11 day held call

[MattRutter]

I have a customer running a IP406 at 5.0(18).

They run a very busy outbound call centre with 12 agents on analogue extensions, using TAPI to dial from their customer database.

The agents are paid commission from sales, so make as many calls as possible per day.

Occasionally an agent will dial into a badly constructed IVR that either loops, or leaves them hanging with dead air. Naturally the agent wants out fast so bangs the headset key a couple of times and gets dial tone back to make the next call.

Of course, this puts the first call on hold!

Obviously, while they're on the second call, the hold recall cannot ring them back to deal with the held call, and if they move on to subsequent calls, the held call could get quite long!

However, they do take lunch breaks etc... so their phones are idle long enough for the system to alert them to the held call, at least a few times each day.

It would seem that the IPO gives up on its attempts to get the held call dealt with, as my customer has just been billed for an 11 day call!

While I've put a cap on this by using the t option on the Dial short code, I'm still stuck with the job of explaining an 11 day call to their MD....

It's a very rare occurrence... it's happened 20 times this year in 200,000 calls, it's just unfortunate that on one occasion it was to an 0870 number, and cost the company nearly £200!!!

Can anyone come up with a plausible explanation, please? And before you say upgrade, we're trying to sell them an IP500 with IP phones all round, the deal may depend on my answer!!!

Thanks with bated breath!

Matt

 

[amriddle01]

You know why, because they are doing a flash hook by not ending calls correctly. It can be avoided by shortening their hook flash setting out of bounds of human ability, this breaks transfer though, this is also the reason Agents/heavy users shouldn't use analogue phones, call centres and analogue phones are rarely a good mix as it's all down to wanting it cheap, dig and IP also work better with TAPI usually....good luck hitting them with that

 

[TouchToneTommy]

Do they actually need to flash on their phones? (such as transfer or conference)

If not, follow the advice of intrigrant, which I have saved to my archive and used in the past:

22 Jul 11 16:01
You can change the flash hook timers for each individual phone.
set the minimum flash time to 50 and the maximum flash time to 51.
Wise guy who can still flash with the hookswitch within these parameters, he can be added to the Guiness Book of records then.

 

[MattRutter]

Yes, yes, yes....

I fully understand all the problems with hookswitch on analogue phones.... But the system's got a hold recall timer!!!! If an agent puts a call on hold, they should be called back to remind them to deal with it!!!

OK, if they're busy, the recall might be delayed... but these guys stop work at lunchtime... their phones are idle... why aren't they getting the hold recall??????

Matt

 

[amriddle01]

They are Matt, but the system has to stop at some point, I imagine that's after an hour or so of trying, ask Avaya, it will be hidden timer we just don't see

 

[MattRutter]

Thank you amriddle! I suspected something similar!!! I kinda think that if the system is going to give up trying to do a hold recall, it should cut the held call off!!

Matt

 

[fshaw]

You can limit the outbound call time to say 120 minutes (3 hours) using the N(t) under a dial short code. It would not get rid of the stray call not disconnecting, but it will hammer away anything still active after 3 hours. I will copy the rtfm stuff below.


Example: Maximum Call Length

The character t can be used in dialing short codes to set the maximum allowed duration of a call. For example, the following short code will dial a number but then disconnect the call after 20 minutes (plus or minus a minute).

· Short Code: 9N

· Telephone Number: Nt(20)

 

[amriddle01]

fshaw, he's done that already

 

[teletomi]

are you using analog trunks or ISND..??