Queuing

[sweetac]

Hi. I have a situation where a client wants to have calls during normal business hours to ring 4 times and then overflow to a queue where the call would automatically be placed on hold. The receptionist or anyone else in the office would see a call on hold and pick it up manually.

At night they want the calls to go to auto attendent except for one of their 3 CO lines. Currently the system has 3 CO lines in a Calling Group that overflows to the VM calling group. I plan on removing the third line from that group so it does not overflow.

How would I go about making calls during normal business hours go on hold after 4 rings?

The system is Merlin Legend R7.

Thanks!

 

[BigWill]

This is what I would do. Put the console in another coverage group. Maybe number 29 or something. My point is that group 29 could cover to calling group 771 which is an auto-logout type of group with queueing turned on. I commonly use an answering machine from radio shack with the "Answer Only" feature for a queue announcement if you wish. On the phones there is a button you can program that will monitor the queue, kind of like a call center manager would have. All these people could be part of that calling group 771 where they could login, receive the call, than logout or go into "aux-work". The console can also have a night button which would redirect the calls to the night time auto attendant. Is this what you had in mind?

 

[sweetac]

That's it for the most part but I don't want phones to have to log in. This is in a Vet Hospital with only a single receptionist. So calls on the other 2 lines would have to hold until the receptionist takes it off.

Thanks!

 

[BigWill]

Try this. I have no idea if this will work, I am basing this totally on assumption since I have never tried this before. If you had the calls cover to an auto-logout style calling group with no members, that would put them in Queue. That style of calling group is the only one that has a queue. My inquiry is that if a call in queue is like a call in mid transfer. If you look at a call in mid transfer to an extension in key mode, the line is on a hold status, and can be picked up by anyone. Try this, when the call goes into queue, try to pick up the line from one of the other phones without logging in or anything. I would be really curious to see if that would work. hypothetically that is about all I can come up with. If that doesn't work would they be happy having the call routed to a centrally located phone, or a ringer in which they could get it from there?

 

[sweetac]

The problem with going to a central phone or ringer is that many different people would answer the call. And in some cases nobody is on the phone when a call comes in. People just may be busy with other activities and can't make it to the phone. So ringing back to an extension wouldn't make a difference.

Also, how would I be able to configure an announcement before the call goes to queue? They would want something like "Thank you for calling... we will answer your call as soon as possible..." or something like that before going on hold.

They are telling me that this was the setup in their last practice and they think they had a Merlin Legend there also.

Thanks.