Voice is not a helpdesk feature. It is its own build.

Voice projects go wrong in a specific and predictable way. The configuration gets done in a fortnight and the go-live slips by a month, because nobody asked the carrier how long porting takes.

Start with the honest framing

Neither Aircall nor Talkdesk is a helpdesk. They are contact centre platforms that integrate with one. We say that on the scoping call rather than after it, because teams occasionally arrive expecting one tool to replace both and the budget conversation is different if it is two.

We hold Aircall Partner status. On Talkdesk we hold integration certifications, which is not the same thing, and we will not describe ourselves as a Talkdesk Partner because we are not one.

The dependency you cannot compress

Number porting is a regulated telecom process. Aircall publishes requirements country by country and the spread is wide:

• Chile, around 8 days.
• Belgium and Croatia, around 10 days.
• Czech Republic, around 12 days.
• Canada, Spain and Switzerland, up to 15 days.
• Austria, two to three weeks.
• Australia, up to six weeks.

For the US and Canada, Aircall's guidance is 10 to 15 business days from a signed letter of authorisation. Countries also split by port type, so Australia has simple and complex categories and the UK and Spain split single-line from multi-line.

Those are ranges, and they assume the paperwork is right first time. Most delays are not the carrier being slow. They are rejected requests: account holder name does not match, service address is stale, the losing carrier wants a PIN nobody knew about. Every rejection restarts the clock.

Sequence that keeps porting off the critical path

• Submit the port in week one with verified account details, before design decisions are finished.
• Build the call flows against temporary numbers so behaviour is proven before cutover.
• Wire call logging into the helpdesk early, because that is where the reporting gaps show up.
• Keep the old system reachable through the cutover window rather than flipping it in one evening.

What actually gets configured

Numbers and hours. A menu short enough that people do not press zero. Routing by region, business hours and SLA priority. Queue behaviour when nobody is available, which is the thing most setups leave on the default. The integration that logs the call against the customer's ticket so the next agent has the context. Dashboards a manager can read without exporting anything.

The integration is the part that earns its keep. A call that is not logged against a ticket is a conversation your next agent does not know happened.

What moves and what gets rebuilt

Numbers port. Call recordings and history live on the Aircall account rather than with the carrier and come out through the API, with six months of retention.

One correction, because we had this wrong ourselves: call flows do not always need rebuilding. Aircall documents importing a Smartflows call distribution to another number, including the full configuration. Tags, macros and cross-system automation still rarely map one to one, so the mapping document still gets written and approved before anything moves.

What to tell your stakeholders

Give them the range for your specific country, name the owner, which is the carrier, and show the parallel plan. A go-live built on a two week assumption when your carrier needs six is not an aggressive plan. It is a missed date with extra steps.

Verified against

• Aircall support, number porting requirements by country.
• Aircall support, US porting requests and porting FAQ.
• Aircall support, importing a Smartflows call distribution to another number.
• Aircall support, accessing and exporting call data and recordings.

Checked against Aircall documentation on August 6, 2026.