Call Forwarding Phone Systems UK 2026: Auto-Attendant, Hunt Groups & Smart Routing

Call forwarding is one of the most fundamental yet underused features of modern business phone systems. When configured properly, it ensures that every call is answered — whether your team is at their desks, working remotely, in a meeting, or on the road. When configured badly (or not at all), it means missed calls, frustrated customers, and lost revenue.

This guide covers everything UK businesses need to know about call forwarding in 2026: the different types, how auto-attendants and hunt groups work, smart routing for remote and hybrid teams, and how to set it all up. All prices quoted are ex-VAT.

Types of Call Forwarding

Call forwarding is not a single feature — it is a family of related routing options, each suited to different scenarios. Understanding the differences helps you configure the right setup for your business.

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Unconditional Forwarding (Always Forward)

Every call is immediately forwarded to another number, regardless of whether the original extension is available. This is useful when an employee is on leave, a department has moved, or you want all calls to route to a central queue. However, it should be used sparingly in normal operations because the original extension never rings.

No-Answer Forwarding

If a call is not answered within a specified number of rings (typically 15–30 seconds), it is automatically forwarded to another destination — usually a colleague, a team queue, or voicemail. This is the most commonly used forwarding type and is essential for ensuring calls are not lost when someone steps away from their desk.

Busy Forwarding

If the called extension is already on a call, the new call is forwarded to an alternative destination instead of going to voicemail or receiving a busy tone. This is particularly useful for high-volume roles like sales or reception where a busy tone could mean a lost opportunity.

Hunt Group Forwarding

Calls to a hunt group are distributed across multiple extensions based on a defined strategy — ring all simultaneously, ring in sequence, or distribute evenly using round-robin. Hunt groups are the backbone of team-based call handling and are covered in detail below.

Time-Based Forwarding

Calls are routed differently based on the time of day or day of the week. During business hours, calls ring your office extensions. Outside business hours, they are forwarded to a mobile, an out-of-hours team, or a voicemail greeting with your opening times. This is essential for presenting a professional image and managing customer expectations.

Feature Comparison: Traditional vs Basic VoIP vs Business Cloud

The call forwarding capabilities available to you depend heavily on your phone system. Here is how the three main system types compare.

The gap in capability between a traditional PBX and a modern cloud phone system is enormous. For the same or lower cost, a business cloud phone system gives you far more sophisticated routing options — all manageable through a web browser without needing an engineer.

Auto-Attendant Setup Guide

An auto-attendant (also called an IVR — Interactive Voice Response) is an automated receptionist that greets callers and routes them to the right person or department. For small businesses, it presents a professional image. For larger businesses, it dramatically reduces the burden on reception staff and ensures calls reach the right team faster.

Planning Your Auto-Attendant

Before configuring anything, plan your call flow on paper. Consider what the most common reasons for calling are, which departments or individuals handle each type of enquiry, what should happen outside business hours, and what the maximum number of menu levels should be (ideally no more than two).

Recording Your Greeting

Your greeting is the first impression callers receive. It should be professional, concise, and helpful. A good structure is: company name, brief welcome, then options. For example: “Thank you for calling [Company Name]. For sales, press 1. For support, press 2. For accounts, press 3. To speak to the receptionist, please hold.”

Keep the total greeting under 30 seconds. Research consistently shows that callers start to disengage after 20–30 seconds of automated messaging. If you need more than 4–5 options, consider a two-level menu structure rather than a long list.

Best Practices for Auto-Attendant Design

• Put the most popular option first: If 60% of your calls are for sales, make sales option 1. This reduces the average time callers spend listening to the menu
• Always offer a human fallback: Include an option to speak to a person, and set up a no-input rule that routes to reception if the caller does not press any key
• Keep menus shallow: Two levels maximum. Deep menu trees frustrate callers and increase abandonment rates
• Set up time-based rules: Play different greetings during business hours and out-of-hours, and include a special greeting for public holidays
• Test from a caller’s perspective: Call your own number from a mobile and go through every menu path. Time how long it takes to reach a human
• Update seasonally: If your hours change, you have a temporary closure, or you launch a new department, update your greeting accordingly

Hunt Groups Explained

A hunt group is a collection of extensions that share responsibility for answering calls to a common number. When a call arrives, it is distributed to the group members based on a defined strategy. Hunt groups are essential for any team that handles inbound calls — sales, support, reception, accounts.

Ring-All (Simultaneous Ring)

Every phone in the group rings at the same time. The first person to pick up gets the call. This is the simplest strategy and works well for small teams (2–5 people) where speed of answer is the priority. The downside is that it can be disruptive in open-plan offices where multiple phones ring constantly, and it does not distribute calls evenly.

Sequential (Linear Hunt)

Calls ring the first extension in the list. If that person does not answer within a set time (e.g. 15 seconds), the call moves to the second extension, then the third, and so on. This is useful when you have a primary person who should take calls first, with colleagues acting as backup. The risk is that the person at the top of the list gets disproportionately more calls.

Round-Robin (Rotational)

Each new call starts with the next extension in the list after the one that last received a call. This distributes calls evenly across the team. Round-robin is the fairest strategy and works well for teams of any size where equal workload distribution matters — typically customer service and support teams.

Weighted Distribution

Calls are distributed based on a percentage weighting assigned to each extension. For example, a senior agent might receive 40% of calls while a junior agent receives 20%. This is useful for training scenarios or when team members have different capacity due to other responsibilities. Not all VoIP platforms support weighted distribution — it is a feature of more advanced cloud phone systems.

Skills-Based Routing

Calls are routed to agents based on their skill set. For example, a call from a French-speaking number could be routed to a French-speaking agent, or a call about a specific product could be routed to the product specialist. This requires integration between your phone system and your CRM or contact centre platform and is typically used by larger teams with 20+ agents.

Call Routing for Remote and Hybrid Teams

Remote and hybrid working has fundamentally changed how businesses need to handle calls. Employees are no longer anchored to a desk phone in the office — they might be at home on Monday, in the office on Tuesday, at a client site on Wednesday, and working from a coffee shop on Thursday. Your phone system needs to follow them seamlessly.

Presence-Based Routing

Modern cloud phone systems track each user’s availability status — available, busy, away, do not disturb, in a meeting. Calls can be routed based on this status in real time. If a user’s status is “available,” the call rings their desk phone and mobile app simultaneously. If they are “in a meeting,” the call goes directly to a colleague or voicemail. This eliminates the guesswork of traditional forwarding and ensures callers reach someone who is actually available.

Find Me / Follow Me

This feature rings multiple devices simultaneously or in sequence — for example, desk phone first for 10 seconds, then mobile app, then personal mobile as a final fallback. The user can configure their own find-me rules via the mobile app or web portal, changing them on the fly as their day changes. This is particularly valuable for staff who move between office, home, and external locations throughout the week.

Softphone and Mobile App

Rather than forwarding calls to a personal mobile number, a mobile VoIP app lets the employee answer on their business number directly from their smartphone. The caller sees the business number, calls are logged against the business system, and the employee’s personal number remains private. This is the foundation of remote-friendly call handling and should be available to every user.

Hot Desking

For offices with shared desks, hot desking allows users to log into any desk phone temporarily and receive their calls on it. When they log out at the end of the day, the phone reverts to its default state. This is ideal for hybrid offices where employees come in on different days and do not have permanently assigned desks.

Failover Routing: Preparing for the Worst

Even the most reliable phone system can experience issues. Failover routing ensures your business remains reachable even during outages. A well-designed failover strategy includes multiple tiers.

• Tier 1 — Automatic broadband failover: If your primary broadband connection drops, a 4G backup router takes over. Voice traffic continues over 4G with minimal disruption. Cost: £20–£30/mo for the backup router
• Tier 2 — Device failover: If a desk phone is unreachable, calls automatically route to the user’s mobile app. No configuration needed — the cloud system handles this natively
• Tier 3 — Site failover: If an entire office goes offline (power outage, fire), calls are redirected to another office, a remote worker group, or a third-party answering service
• Tier 4 — Platform failover: Reputable cloud providers operate from multiple geographically dispersed data centres. If one data centre fails, traffic automatically routes to another. This is invisible to users and callers

The beauty of cloud based call forwarding is that these failover tiers can all be configured in advance and activated automatically. With a traditional PBX, failover required expensive redundant hardware or manual intervention by an engineer.

Costs of Advanced Call Routing

The good news is that advanced call routing features are typically included in standard cloud phone system subscriptions. Here is what you can expect to pay.

• Basic auto-attendant + hunt groups: Included in plans from £6/user/month
• Multi-level IVR with time-based routing: Included in mid-tier plans from £8/user/month
• CRM integration and skills-based routing: Included in premium plans from £12/user/month, or available as add-ons
• 4G failover broadband: £20–£30/month for the backup router
• Professional greeting recording: £50–£150 one-off for a studio recording, or record your own for free
• Call queuing with wallboard: Typically included in plans from £8/user/month

Compare this with traditional PBX systems where an auto-attendant module alone could cost £500–£2,000, and any change to call routing required an engineer visit at £75–£150/hour.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I set up call forwarding myself?

Yes. Cloud phone systems provide a web-based admin portal where you can configure all forwarding rules, auto-attendants, hunt groups, and time schedules yourself. Most changes take effect immediately. If you prefer, your provider can also manage the configuration for you.

Will callers know their call has been forwarded?

No. Call forwarding is seamless from the caller’s perspective. They dial your number and someone answers — they have no way of knowing whether the call was answered on a desk phone, a mobile app, or at a different location entirely.

Can I forward calls to international numbers?

Yes, but be aware of the cost implications. Forwarding to international numbers incurs per-minute charges based on the destination. If you have staff working internationally, it is far more cost-effective to have them use the VoIP mobile app on their smartphone, which routes calls over the internet rather than the international telephone network.

How do I stop important calls going to voicemail?

Use a combination of ring groups (so multiple people can answer), find-me/follow-me (so calls ring across devices), and presence-based routing (so calls only go to available team members). Set voicemail as the absolute last resort after all other routing options have been exhausted. You can also configure VIP lists so that calls from your most important clients always ring through to a specific person or team.

What is the difference between call forwarding and call transfer?

Call forwarding is automatic — it is configured in advance and happens without any human intervention. Call transfer is manual — the person who answers the call actively transfers it to another extension during the conversation. Both are essential, but they serve different purposes. Forwarding ensures calls are answered; transferring ensures they reach the right person once answered.

The Bottom Line

Call forwarding has evolved from a simple “redirect to another number” feature into a sophisticated suite of routing tools that can transform how your business handles calls. Auto-attendants project professionalism, hunt groups distribute workload fairly, time-based routing manages customer expectations, and presence-based routing ensures callers always reach someone who is available.

The key enabler is a modern cloud phone system. Traditional PBX systems offered basic forwarding at best, and every change required an engineer. Cloud systems put full control in your hands through an intuitive web portal, with changes taking effect in seconds rather than days.

If your business still relies on basic call forwarding — or worse, has no forwarding configured at all — you are almost certainly missing calls and losing revenue. Investing in a properly configured cloud phone system with smart routing is one of the highest-ROI technology decisions a UK business can make in 2026.