and the group stops hunting because the call was answered. Callers reach a personal voicemail greeting they were never meant to hear.
- The timer is too short
- Sequential hunting with a six-second step gives nobody time to reach a phone, so a five-member group burns through everyone in half a minute and dumps to voicemail.
- Leavers still in the list
- An extension that no longer belongs to anyone keeps taking its turn in the rotation. Review group membership whenever someone leaves, not whenever someone complains.
- No after-hours path
- A group that rings an empty office at 18:00 tells the caller nothing. Point the group at a time condition so evenings and the twelve public holidays route somewhere that answers.
Before you buy call centre licences
For a team under about ten people, a hunt group with a sensible overflow, an IVR in front of it and voicemail to email covers what most businesses actually need. Ask your provider to configure it properly rather than quoting you an upgrade.
The honest trigger for moving to a queue is measurement. Once you need to know how long callers waited and how many gave up, you have outgrown hunt groups, because a hunt group cannot tell you either.
About this entry
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