Need some guidance please.

[kidjake28]

Hey everyone, hope some will be kind enough to give me some guidance in setting up a call center for this particular clients situation.

It's a real estate office that has 5 remote branch offices that connect to a hosted Fusionpbx 4.4.5

Each office has their own direct DID.

They would like to set up the following.

Each direct DID would call the respective offices first (one or two receptionists), IF no one answers it gets distributed to the other offices.

What I have done is the following but I don't think this is proper way of setting up the call flow.

Example
DID for office #1 goes to Ring Group #1 -> (simultaneous ring) Reception1 & Reception2
In each of the Reception1 & Reception2 call routing settings I have (no answer, on busy and not registered) set to Main_Call_Center (call center that I created)
Each of the offices are set this same way.
In the call center I have ALL the receptionists configured as agents having the same tier and tier priority (stragegy: Agents with fewest calls). If the Call Center times out it goes to the answering service.

So the obvious issue is that calls that come in via direct DID can conflict with calls that are coming in from Call Center? (At least I think). I can't really get proper call stats because calls are coming from Call Center AND direct.

Is there a better, proper way of setting up this scenario?

 

[JamesBorne]

That solution works, so I'm not sure if there is an issue.
All I would do is perhaps use a prepended Caller ID name to say 'direct' or 'call center', or a different ring to differentiate the two types of calls.

 

[kidjake28]

Thanks for the reply James. I actually DO prepend caller id name with the offices location (ie. TH, RH,) so that they know where the call is coming from.

As for as the issues are concerned I get the following:

1) One office says that they get more calls then the other offices, that could be true because direct calls coming in on top of call center transfer can be more for them then the other offices.
2) I don't know of any really good way of printing/exporting/viewing call stats (call center + direct calls).
3) When a direct call comes in it goes to a ring group ringing both reception phones EVEN if one person marks themselves ON BREAK in the call center. They don't like the fact that it still rings.

That's why I was wondering if there was a better solution?

 

[DigitalDaz]

@kidjake28 Why don't you put the receptionists in the callcenter too but on a lower tier.

instead of when receptiionists not answering it then goes to callcenter from ring group, it will just go to the next tier instead.

 

[kidjake28]

Hey Daz, thanks for the reply.

This sounds interesting but I don't quite understand.

The receptionists ARE in the call center. It's actually ONLY receptionists that are in the call center.

What I have with call flow with regard to this is. For example Office-1

1) Inbound route Office-1 DID -> Time Condition
2) Time Condition -> Office-1 IVR (after hours goes to answering service)
3) Office-1 IVR (option 1) - Receptionist Ring Group (reception 1 & reception 2)
4) Both reception 1&2 on call busy, no answer goto CALL CENTER where ALL receptionist are agents.

Other offices configured the same as above.

CALL CENTER consists of ALL RECEPTIONISTS on same tier.


The idea is that if a person is calling a particular office that it will try that office first, if no one answers then it should forward the call to the call center for everyone to answer.


But like I said this has its drawbacks because:

1) One office says that they get more calls then the other offices, that could be true because direct calls coming in on top of call center transfer can be more for them then the other offices.
2) I don't know of any really good way of printing/exporting/viewing call stats (call center + direct calls).
3) When a direct call comes in it goes to a ring group ringing both reception phones EVEN if one person marks themselves ON BREAK in the call center. They don't like the fact that it still rings.


So if you have a better solution, please let me know.