BCM50 & Auto attendant

[sparky256]

I'm wondering if anyone more familiar with BCM50 than me can let me know if my impression of a situation is correct.

The current setup is two incoming lines with a single receptionist answering the phone. At busy times of the day, this can be problematic. Ideally, incoming calls would be answered automatically with a hold message, with the receptionist picking up the call when free.

I initially thought that this could be accomplished with auto-attendant, but it would seem that this will not work, as once auto-attendant has picked up the call, there's no way to set the system up so that the receptionist can break into the call. Is that correct?

If so, does that mean that an ICC keycode would need to be purchased for the situation above to be implemented?

Many thanks!

 

[cook1082]

Yes and yes. AA does not put call on hold the caller has to do something.. dial extension ,leave mesage etc. Call center will put call on hold untill recept /agent is off phone but keycode cost bucks$$$$.

 

[sparky256]

Thanks for confirming my fears! Not too impressed that the cost of a fairly basic feature seems to be a min £250!

 

[SupportDude]

There are always workarounds my friend.

There is a feature in the BCM called Hunt Groups (aka Poor Man's ACD).
You can have the AA answer the call, roll the call into a CCR tree and provide a message giving callers the option to leave a voicemail message or dial a digit to wait for the next available rep. Lets say the digit 3 routes them to the next rep. The 3 would transfer the call to a hunt group. The Receptionist would be the only member of the hunt group. The downside .... while a call is waiting to be answered in a hunt group, all the calling party hears is ringback tone.
There is also a caveat ... the trunk the call arrived on cannot appear on the telephone of a Hunt Group member, but the trunks can be assigned directly to the Hunt Group.

-SD-

http://www.mysupportguy.net

 

[sparky256]

Thanks! I had investigated & it would seem wrongly rejected hunt groups.

One question - when you say the trunk can't appear on the telephone, what exactly do you mean by that??

 

[SupportDude]

Let's say you have the receptionist answer lines 1-4 and have AA set to answer lines 1-4 after 5 rings for backup.
You'll have to remove lines 1-4 from the receptionist phone because line assignments will take priority over Hunt Group assignment and then the Hunt Group won't work like you want it to work.
So, instead of assigning the lines directly to the receptionist, put the receptionist in a Hunt Group and assign the lines to the Hunt Group.
This will still allow the AA to pick up the lines after 5 rings and the Hunt Group flow will work correctly.
You may even be able to use the Transfer Callback timer to pull the call back into AA/CCR and repeat your greeting allowing the calling party the option of leaving a message or transferring to the receptionist again.

HTH!

-SD-

http://www.mysupportguy.net