Best way of playing unskippable audio file at some point in the call flow?

[NicholasBarnes]

Hi all,

I have a customer with a specific requirement for inbound calls.

1 - Play "Thank you for calling COMPANY" message. This must not be skippable by the caller.
2 - Play current status message (e.g. "It's currently snowing and staff numbers are reduced. We apologise for longer than average waiting times."). This must not be skippable by the caller.
3 - Enter IVR and continue call flow according to choice.

The status message needs to be easily changed by the customer (so using a Call Flow App probably isn't appropriate).

In an ideal world, 3CX would have a "play audio" target/action, but as it doesn't appear to, does anybody know what the best way of achieving the above is? My initial thought was to use the digital receptionist, but there are two problems with this:
1 - There doesn't seem to be a way of forcing the caller to hear the whole message (i.e. ignore keypresses until the audio terminates)
2 - The minimum delay after the message has finished is 1 second. This may not sound a lot, but it does make the message flow a bit stilted.

So, is there a better way of meeting the customer's requirements?

Many thanks,
Nicholas.

 

[ChrisC_3CX]

You could create a DTMF input IVR instead of a Standard one to avoid allowing direct dialing and therefore skipping the prompt. Just have invalid inputs repeat the prompt and then the timeout routing your next IVR. This of course will still not address the 1 second delay but I think it's the closest you can get to what you're trying to achieve without using the CFD.

 

[NicholasBarnes]

Thank you for the reply.

This of course will still not address the 1 second delay

I had played with this idea and it does work - the repeating prompts aren't ideal but are acceptable, but the real problem is that it's not a 1 second delay - if the status message is empty (which it will be most of the time), then as far as the caller is concerned, there's actually a 2 second delay between the welcome and the IVR.
Thank you, though. I'll see what the customer has to say.

 

[VoIPTools]

You bring up two issues (1) the ability to change the message, and (2) the 1 second delay when using a standard IVR. I believe you can address both of these issues while using a CFD application.

Regarding #1 above, it depends on how fancy you want to make it. If it is simply an on/off situation, then having the CFD check a flag in a text file will do the trick. If you want to pay different messages, then the same approach applies except you specify the name of the prompt to be played rather than a True/False.

Issue #2 is also solved by the CFD since there is not minimum wait time after playing the audio.

Providing an interface to change the settings is straightforward. You could create a separate CFD application that updates the text file. When the CFD extension is called, you are prompted for the state (true/false) or the prompt name -- For prompt X press 1. For prompt Y, press 2.