Automated Attendant - Buying Tips

By CommWeb.com
May 4, 2000

Phone System Installation and Integration.

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.

The best form of auto-attendant integration still involves something called "digital phone set emulation".

This technology is provided either by specialized PC boards or external boxes. Essentially, they appear to the telephone system switch as digital phone sets and, thus, receive instructions in the switch's own proprietary language in separate digital channels. Then they turn over all that information, usually via an out-of-band SMDI interface, to the voicemail / auto attendant / audiotext app processor.

One critical piece of voice-processing signaling involves something called "follow-on ID" information. This is the signal that tells an auto attendant who callers were looking for when they were transferred. In other words, if Joe hits an auto attendant and touchtones in Frank's extension, gets transferred and hits a busy- or ring-no-answer, you don't want to force Joe to repeat information to the automated CT machine so that it can plunk him into Frank's voicemailbox; you want him to go directly into Frank's specific voicemailbox and hear Frank's greeting.

It's important to note that when auto-attendant vendors say their product integrates with 60 different switches, they're usually not referring to a specific digital-emulation mode; they're referring to analog inband signaling.

Here, the voice-processing board in their system is simply listening for and barking back the DTMF tones a switch wants to hear to transfer/make/disconnect a call or that a switch makes to pass follow-on IDs or light message-waiting lamps. This type of signalling takes up a voicemail port, is subject to misinterpretation across the board and, because the tones are literally audible, may annoy or confuse callers if tone clamping is not performed.

Overall, you should pay keen attention to how the vendor treats this crucial "integration" topic. If they gloss over it, you could be headed for trouble. Instead, look for vendors that provide: extensive documentation on phone-system integration; an extensive drop-down phone-system model list in their installation software; special utilities for tweaking phone-system integration; and specific platforms that include specialized integration technology from vendors such as VTG and Calista.

Blind and Supervised Transfer support.

This is an extension of the integration question.

Basically, blind versus supervised transferring has to do with the way the auto attendant routes calls. In supervised mode, the CT box gets an extension number from the caller (DTMF tones) and usually performs a hookflash, puts the caller on hold and waits for new internal dialtone from the phone system. It then dials the requested party and, in the simplest case, connects the on-hold caller through with another hookflash as soon as the called party answers.

Since the CT system stays on the line as the call transfer is made, it "listens in" and takes action based on the results of the call transfer.

For example, if the call was busy or rang with no answer, the CT system would immediately see this and take action, like send the caller into the appropriate subscriber mailbox. Supervised transfers are also required for call-handling features like call screening (wherein the caller is asked to announce who they are before being connected through) and call queueing.

The drag with supervised transfers is they tie up ports as they hang around looking to see what's happening with calls; and the features they actually enable — like call screening — are really only suitable for call-taking VIPs, not common voicemail subscribers. That's why "blind" transfers, if supported by the voice-processing and phone system, are almost always preferred (with maybe supervised supported for just a few "big-boss" extensions).

A blind transfer simply hangs up as soon as it dials the destination extension, freeing up the port to take another call.

The key, again, is whether the CT integration can intelligently deal with blind transfers when there are ring-no-answers or busy conditions at the extensions. See integration questions above.

Dial by Name.

This feature lets the calling party use their keypad to access company directories in order to receive the extension of a particular person. This is now a must feature. And it should be automatically created when the system is set up.

App programmability by port.

This is important for shared tenant or shared application scenarios. Most, if not all, systems handle this.

Multi-lingual prompts.

Most support any prompt you record into them, though some do have better pre-packaged language options.

Automatic Day / Night / Weekend / Holiday modes.

Some get more carried away than others. But are you really going to set up a 100 different answering modes based on time of day / day of week / time of year? No. Most users are happy to have normal business hours and after hours settings and maybe something special around the Thanksgiving / Chanukah / Christmas season. Just check to see how easy it is to manage this.

Audiotext.

Basically, sub-applications that pass along stored audio information to callers based on their (usually single-digit) touchtone prompts. The thing auto-attendant vendors like to brag about is how deep they can build their audiotext call-flow trees. For example, you can drop down 50 menu selections. But, really, what caller is going to put up with that?

Administrative Interface.

Any end user should take a careful look at the admin interface. How easy is it to change the routing? Add a new user? Kill a user? Set up audiotext?

Reports.

Most people don't print out reports on auto attendant performance. Having a run-time monitor — one that shows what's happing on each port in the system in real time — is very handy.

Training materials.

Vendors should be adept at helping you train both your users and your customers to an automated telephone answering system.

A general tip:

Don't just spring an auto-attendant on customers. If possible, let them know it's coming via a letter or newsletter. Give them some training too. They'll like it much better if it's not a complete surprise.