Hold for Me

[rbergthold]

i have a client that is looking for something that will keep their place in queue on an OUTBOUND call from their 8SC Pro. They, sometimes, have to call into government offices and get stuck on hold for extended periods of time. They are wondering if there is something we can integrate with the 3CX that will hold for them and advise when they are about to be picked up (i.e. when they are the next caller in queue).

This would be analogous to something like "Hold for Me" on a Google Pixel: For Google Pixel phones, "Hold for Me" is an AI feature in the Phone app that lets the Assistant wait on hold with a business for you, notifying you when someone's ready, activated by tapping "Hold for Me" during a call after enabling it in Phone app settings; it uses Google Duplex to listen for you and announce your presence, saving you from listening to hold music.

 

[VoIPTools]

Maybe someone smarter than me can help, but I have looked into this exact challenge. Here is the problem -- you make an outbound call between an internal extension and the outside party. The government agency (IRS for example) answers the call and sends your call to their queue. From 3CX's perspective the call has been answered and active. So how does 3CX know when the call is picked up from the queue? I don't think it can. We do not receive an event when this happens. The only option would be to forward the audio to AI and have AI figure out when the call is answered by a human. The cost of streaming a hour-long phone call to AI to monitor the audio is cost prohibitive. If we could determine when the call is taken off hold, then we could transfer the current call in 3CX to the 3CX user waiting. Anyone have another thought?