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When a customer rings one of your numbers, Dialbird brings the call to you wherever you’re working, so you don’t miss the job even if you’re heads-down in another window. This page shows you how to answer, what you can tell about a caller before you pick up, and what to check if the ringing goes quiet.

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Answering a call

When someone calls, a call card pops up in the middle of your screen with two buttons: Accept (green) and Reject (red). The card tells you who it is:
  • If the caller is one of your saved contacts, you see their name and picture.
  • If they’re not saved, you see their phone number and a plain placeholder picture.
  • At the top, you see which of your numbers they rang, shown as the inbox name and number, so you know which hat to answer with.
Dialbird also rings out loud and shows a notification on your desktop, so you’ll know a call has come in even if Dialbird isn’t the window you’re looking at. Click Accept to take the call. Once you’re connected you get the full call window, the same controls as an outbound call: mute, hold, record, keypad, transfer and end. See what you can do once you’re talking. Click Reject and the caller is turned away. If voicemail is switched on for that number, they can leave a message instead. See Voicemail.

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When the call is being passed to you

Sometimes the card isn’t a fresh caller, it’s a colleague handing a call over. Then it looks a little different:
  • The heading reads Call transfer or Warm transfer.
  • It shows who’s passing it to you.
  • If they left a note, you’ll see it under Note.
  • On this call lists who’s already on the line, including the customer, so you can decide before you accept.
For the full picture of transfers, see Passing a call to someone else.

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Turning on call notifications

So you never miss a call while Dialbird is in a background tab, let your browser show notifications. If notifications aren’t on yet, Dialbird shows a small banner:
  • Enable call notifications with an Enable button. Click it and say yes to your browser.
  • If you’ve blocked them before, the banner reads Notifications are blocked. A blocked permission can only be turned back on by you, in your browser’s site settings for Dialbird.

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If you can’t hear the phone ring

If calls seem to come in silently, there are two common reasons and both are quick to fix. Your browser is blocking notifications. Turn them back on using the banner above, or in your browser’s site settings for Dialbird. You haven’t clicked on the page yet. Browsers won’t play any sound until you’ve clicked somewhere on the page at least once. If you opened Dialbird and left it sitting in a background tab, the first call may ring silently, though the desktop notification still pops up. Click anywhere in the Dialbird tab and it will ring properly from then on.

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Missed calls

If nobody answers in time, the call is treated as missed. A missed call:
  • Goes to voicemail, if voicemail is switched on for that number. See Voicemail.
  • Shows up in your Calls list marked as missed, so you can spot it and ring back with one click.

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Sending calls somewhere else

If you’d rather calls to a number went to a different phone entirely, say your mobile, you can forward them. That’s set per number in its settings. See Call forwarding.
Needs checking: confirm what happens when you’re signed in on more than one device, does every device ring, and does answering on one stop the others?
Last modified on July 15, 2026