VM PRO Envelope - how to include HG information when transferred call to user? 1

[jeffstev]

We have a pretty complicated VM Pro call routing scenario whereby callers call into dozens of different huntgroup numbers and are looked up and routed. Each Huntgroup represents a different company. The caller's information is looked up in a CRM database in that specific "Company", and the caller is routed directly to the sales rep who owns the record for that Company. We've written applications that alert the user, pop records, etc. This has all been working flawlessly with one exception, and that's where I need help.

When the call is routed to the user and they aren't available, the caller leaves a voicemail. That's all well and fine, except when the user retrieves the voicemail, they have absolutely no idea which HuntGroup the call came in on and therefore no way to associate the caller to the correct Company, thereby making the voicemail the user leaves almost useless unless the caller announces which company they called (which never happens).

- I can identify the HG in a user variable when the call comes in
- I can prerecord Company Names that are associated with each HG

Since there appears to be no way to modify the Envelope information of the VM that is left, is there any way I can pre-pend the WAV file of the prerecorded Company Name to the VM being left so the sales rep knows what Company was called? Am I over-thinking this? Is there an easier way? Some sales reps handle a dozen companies now so this is becoming a much bigger problem than when we first started all this.

thanks for any help!

Jeff Stevenson

 

[overthebars]

What I would do is assign a Huntgroup Mailbox for each company to the sales person's extension instead of it just going to his personal voicemail. I don't know what kind of phones you are using but would be great to have something with a multi line display. So when he presses his message button, if using visual voice, he will see his personal mailbox and any HG mailbox you have assigned through Source Numbers. Not sure if this is limited or not though.

 

[jeffstev]

So what you're saying is to get rid of each user's personal mailboxes, and anytime the user isn't available at their desk when a call is routed to them to then route the call to the HG voicemail box? that kind of defeats the purpose of having individual mailboxes for each sales rep who owns their own customers. And you'd have to have each rep check the HG voicemail box which may or may not contain messages for the person checking the messages. Time=money, and that would distract dozens of reps from their job which is to sell (user get lots of VM's). While this might work in a non-sales environment, trust me when I say that if sales reps knew other sales reps were listening to their voicemails, I would have an uprising in the trenches the likes of which we haven't seen before, not even in our current congress...

Any other ideas? I'm starting to experiment with the Whisper functional block, but not sure that will capture recordings when the caller leaves a message.

Jeff

 

[overthebars]

Sorry, I might have not been clear enough. The user will still have his/her user mailbox. But will also have access to HG mailboxes assigned to him also via Source Numbers. For example: Say salesman Joe is responsible for Sears, Lowes, and Kmart and they are to only be checked by him. You will already have Huntgroups for these companies already ringing just Joe's phone. So you will enable voicemail on the Huntgroups and have Joe record a message of his choice. Under Joe's user in the Source Number tab you will add HSears, HLowes, and HKmart. He will be the only user who has access to these Hunt Group mailboxes via Visual Voice. He can go into the Hunt Group mailbox and password protect them also so if anyone dials *17 they will be prompted for a password when entering the huntgroup ext number. Now when Joe hits his message button and it is set to visual voice, his display looks like this:

Listen... 0/0/0 (personal)
Sears... 0/0/0
Lowes... 5/0/0 (5 new messages)
Kmart... 0/5/0 (5 saved messages)

So Joe has access to these 4 mailboxes alone and still has a personal mailbox for when someone calls his DID or calls internally. Joe also knows exactly which messages come from which company. Is this not what you are trying to accomplish?

 

[amriddle01]

Indeed, this is good advice and the way I would do it

 

[overthebars]

So instead of routing it to a user's extension, create a huntgroup with the company's name and route it there and give him access as stated above.

 

[jeffstev]

Yikes... 50 sales reps x 50 different companies with an average of 8-9 companies per rep and there is LOTS of crossover. Several companies have 10-12 sales reps working on it so now I have a mailbox naming problem. Simple calcs: that's about 50x9=450 new mailboxes that need to be set up?? And we are constantly changing/moving the reps around to different companies? While this technically might work, it would be a VM mailbox management nightmare.

Based on all this, I'm now thinking of writing a simple SQL report that queries the Avaya/VM db for each sales rep that shows them all of their incoming calls and what DID line they came in on which would at least let them know how to x-reference calls. I've already written part of it for one of our other apps and could probably incorporate it into the dialer app we wrote:

I would just have to filter the list based on the calls to/VM's that are left for the logged-in user. A bit of work, but something that can be set up and forgotten.

 

[jeffstev]

I should have also said that we also already have HG's built for each Company and they already all have VM boxes assigned to them - those boxes are checked by our admin staff and the get a few VM's per day. Those boxes are used when the caller calls one of the companies #'s we use, but his number can't be found in our CRM db (often because he used his cell phone to call us back instead of the home phone we called him on).

 

[overthebars]

Just as a note though, you can add as many users as you like to get the HG mailboxes. So if you have 12 agents handling Lowes then you would put the HG in the Source Number of the 12 users. May not be the solution you are looking for, just tryin to help...

 

[jeffstev]

overthebars: I think I addressed this already >>While this might work in a non-sales environment, trust me when I say that if sales reps knew other sales reps were listening to their voicemails, I would have an uprising in the trenches the likes of which we haven't seen before, not even in our current congress...

Unless there is user/extension level security assigned to the WAV files for the HG VM's that only the user can access... I somehow doubt VMPro is that advanced.

 

[tlpeter]

Jeff, what about using the email action and send the voicemails as email?
You can add a description to it and that could the CLI of the group or even caller or the DDI choosen.
I am not sure if you can select the right message but it worth a shot.



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