Outbound Calls stepping on Inbound calls and forcing Hold

[3408phonegod]

We have a 2-way call center. ACD agents operate in an "Auto-in" mode with a little bit of automatic "after-call-work" time allocated after every call. Mostly they are waiting for another inbound call, but at the same time are watching for certain events to pop up on their workstation PC which would cause them to initiate an outbound call. They do this by hitting a Ctrl-key combination on their PC which works with the TAPI/TSAPI interface and an application on our AES server to dial the outbound call from their phone set. Occasionally, when the timing is just right, an inbound call hits their voice terminal at the same time as an outbound call is dialed and the inbound call ends up on Hold at the agent's phone set. When this happens the inbound caller just hears MOH until the agent finishes the outbound call or notices the call on hold. Half time they don't notice the held call at all - even when the outbound call terminates. Whatever the case, when they do notice, the agent needs to do something manually to pick up the call on hold.

Short of forcing agents to use a "Manual-In" mode for receiving inbound calls is there a way to prevent inbound calls from holding at the agent's phone set? Would there be a way to limit the hold time to a (very) short interval and then automatically send the call somewhere else (like to a VDN or back to the queue)?

This issue is driving our management nuts and giving customers fits when they get "held" for no apparent reason and without talking to a person first. Any ideas would be appreciated.

 

[jimbojimbo]

When they initiate the TSAPI connection have it put them into aux-work before making the outbound connection.

Jimbo