Queues and presence

[Marc Mohring]

Hi all,
I have a tricky callflow problem, and I'm hoping someone can help.

My client has 60 retail stores, and 1 head office location.

To improve customer service, they have started a call centre trial in head office that can take the calls for the retail stores, if the store staff don't answer the call.
So, a customer will ring the store DDI, call does not get answered in-store, then the call goes to the call centre.

There is currently only 1 person manning the call centre. I have created a queue for the call centre, and all works beautifully.

The customer now wants to make some changes:
- if the call centre person is away (sick, lunch, other duties), the calls need to keep ringing at the store.
- if she is 'on duty' the call needs to ring at the store for 20secs, then go to the call centre queue and stay there until answered by the call centre person

I've been going round in circles trying to design the callflow for this, and am hopelessly stuck.
Any suggestions would be very welcome.

Thanks,
Marc

 

[pact]

Hi Marc,

Quick thought would be;

DDI -> Ring Group 1 (Which only has the store)
Exit Strategy for RG1 -> Call Queue (call center)
Call Queue (Call Center) will only work if an agent is logged in
Exit Strategy for Call Queue (Call Center) -> Ring Group 2 (Store again).

This way if there is an agent logged into the Queue the caller will sit in that queue to be collected, if the agent is logged out, then the Queue will be skipped and the call will go back to the store.

So the Agent would need to be responsible for logging in and out of the queue when they are on break / end of day to ensure the caller isn't stuck on hold for 2 minutes (or whatever the maximum wait time is of the queue).

This is all on the assumption that you do not want the caller to go to Voicemail, which could be put in place of any exit strategy if you wanted this to happen.

 

[Marc Mohring]

Thanks pact,

Looked at something similar, and I'm not sure it will work.

Once it goes from RG1 to the Call Queue and on to RG2 if no-one's logged in, how do I know which store to send it back to?

Unless I set up a queue for each store.

And, I was kind of hoping to avoid that, since I also have to do 2 Digital Receptionist per store.

Tx,
Marc

 

[NickD_3CX]

You could use the 3CX Call Flow Designer to create this kind of custom logic you are looking for, there are a few great example of what you can do here.

I must admit personally I haven't used it that much, but I think you still wouldn't avoid creating a custom CFD project per store, only to change the RG numbers that it would transfer back to. This means that as far as entries in the Management Console go, it would be the same as adding a Queue per store. It is worth checking out though.
A notice about this though, as you will need to make a few Call Control API calls to get the status of Queue Agents (logged in/out), it would be good if you are somewhat familiar with .NET programming (not too much).

Then you could create a logical flow of:
- Ring Store A RG for 20s
- No Answer --> CFD project
- CFD Project: Is Agent logged in?
---- If yes --> transfer to Queue
---- else --> Send back to Store A RG
- Repeat all