Car Dealership - Shared Parking Sales Calls

[contoured]

Hello!

I'm currently experiencing issues with a 3CX v15.5 with Yealink T46S recently installed at a car dealership. I'm looking for suggestions on how to improve this use case scenario.

Currently we are using 5 Shared Parks with BLFs to direct incoming sales calls. Basically ...

1. Sales call comes into receptionist.
2. She places the call in a shared park
3. She announces on the PA "Sales Call Park 1"
4. Every salesman in the office (15+ guys) slam the Shared Park BLF to try and grab the call. (Its a competitive thing)
5. The first sales guy that hits the BLF gets the call...sometimes.

What is happening is the sales guys are rushing/panicking and pressing the key multiple times (partially due to the screensaver on which forces them to wake up the phone first) and they often grab the call and then put it right back on shared park 1. Another complaint is that the sales guys somehow end up talking to each other on the shared park which causes confusion.

They are not really open to using a call queue because the sales guys float around all time time. They also like the competitive nature of snatching the calls, it's a company culture thing.

I've tried using a Call Park (*00) and Park Pickup (*10) to mimic something of a call queue, but that has it's own issues. Like no indicator lights on the DSS key .

Any suggestions or recommendations would be greatly appreciated!

 

[jimbo59]

I'd turn off the screensaver

 

[eddv123]

I would just use a queue for Sales calls with the "Ring All" polling strategy, that way they don't have to hit a key to answer the call, whoever picks up the receiver first gets the call. This way you also take the receptionist out of circulation to deal with other calls.

If Queues are an issue because agents float around then use the "Hotdesking" feature (if you have a PRO licence) or the other option is 3CX Phone for IOS and Android.
https://www.3cx.com/docs/hot-desking/

 

[jbryant84]

I would just use a queue for Sales calls with the "Ring All" polling strategy, that way they don't have to hit a key to answer the call, whoever picks up the receiver first gets the call. This way you also take the receptionist out of circulation to deal with other calls.

If Queues are an issue because agents float around then use the "Hotdesking" feature (if you have a PRO licence) or the other option is 3CX Phone for IOS and Android.
https://www.3cx.com/docs/hot-desking/

This, and set a custom speed dial on the recptionist's phone set to the queue extension number, so it rings the phones and eliminates the need to page. Yealink phones use ring tone 4 for queues which by default is set to music (can be changed in phone webui).

 

[100028]

Another complaint is that the sales guys somehow end up talking to each other on the shared park which causes confusion.

On the phones you need to disable Allow Trans Exist Call. We've had this issue also with some customers. Sometimes external lines were connected with each other instead of the users of the phone system.

 

[cobaltit]

So Parking BLFs will still show red/green regardless of the screensaver so that sounds like more of a training issue.

 

[iron]

Honestly you should be using a call queue to handle this. This is not what call parking is really designed for.

A ring group would work too, but a call queue does way more and gives more flexibility in terms of routing options. It's also a great idea to have the callers listen to the service specials while they are waiting. Sales people can log in/out of queue's when the are working with customers so as to not be disturbed.

I know people are kind of funny with regard to "someone must answer my phone" only to have that person then forward the call to someone else (not very productive, but w/e). If that is the case, have the receptionist transfer the call to the queue extension.

 

[Brian Cross]

Incoming call to receptionist, receptionist transfers call to sales queue, sales queue to ring all strategy. First one to answer gets the call.

You could also have the receptionist transfer to a sales ring group if you didn't want to use a queue for some reason.

 

[contoured]

Update: For now I have settled on having the receptionist park the call with *00 (custom speed dial), page out "sales call on hold" and then the sales guys pick up with *10 (custom speed dial). It works well because multiple calls can be stacked in that parking space and are retrieved FIFO. What's also nice is that that if no one is in that psuedo-queue then the phones just say "not found" which lets the sales guys instantly know that they missed the call. The only major downside is the lack of a status light, which in this case is not all that important because so many people are competing for those calls

Also, changing the screensaver timeout to the maximum (6 hours) has removed the headache of having to wake up the phone. That was a great tip so thank you! I have not yet been able to look into that "Allow Trans Exist" setting on the phone but if I can figure that out that would be helpful as well. Shared park functionality is a bit strange at times.