Auto Attendant

Does your business prefer that calls be answered automatically with callers receiving recorded options from which they may choose?

Proficient Telecom's Auto Attendant provides businesses a powerful and flexible tool to manage inbound calls and deliver them to the intended destination through interactions with the caller.

The Auto Attendant is reached normally by dialing an associated phone number or an extension.

Once connected to the Auto Attendant, the caller is played a greeting providing a menu of options to complete call routing.

The menu is configurable by the group administrator and can provide up to nine options to the caller, including:

• One-key dialing - Press a pre-defined DTMF key to reach a particular phone number or extension within the group, e.g., press 1 for sales, press 2 for support, press 3 for billing.
• Operator dialing - Press a pre-defined DTMF key to reach an operator.
• Name dialing - Spell the name of the intended party through the numerical DTMF keypad. Upon identifying a unique match, the caller is played the name of the called party and transferred.
• Extension dialing - Enter the extension of the intended party through the numerical DTMF keypad. Upon collecting the full extension, the caller is played the name of the called party and transferred.
• Auto provisioning of group users - The moves, adds and changes of users in a group are automatically available to the name dialing and extension dialing functions. Access to the current users of the group is always available.

To discuss Auto Attendant with a Proficient Telecom sales consultant, please call us on 1-800-734-7477.

Alternatively, to find out more about how Proficient can save your business hundreds of dollars a month on telecommunications services, click here: Savings Assessment.

Auto Attendant can be configured to meet a variety of application needs. The most popular choices include:

Front office attendant - Front office is the most natural application of the Auto Attendant service. The attendant is used as the central ingress point for incoming calls and dispatches them to the intended destination via routing tables that you easily set up. The group administrator needs only to assign a direct inward dialing (DID) number to the auto-attendant and configure business hours and after-hours profiles. Alternately, the company receptionist or any user of the group can forward calls to the attendant console outside of business hours to provide an automated access to the company directory.

Mailbox attendant - In the case where users are sharing groups of lines, such as with a key telephone system, the attendant allows users to have their own mailboxes where messages can be left. This is achieved by directing overflow calls (busy, no-answer, night service) to the Auto Attendant, where the caller is prompted to select the recipient of the message. Upon selection, the caller is sent to a mailbox owned by the recipient.

Multi-level attendant -There can be multiple Auto Attendants in a group, and they can be organized in a hierarchical fashion to ease the caller navigation. For instance, the highest level attendant may offer a menu of departments (press 1 for sales, press 2 for marketing, etc), and each department can in turn be front-ended by its own attendant offering a menu of the available functions or employees (press 1 for Joe in the east region, press 2 for Sam in the west region, etc.).

Support Center's attendant - The BroadWorks attendant can easily be configured to provide a first screening of support calls to ensure they are directed to the appropriate subject matter expert (press 1 for a problem with your phone, press 2 for assistance with a service, etc.).

Personal attendant - Users who are not available to answer their calls can allow the callers to escape to the Auto Attendant from their voice mail greeting. This way, the caller can elect to leave a message for the called party, or transfer to the attendant to attempt to reach an alternate destination within the same call session. In this scenario, users can configure their voice mail to escape to a generic front office attendant, or use a personalized Auto Attendant with menu options specifically configured to address their calls.

To discuss Auto Attendant with a Proficient Telecom sales consultant, please call us on 1-800-734-7477. Alternatively, to find out more about how Proficient can save your business hundreds of dollars a month on telecommunications cost, click here: Savings Assessment.