Merlin Messaging 2.5 - Automated Attendants

[baronstevo]

I'm trying to find the best way to setup the automated attendants for our office so we can start using the temporary holiday schedule. Currently, from 8am to 5pm a receptionist answers the phone without any automated attendants. From 7am to 6pm, our customer service department is open to take calls. So we have AA 1 stating hour business hours and to press 7 if they want to reach a custome service person between the hours of 7am to 6pm.

We have two problems with this. We're closed for the weekends, but callers will still press 7 to hold in the call queue forever. We used to have a 5 min wait until they get dumped to voicemail, but upper management wanted that timeout removed. Second problem, during a holiday, the temporary message would play, "Hey we're closed, blah blah", and then the normal message plays and callers press 7 to hold in a call queue forever on a holiday. We took over 200 calls because callers didn't bother to listen to the holiday message. On holidays, we have to change the AA 1 recording stating we're closed, and then on the next business day, we re-record our normal message. Even when we change the AA 1 recording, if a caller knows our system, they'll still press 7 to wait in a queue that no one's going to answer.

Can Automated Attendants overlap? (i.e. program AA 2 to answer from 7am to 8am, program AA 3 to answer from 5pm to 6pm, and AA 1 to answer during non-business hours)

 

[Telecomboy]

If you make the operator extension the extension of the Auto-attendant you could make this work. Then, you would just need the regular day/night greetings. When the operator was in to take calls, take DND off and it will ring the operator's phone. Between 5-6pm, and 7-8am leave the DND on, but also leave it in day mode (with option to go to hunt group). After 6pm, before 7am, have both DND on and Night pressed on the operator extension and it will go to the Night Menu (which can have different options than the day Menu). If it always goes to Night at the same time, then you can also set the Messaging to control the Day/Night menus according to a time schedule you set-up.