Call a contact from the CRM

You don’t have to leave the CRM to call a customer. Open a contact, click the call button next to a phone number, and Atender places the call through your tenant’s voice channel.

Platform availability: The steps below apply to the web CRM. In the iOS app, tap a phone number on the contact to open the call sheet, which places the call through Atender.

Before you start

• The contact must have at least one phone number on file. See Contact fields reference.
• Voice must be configured for your tenant (Settings → Voice). If voice isn’t set up, the call button won’t appear.
• There’s no separate outbound-voice permission: anyone who can open the contact can use the call button.

Steps

1. Open the CRM.
2. Find the contact (search by name, email, or phone).
3. Open the contact detail.
4. In the Details card, find the phone number you want and click the call button next to it (Call followed by the number).
5. The call places to that number. A voice conversation opens in the inbox.
6. Handle the call as you would any other voice interaction — the call recording, transcript, and timeline show on the conversation as they do for an inbound call.

What happens behind the scenes

• A new voice conversation with the subject Outbound call is created in the customer’s history
• The call goes through Atender’s voice channel using one of the tenant’s voice numbers as caller ID — one with the customer’s country code if there is one, otherwise the most recently added
• Call duration, the recording, and its transcript are captured on the new conversation. Atender records every outbound call, whatever your tenant’s recording setting. If the customer hears the recording notice and presses 9, that call is not recorded

After the call ends, the conversation moves to the standard active / done flow — you mark it Done, add tags, leave comments, all as usual. If you turned on Automatically set finished calls to done in your personal preferences, Atender sets the conversation to Done for you when the call ends.

What if there are multiple phone numbers?

The Details card lists every phone number on the contact, each with its own call button. Click the button next to the number you want to call — mobile or office, for example. You don’t need to change which phone is primary first. To add or correct a number, see Edit a contact.

Verify it worked

• The call connects (or rings out / goes to voicemail — at which point it ended like any outbound call)
• A new conversation with the subject Outbound call appears in the contact’s Conversations tab
• The conversation timeline shows the call event with duration

Why call from the CRM, not the dialer?

A few reasons to start from the contact rather than a generic dialer:

• The conversation auto-attaches to the right CRM record — no manual contact lookup later
• All call context (tier, custom fields, prior conversations) is right there
• If the customer doesn’t pick up, the call shows as No answer on their conversation history, useful for follow-up

Other actions from a contact

The CRM Details card also has a send button next to each email address (Send email to followed by the address) and an SMS button next to each phone number (Send SMS to followed by the number), when those channels are set up for your tenant. Each starts a new conversation. You can also start outbound conversations elsewhere:

• For email outreach, start from Conversations → Create new conversation
• For SMS, use the Send SMS button on the contact’s phone number — the Create new conversation dialog offers email and phone only
• For an inbound conversation, the customer reaches out and a conversation auto-creates

Troubleshooting

• Symptom: The call button is missing. Fix: Either the contact has no phone on file, or voice isn’t configured for your tenant. Check each in order.

• Symptom: The call connects but the wrong number is dialed. Fix: Atender dials the number next to the call button you clicked. Check that you clicked the right row in the Details card, and correct the number on the contact if it is wrong.

• Symptom: The customer’s caller ID shows an unexpected number. Fix: There’s no caller-ID setting for these calls: Atender picks one of your workspace’s voice numbers, preferring one with the customer’s country code and otherwise using the most recently added number. Talk to your admin about adding a number for that country in Settings → Voice.

See also

• What is the CRM?
• Contact fields reference
• Edit a contact