Multiple offices. One phone system. Right routing.
Each office or location gets its own US business number, hunt group of local staff, working-hours schedule (timezone-aware), and voicemail. The company main IVR routes callers to the right location. Team plans handle 2–50 seats across as many locations as needed.
What this is solving for.
Multi-location businesses face a routing problem softphone UCaaS solves badly. Each office has local staff who pick up local calls. The company main number needs to route callers to the right office. Office hours might differ (Boston open 9–6 ET, Austin open 8–5 CT, San Francisco open 9–6 PT). After-hours coverage might consolidate to one office or rotate. Voicemail should land in the right location's inbox, not a single global voicemail.
Without good routing, the bad versions emerge: every office uses a separate phone system (impossible to coordinate, expensive in seats), or one office handles all calls and transfers manually (the operator becomes the bottleneck), or every customer has to call the right office directly and remember which is which (they don't).
The good version uses departments per location, IVR for caller selection, timezone-aware working hours per location, and shared voicemail per office. Customers reach the right location automatically; office staff handle their own calls; admin handles routing centrally.
Features that apply.
Kelir's department feature is the multi-location primitive. Each location is a department with its own number, hours, members, and routing.
Departments
Each office is a department — own number, hours, hunt group, voicemail, members.
Multi-level IVR
Top-level menu: "Press 1 for Boston, 2 for Austin, 3 for SF" routes to the right department.
Working hours
Per-department schedules respect each location's timezone and local hours.
Hunt groups
Per-office hunt group distributes inbound across that office's local staff.
Shared voicemail
Per-office voicemail inbox the local team manages together.
Admin portal
Central admin manages all locations from one app.kelir.io account.
Step by step.
- Step 01
Pick the company main number
Customers calling without a specific office in mind dial the company main. This is the entry point for the IVR.
- Step 02
Create a department per location
Routing → Departments → New for each location: Boston, Austin, San Francisco. Each gets a dedicated US number.
- Step 03
Assign per-location working hours
Boston department: 9–6 ET. Austin: 8–5 CT. SF: 9–6 PT. Holiday calendar marked at the company level applies to all; per-department overrides for local civic holidays.
- Step 04
Build the hunt group per location
Boston hunt group: Boston-based staff, simultaneous ring. Austin hunt group: Austin-based staff. SF hunt group: SF-based staff. Each rings on its members' real cellular eSIM lines.
- Step 05
Build the IVR menu on the company main
"Thanks for calling. Press 1 for Boston, 2 for Austin, 3 for San Francisco, or stay on the line for the operator." Each option routes to the corresponding department.
- Step 06
Configure shared voicemail per location
Each department has shared voicemail — local staff see their location's missed calls; admin can see all locations from the portal.
- Step 07
Test the full chain
Call the company main from another phone, press each IVR option, verify routing to the right office, leave a voicemail in each, verify transcripts land in the right shared inbox.
What changes.
- Customers calling the company main reach the right office without manual transfer or knowing which direct number to dial.
- Each office's local staff handle their own calls without an operator bottleneck.
- Timezone-aware working hours mean East Coast staff aren't getting woken up at 6 am for West Coast inbound.
- After-hours per-office routing — Boston goes to a Boston-night voicemail, Austin to an Austin-night voicemail.
- Admin sees all locations' missed-call rates and volume from one analytics dashboard at app.kelir.io.
- Adding a new location is a 30-minute task: new department, new number, new hunt group, new IVR option, done.
The right buyer.
Multi-office businesses with 2–50 total seats across locations: small chains (3–10 retail locations), professional services with multiple offices (law firms, accounting practices, multi-clinic medical groups), agencies with regional offices, services businesses with city-specific dispatch (Boston dispatchers handle Boston calls). Each location has its own staff and operates somewhat autonomously.
Who this isn't for: If you have 50+ locations, the central admin gets cumbersome — enterprise-scale multi-location routing is closer to RingCentral or Cisco Webex Calling territory. If your locations actually share staff and route fluidly between them, treating them as one team with multiple inbound numbers (no per-location departments) is simpler.
Common questions
Each department has its own working-hours config that respects the location's timezone. Boston department: 9–6 America/New_York. Austin: 8–5 America/Chicago. SF: 9–6 America/Los_Angeles. The Kelir routing platform evaluates each department's schedule in its own timezone.
Yes — useful for staff who cover multiple offices or for the operator who answers the company main. Member-of-multiple-departments doesn't use extra seats; the user's seat is by user, not by department membership.
The IVR's no-input fallback routes them to the operator (or a default office). Configure the no-input timeout (default 5 seconds) and the destination — typically a hunt group of senior staff who can route the caller to the right place.
Yes. Each department has its own auto-attendant greeting and voicemail greeting. Boston customers calling the Boston number hear a Boston-specific greeting; Austin customers hear an Austin-specific greeting.
Up to 50 seats per Team account. The number of locations isn't directly capped — you can have 10 small locations with 3 seats each, or 3 large locations with 15 seats each. Beyond 50 total seats, the account moves to enterprise sales for custom contracting.
Yes. The Analytics surface in app.kelir.io supports filtering by department — see Boston's call volume separate from Austin's, missed-call rate per location, peak hours per timezone. Useful for operational decisions specific to each office.
Related use cases & features.
Inbound call routing
The full routing chain that multi-location IVR sits on top of.
Departments feature
Detailed feature page for the per-location primitive.
Working hours
Timezone-aware per-department scheduling.