These two pages work together to control your agent's availability:
Answering Hours decides when your agent answers calls.
Failover Options decides what happens to a call when your agent doesn't answer.
Both live under Agent, in the Call handling group. For setting up live calls in the first place, see Call routing — going live and forwarding your number. For routing live callers to a person mid-call, see Configuring transfers and call routing rules in Configuring Your Agent — that's a transfer, not a failover.
Answering Hours
Open Agent → Answering Hours. You'll choose between two top-level modes:
24/7 Availability — your agent answers any call, any time. No further setup.
Custom Schedule — set per-day hours. Your agent answers only inside those hours; outside them, calls go to the failover option you've configured.
When you pick Custom Schedule, an editor expands showing each day Monday through Sunday. For each day, pick a mode from the dropdown:
All Day — agent available the whole day.
No Service — agent unavailable all day.
Only — agent available only during the time window you specify.
All Except — agent available all day except during the time window you specify.
Time pickers run in 30-minute increments. Each day has one window — overnight shifts (e.g., 10 pm Friday running into 2 am Saturday) aren't supported; the end time must be later than the start time on the same calendar day.
Timezone: the schedule uses your company timezone from Business Details (Configuring Your Agent). There's no per-agent timezone override.
If no timezone is set, your schedule is not applied at all. The schedule is evaluated in your company timezone, so without one there is no way to tell whether a call falls inside your hours - and rather than guess, we let every call through. Your agent answers around the clock until you set it. Answering Hours shows a warning while this is the case.
If every day is set to No Service, your agent answers nothing at all, and every call goes straight to your failover option. That is a valid setup - a business that only wants voicemail can use it - but it is rarely what someone means to configure, so Answering Hours warns you and names where the calls will go.
Holidays and one-off date exceptions aren't supported in the current schedule editor. To close for a single day, switch that day's mode to No Service, then switch it back when you're done.
Failover Options
Open Agent → Failover Options. Pick one of five behaviors that apply whenever your agent isn't available to answer:
Leave a voicemail — caller is sent to a voicemail where they can leave a message. Available after your first purchase — on a Free account that hasn't bought credits or a paid plan, this option is locked, with a notice explaining it unlocks once you've purchased.
Forward to fallback number — caller is forwarded to a phone number you specify.
Play an Audio Message and Hang Up — caller hears a short message you've written, then the call ends.
Send to a Busy Signal — caller hears a busy tone.
Reject the call — call is declined immediately with no notification to the caller.
Voicemail greeting
If you choose "Leave a voicemail," you can write a short greeting the caller hears before they record their message. A character counter shows how much you've used against the limit.
Audio message
If you choose "Play an Audio Message and Hang Up," type the message in the text field. CoreReach generates audio from your text, so you don't need to upload an MP3. A character counter shows how much you've used against the limit.
Fallback forwarding number
If you choose "Forward to fallback number," enter the destination phone number in the input. The fallback number is separate from your transfer destinations in Agent → Transfers & Escalation; it's used only for failover, not for in-call transfers.
Make sure the fallback number isn't your CoreReach number or your business number — forwarding to either creates a loop.
When failover fires
Failover is triggered automatically. There's no on/off toggle — whichever mode you've configured will run whenever:
A call arrives outside your agent's schedule,
Your account has no minutes remaining to handle the call,
Your billing is frozen (for example, during a chargeback dispute), or
Your agent couldn't be reached for the call — a rare connection failure, or every line busy at once.
In most of these cases, the failover behavior you picked above takes over. Two exceptions are worth knowing about:
Before your first purchase. While you're still on free minutes, running out of them plays a standard message and ends the call, rather than using your chosen failover. Once you've bought credit minutes or started a subscription, your choice applies on this path like any other.
When your agent couldn't be reached. On this path only "Leave a voicemail" and "Forward to fallback number" are used. If you've chosen an audio message, a busy signal, or reject, the caller is offered a voicemail instead — we'd rather take a message than hang up on someone because of a fault on our side.