Activating 3 different answer messages

[Michele Communikare]

Hello,

I have a customer who asks me, at his discretion, to activate audio messages that answer automatically when a call arrives.

It works like this:

The call enters and goes to a queue consisting of 2 agents. Everything up to now is working.

The customer, however, tells me that the agent, at his discretion and independently, would actively want up to 3 messages that would be reproduced when the call arrives.

I tried to set the "Lunch" and "Business Trip" states to 2 Standard IVRs respectively that reproduce the 2 distinct messages, but if the agent is in the queue, the 2 extension rules for forwarding are not taken into consideration .

If instead I call the extension directly, they work perfectly.


Do you have any idea what I can do?

Thanks
Michele

 

[ChrisC_3CX]

Just so that we first better understand the requirements:

• Are these two extensions ever going to be picking up calls or do you require the caller only listens to a prerecorded message? If the latter, why use a Call Queue with two extensions?

• Does the user need to pick a prerecorded message per call, per time of day, per day, or might be any of the three?

• What should happen to the call after the caller listens to the prerecorded message?

• Are there any other requirements or any other expected behavior regarding this call flow?

 

[Michele Communikare]

Hi, here the aswers:


• Are these two extensions ever going to be picking up calls or do you require the caller only listens to a prerecorded message? If the latter, why use a Call Queue with two extensions?
It happens that there are a lot af callers at the same time. The customer wants to activate one of these three messages when hi wants.

• Does the user need to pick a prerecorded message per call, per time of day, per day, or might be any of the three? The messages are preregistrated, the customer wants to enable or disable when hi wants.

• What should happen to the call after the caller listens to the prerecorded message?
For now, the call ends.

• Are there any other requirements or any other expected behavior regarding this call flow?
For now no.


Thank You
Michele

 

[ChrisC_3CX]

In that case, you could have the Call Queue set to only accept a specific number of callers. This can be done under Call Queues >> Edit >> Advanced >> Maximum Callers in Queue. This counts answered calls as well so if you for instance set it to 3, you can have the two agents receive a call each and one more call waiting in Queue. The rest of the calls will be routed to the "destination if no answer" of the Call Queue.

• The "destination if no answer" can be set to a dummy/routing extension you create and has the desired prerecorded greeting messages each assigned to its corresponding profile status.

• The user can then change the dummy/routing extension profile status by dialing the special menu (999) pressing # and then logging in with the dummy/routing extension PIN code. Press 9 for options and then 1 to change profile status and hence the message to be played. You can also change this extension's profile status from the management console or from a 3CX Client that has this extension provisioned.

Do bear in mind that the Destination if no answer of the queue may also be reached:

1. if the caller waits in the queue for the "Maximum Queue Wait Time" set under Queue >> Edit >> General. That said, you might want to increase the Queue's maximum ring time.

2. The caller presses * while waiting in the Queue.

 

[Michele Communikare]

Thanks,

But the customer tells me that wants to enable the message (one time for instance the first message, another time, the second and another the third), not based on the total callers on a queue.

He wants to enable or disable the messages when he wants.

There is a solution? Call flows? Or for example three day or night switch?

Michele

 

[ChrisC_3CX]

I'm afraid I am not certain I completely understood the desired behavior. In the above workaround, the customer will be able to switch from one prerecorded message to the other whenever he wants by changing the dummy/routing extensions profile status. If the problem is that you want this to apply to all calls and not just the ones triggering the Queue's maximum caller limit, you could have the same setup but without the maximum callers in queue settings, and then simply have the agents logout of the queue when you want the prerecorded message to be heard. All callers waiting in queue will be routed to the destination if no answer of the queue, and will hear the corresponding greeting message depending on the dummy/routing extension profile status.

If this does not suit your needs either, please provide more details on what exactly it is you want to accomplish with an example. Let's say you have 2 agents, both on a Queue call, and you have 5 other callers waiting in the queue, what would you want to happen to which calls and how.

• Would you want to be able to route one of the two ongoing calls to a prerecorded message?
• Would you want to route the 1st call waiting in the queue to a prerecorded message and then the 2nd to another? If yes, would the user be diverting this calls manually?
• Would you want all waiting calls to hear the same prerecorded message?

Please explain and provide as many details as possible. Whether this will be possible with a Call Flow App or some other type of configuration all depends on the behavior you expect.

 

[Michele Communikare]

I try to explain myself better:

Now the incoming call goes to an IVR which plays the welcome message. Then go to the queue that contains the 2 agents.

It is not a problem for the customer if there are few or many callers waiting.

This is a restaurant. The customer has pre-recorded 3 messages:
1- Restaurant closed;
2- Short afternoon break;
3- Table reservations are not accepted because all seats are occupied.

The customer wants to insert one of these 3 messages according to the situation when the call is answered.


Thank You
Michele

 

[ChrisC_3CX]

Does he still want to answer the call though?

Could you also give an example such as:

• Call comes in and goes to IVR
• Caller presses 3 for reservations
• Is this where you want the different routing to occur?
- ring agents
- or, Play message 1(closed)
- or, Play message 2(break)
- or, Play message 3(no reservations)

• Caller listens to message 2

 

[Michele Communikare]

Now;

New call comes and goes to IVR. There are no options in the IVR that the caller select. But when the message of ivr end, the call goes to queue.

The goal is:

When the person at the customer care (that is the agent in the queue), want to enable one of the three messages, the caller have to listen that message. After that, the call end.

Michele

 

[ChrisC_3CX]

Great, thank you for the explanation. In that case, you could achieve this by having the following call flow:

1. DID/CID Rule routes to IVR
2. IVR routes to Dummy/routing extension
3. Dummy/routing extension:
- Available and unregistered: Routes to Call Queue
- Away: Plays voicemail greeting - message 1
- Do not Disturb: Plays voicemail greeting - message 2
- Custom 2 (DND2): Plays voicemail greeting - message 3

Do bear in mind however that all calls that have already reached the Call Queue will stay in the Call Queue and will either have to be answered or go to the Destination if no answer of the Call Queue.

 

[Michele Communikare]

Thank You!

Michele