Your AI receptionist has its own phone number, but you keep your own number too. To put the receptionist to work, you forward your business line to the Mucka number, so it only ever picks up the calls you want it to. You will find your Mucka number, and these same codes ready to copy, on the Receptionist page: open Settings, then Forwarding under Answering.
Choose when Mucka picks up
Dial one of these from the phone you want covered. Replace the number shown with your own Mucka number (it is on the Receptionist page).
- When you do not answer (recommended). Your phone rings first, and Mucka only picks up if you miss it. Dial
**61*then your Mucka number then**15#. - When your line is busy. Mucka answers if you are already on a call. Dial
**67*then your Mucka number then#. - Every call. Everything goes straight to Mucka without ringing your phone. Dial
*21*then your Mucka number then#.
You will usually hear a short tone or a confirmation message once it is set. The "when you do not answer" option is the one most people want, because you still catch the calls you can take and Mucka mops up the rest.
You do not have to work the code out yourself. Go to Receptionist, then Settings, then Forwarding under Answering, and the "Go live: forward your calls" panel builds it for you: pick how long you want your phone to ring from the dropdown and it shows you the exact thing to dial, ready to copy.
How long should your phone ring first?
Fifteen seconds, which is about three rings. That is the bit of this page worth reading twice.
If you dial **61* and your Mucka number and just #, you get whatever your network uses as its default, and on most UK mobiles that is 20 to 30 seconds. Add **15# on the end instead and you are telling it to hand over after fifteen.
It matters more than it sounds. We looked at every call that came in over three weeks and found something we did not expect: when somebody rings your Mucka number straight off, they almost never hang up. When they ring your normal number and get passed across to Mucka, roughly one in four hangs up in the first few seconds, before your receptionist has said a word. Same receptionist, same greeting, same business, on the same day. The only difference is that the second caller had already been listening to your phone ring for half a minute before Mucka got a look in.
By then they have run out of patience, and they ring off just as the call is about to be answered. Shortening that first ring is the single biggest thing you can do to stop losing those calls.
So:
- 15 seconds suits most people. Long enough to get to your phone if you can, short enough that the caller is still there.
- 5 or 10 seconds if you are usually on the tools and would rather Mucka just got on with it.
- 25 or 30 seconds only if you really do want a long go at answering yourself, and accept that more callers will give up.
If you would rather nobody waited at all, use Every call instead and Mucka picks up immediately every time.
You can change it whenever you like. Just dial the code again with a different number on the end, and the new one replaces the old.
Turning forwarding off
To stop forwarding and send calls back to your own phone, dial ##002#. That clears all the forwarding settings at once. You can turn it back on any time with the codes above.
If every call shows your own number
Some landlines, when they divert a call, tell us the call is coming from your line rather than from the person who rang. When that happens Mucka has no way to know the caller's number, so your call alerts will say "their number didn't come through" instead of giving you someone to ring back. Your receptionist will ask the caller for a number instead, and that is the number you will see.
It is a setting at your phone provider's end, not something in Mucka. If it is happening to you, it is worth a call to them to ask whether their diversion can pass the original caller's number through. Mobiles almost always do this correctly; it is traditional landlines where it varies. You keep your own number either way: Mucka does not take it over, it only answers the calls you send it.
If the codes do not work
These codes work on most UK mobiles. Landlines and a few networks set forwarding up differently, so if a code does not take, your phone provider can switch it on for you in a minute, or you can look up "call forwarding" in your provider's help. Nothing else in Mucka needs changing, the receptionist is already waiting on its number.