A real support phone system. Without a contact center.
For 2–10 agent support teams that need UCaaS-tier routing — distribution, queuing, recording, analytics — without the complexity (and cost, and overkill) of a Five9 or NICE CXone deployment. Hunt groups distribute, queues hold callers when busy, recordings power QA, shared voicemail catches missed messages.
What this is solving for.
Small-team customer support has a phone problem most software solves badly. Big platforms (Five9, NICE CXone, Genesys) are designed for 50+ agent contact centers — too complex, too expensive, too much overhead for a 5-person team. Generic UCaaS softphones (RingCentral, Dialpad, Vonage Business) ship the right primitives but require an app-must-be-open model that doesn't match how mobile-first support teams actually work. Help-desk-only tools (Zendesk Talk, Intercom Calls) are tightly coupled to a specific ticket platform.
What a 5-person support team actually needs: inbound calls distributed across the team, callers queued (with music + position announcement) when everyone's busy instead of dropped to voicemail, calls recorded for quality reviews, shared voicemail for messages that come in when the team is at capacity, analytics that show missed-rate trends and peak hours, and the ability to take calls on agents' phones — not require everyone to keep a desktop app open.
Kelir delivers exactly that. UCaaS-tier routing depth (hunt groups, queuing, recording, analytics, shared voicemail), all on real cellular eSIM lines so agents take calls on their phones the way they take any other call. No headset hardware, no app-must-be-open, no contact-center overkill.
Features that apply.
The full small-team support stack on Team Starter ($29.99/seat). Adding CRM integration moves to Team Pro ($39.99/seat).
Hunt groups
Round-robin or simultaneous distribution across the support team.
Call queuing
Hold callers with music + position announcements when everyone's busy.
Shared voicemail
Team inbox for messages that come in when the queue is full or after hours.
Call recording
Always-on or on-demand for QA review. Encrypted at rest, configurable retention.
Voicemail transcripts
Read missed messages on the lock screen — triage in the morning.
Analytics
Volume, missed-rate, peak hours, average duration — by user and team.
CRM integrations (Pro)
Auto-log support calls to HubSpot, Salesforce, or Pipedrive.
Step by step.
- Step 01
Set up the support hunt group
Routing → Hunt groups → New. Distribution: round-robin (even load) or simultaneous (race-to-pick-up). Add agents as members. Ring timeout 25s.
- Step 02
Enable call queuing
On the hunt group, enable queuing. Max queue length 5, max wait 3 minutes, position announcements every 30s, music-on-hold from default catalog or custom upload.
- Step 03
Configure the catcher
When the queue is full or max-wait expires: route to shared voicemail (typical) or forward to an external 24/7 service (for higher-stakes practices).
- Step 04
Enable always-on recording
Settings → Call recording → Always-on for the support team. Configure retention (1 year default; up to 7 years on Pro for compliance). Optional consent disclosure prompt at call start.
- Step 05
Set up shared voicemail
Routing → Voicemail → Shared inbox for the support number. Members: the support team. Slack/email notification on new messages so nothing falls through.
- Step 06
Configure working hours
Support team hours: e.g. Mon–Fri 7–7 plus Saturday 9–1. After-hours routes to shared voicemail with promised next-business-morning callback.
- Step 07
Connect the CRM (Team Pro)
Integrations → Connect HubSpot/Salesforce/Pipedrive via OAuth. Calls and messages auto-log to the customer's contact record. Caller-ID lookup overlay shows context pre-pickup.
- Step 08
Monitor analytics weekly
Track missed-rate, queue abandon-rate, and peak hours. Adjust staffing or queue config based on trends.
What changes.
- Support calls distribute across the team — no single agent overloaded, no waiting customer dropped to voicemail.
- Recordings power weekly QA reviews — managers spot training opportunities, agents know what good looks like.
- Missed-call rate stays under 5% during peak hours because the queue holds callers rather than dropping them.
- After-hours messages land in shared voicemail with transcripts — morning triage takes 10 minutes, nothing falls through.
- Analytics shows when peak hours are — staffing decisions become data-driven instead of "it feels busy".
- Agents take calls on their phones — no desktop softphone required, no headset chained to a desk.
The right buyer.
Customer support teams of 2–10 agents at SMB and lower mid-market companies. Service businesses (clinics, agencies, insurance brokerages, financial services) and product companies (small SaaS, e-commerce with phone support, B2B startups). The team handles 50–500 inbound calls per week. Working hours, recording for QA, and shared voicemail are operationally important.
Who this isn't for: If you're running a 25+ agent contact center with shift scheduling, real-time supervision, and SLA dashboards, Kelir's support routing is intentionally narrower than enterprise contact-center platforms. Look at Five9, NICE CXone, Genesys for that scale. If your support is purely chat-and-email and phone is incidental, Kelir is overkill — Help Scout or Intercom plus basic phone forwarding probably covers it.
Common questions
Five9 and NICE are enterprise contact-center platforms — designed for 50+ agents with shift scheduling, real-time supervision, skill-based queuing across hundreds of skills, SLA dashboards, workforce management. Kelir is a UCaaS phone system with the routing primitives small support teams need: hunt groups, queuing, recording, shared voicemail, analytics. Kelir is for 2–10 agent teams; Five9 and NICE are for 50+. Different product class, different price point, different complexity.
Yes — that's the entire delivery model. Each agent has a real cellular eSIM line on their phone. Inbound calls (from the hunt group) ring on the native dialer. They answer however they normally answer cellular calls — speaker, headset, AirPods, CarPlay if they're in a car. No desk-tied headset required.
Default 1 year on Team Starter; configurable from 30 days to 7 years on Team Pro. Useful when compliance requires defined retention. All recordings encrypted at rest with AES-256 in AWS US-East-1.
Yes. Admin portal at app.kelir.io has the Recordings page — filter by agent, date, customer, call duration. Play directly in browser; download as MP3 for archival or evidentiary use. Audit log on Team Pro tracks every recording access for compliance reviews.
Callers beyond the max-queue-length fall through to the queue-full fallback — typically shared voicemail with a "we're at capacity, leave a message" greeting. Optionally forward to an external 24/7 answering service for high-stakes practices.
Inbound calls auto-log to the customer's contact record with timestamp, duration, and recording link. Caller-ID lookup overlay surfaces the customer's pipeline stage / open tickets / last interaction pre-pickup so the agent has context. Useful for support workflows where the agent needs to know if this is a high-priority customer or a repeat issue. Team Pro feature.
Related use cases & features.
Sales team distribution
Same primitives, applied to sales-rep workflows.
Inbound call routing
The full inbound chain that the support hunt group sits inside.
Call recording feature
Detailed feature page for the QA-review recording workflow.