By CommWeb.com
May 4, 2000

An automated attendant (or auto-attendant) is a system that replaces or augments the job of a "human" receptionist; it answers a company's phones and lets callers route themselves, via touchtone keypad or speech recognition access, to company extensions, departments and automated-processing applications. Most auto-attendant systems today are integrated with a voicemail system; they're increasingly PC-based, although most business phone systems (closed or open) now include "inskins" auto attendant as a fundamental feature.

Key features for auto attendant systems include: custom technology for proprietary phone-system integration; app programmability by port (so that you can have different prompts and routing schemes for different lines terminated into the system); multi-lingual prompts; automatic day / night / weekend / holiday modes; built-in audiotext and Q&A app capability; outdialing; fax-tone recognition (so if the machine picks up on a fax call it can shunt it to a suitable resource); optional blind and supervised transfer modes; and dial by name, which lets callers access user desktops by punching a few letters of first and/or last names.

Automated Attendant - Buying Tips

By CommWeb.com
May 4, 2000

Perhaps the most important thing to look for in an "adjunct" auto attendant (one that attaches to a separate business phone system) is how well it integrates with the phone system in question.

On the integration front, you want a system that transfers callers successfully and seamlessly and blindly (rather than supervised), interprets follow-on ID and auto-login DTMF information and picks up on call disconnects by getting positive disconnect signals from the phone system (so ports aren't left hanging). In order to accomplish this, the auto attendant must communicate properly with the phone system — a task that's not trivial, considering that phone systems operate and signal differently from manufacturer to manufacturer.

more..

.