Call a contact from the CRM

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

Before you start

• The contact must have a primary phone number on file. See Contact fields reference.
• Voice must be configured for your tenant (Settings → Channels → Voice). If voice isn’t set up, the Call action won’t appear.
• You need a role that allows outbound voice. Most agent roles do; some restricted roles don’t.

Steps

1. Open the CRM.
2. Find the contact (search by name, email, or phone).
3. Open the contact detail.
4. Click Call in the contact actions.
5. The call places to the contact’s primary phone. A voice conversation opens in the inbox.
6. Handle the call as you would any other voice interaction — the call recording, transcription, and timeline all behave like an inbound call.

What happens behind the scenes

• A new conversation is created in the customer’s history, marked as outbound voice
• The call goes through Atender’s voice channel using the tenant’s configured caller ID
• Call duration, recording (if enabled), and transcription (if enabled) are captured on the new conversation

After the call ends, the conversation moves to the standard active / done flow — you mark it Done, add tags, leave comments, all as usual.

What if there are multiple phone numbers?

The call uses the contact’s primary phone. If the contact has multiple phones (mobile and office, for example):

• Set the right one as primary before calling — see Edit a contact
• Or change which phone is primary, place the call, then change it back if needed

There’s no “pick which phone” prompt at call time — the primary is dialed.

Verify it worked

• The call connects (or rings out / goes to voicemail — at which point it ended like any outbound call)
• A new conversation appears in the contact’s Conversations tab, marked outbound voice
• 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 missed-call event is logged on their conversation history, useful for follow-up

Other actions from a contact

The CRM contact card supports the outbound voice call action. Other outbound channels (SMS, email composition) are accessed from elsewhere in the app today:

• For email outreach, start from Conversations → Compose
• For SMS, start from Conversations → Compose with the SMS channel
• 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, voice isn’t configured for your tenant, or your role doesn’t permit outbound voice. Check each in order.

• Symptom: The call connects but the wrong number is dialed. Fix: The primary phone is what’s dialed. Edit the contact, change which phone is primary, and try again.

• Symptom: The customer’s caller ID shows an unexpected number. Fix: Outbound caller ID is set in Settings → Channels → Voice. Talk to your admin if the wrong number is going out.

See also

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