Voicemail to an external number

[TazPam]

Hi Everyone,

Just a quick question. We are a security company and outside the office hours (7-17), we diverted our phone lines to an external number who take messages and call on duty engineer if it is urgent. Is there a way to set up a voicemail to answer first saying, 'Hi, thanks for calling .... if your call is not urgent please call back us in office hours which is 7till 17pm or leave a message. If it is urgent please dial 9' and when they press 9 then it would call our emergency out of hour numbers.

At the moment, all calls received out of hours is diverted to an emergency line but we are receiving a lot of non emergency calls and we want to greet our costumers with voicemail first and divert their call if it is only emergency.

Any help would be appreciated.

Taz

 

[Saqqara]

Use a digital receptionist , for calls out of office hrs.

https://www.3cx.com/docs/manual/ivr-digital-receptionist/

 

[TazPam]

Thanks for a prompt reply. i will look into it.

Best Regards
Taz

 

[VoIPTools]

Taz,

On your inbound rule, when out of office, route to an IVR that says something like:

"Hi, thanks for calling .... If this is an emergency and you wish to speak with a security engineer, press 1. Otherwise, please call back during our regular office hours. To leave a message, press 2."

When they press 1, forward the call to the on-call security person. If they press 2, forward the call to the general voicemail box.

I see, however, an administrative challenge. Someone is going to need to update the IVR daily so that the call is routed to the person on-call. Some companies pass around a shared "support" cell phone. That eliminates the need to change the IVR, but getting the phone passed around is a hassle.

To eliminate the scheduling hassles and the paid answering service, you might want to take a look at our "3CX On Call Manager". It handles the complexities of recurring on-call schedules, and supports monitoring multiple voicemail boxes and queues (live answer).

 

[TazPam]

Thank you Matthew,

We have a live call centre that we divert each phone calls to when out of hours and they inform the on call engineer if necessary however they charge us heavily per each call therefore i just wish to make sure if someone was calling, it is an emergency.

Thank you very much for your tips, I will look into it and give you shout if it didn't work.

Kind Regards
Taz