Announcement board for option 11

[dynamos2000]

Hi, I'm an Avaya guy looking for assistance on a Nortel issue.

The announcements on the nortel switch at one our locations are on a "viking" device that by the looks of it, doesn't handle but a few callers at a time. Our customers are hearing ringing instead of the announcement when we are busy and I'm looking for a replacement for these viking announcement devices.

In the Avaya world, I would get an announcement board, throw it in and add announcements. I would think this would be similar for nortel but our reseller is saying we need to get a MIRAN card which requires that the switch be upgraded to 3.0 as the option11c isn't supported.

Is there no other option for adding announcement ability to this pbx so 40+ customers can hear an announcement as they hit our call center?

THANK YOU for your help.

 

[pronei]

Do you have a Callpilot Voicemail system attached?

 

[trvlr1]

If you have a Universal card you can set up a music route, then record your own messages to a cassett or CD and have the message play as "Music" while the callers are on hold/waiting. I assume you are using ACD, this is an easy option to add to the programming. If you are looking to add in announcements Interalia does a nice unit that can deliver multiple RANS - ie "please hold and an agent will be right with you" again this works for an ACD environment and will intersperse with the music when programmed, or you could actually record those greetings into your message.

 

[rpneal44]

You could get an Interalia RAN device on the "gray market" and connect your recorded announcement to a UTK card that would have vacant port. The only caveat would be that the connections would be a one-to-one.(5 trks ->5 simultaneous playbacks). keep the announcements short and you'll work through them fairly quickly.

 

[dynamos2000]

I am told we have CallPilot 2.02 and cannot add channels. I'm guessing they mean we cannot add channels to the existing callpilot.

 

[rpneal44]

Dynamo - You are correct. Your RAN trunks would be separate and distinct from your Call Pilot.

 

[dynamos2000]

First off, thanks everybody, its frustrating not fully understanding therefore not explaining well and it can't be that fun for you folks to read and then offer assistance.

The main issue is our long distance provider has an IVR, and when the customer chooses option for example, the call hits the nortel switch but since there is only ringing and no initial "HELLO THANKS FOR CALLING", there isn't 'answer supervision' to go back to the ivr to say "hey we got the call". Instead the IVR thinks there was no answer when in fact the customer is technically in queue. IVR yanks the call back and plays a "sorry no one is available, call back later". Granted we've increased the number of rings to help assist the issue but the only real cure is to have every customer call hear an initial greeting/announcement.

Just seems like $9k is way expensive to accomodate the need to have up to 30 calls or so to get an announcement when they hit the call center.

 

[MossEng]

I'm guessing the existing "Viking Announcement Device" connects to the Meridian via a XFEM card (NT5K19), this card has 4 ports, which is probably the limiting factor not the announcement device, so the easiest solution would be to purchase some additional XFEM (DC5/AC15/RAN/PAG) cards and configure additional trunks in the announcement routes, and then daisy chain the output from the announcement device to all the trunks. No need for an upgrade, providing you have spare card slots and spare TN's.

 

[pronei]

I disagree, If he already has callpilot, the easiest thing would be to pipe all the calls into an application in callpilot that will greet the caller and then automatically xfer to the call center acd/cdn.

 

[Triton101]

I would try the idea trvlr1 has posted, it's one of the cheapest options (other then the Callpilot, but that might run out of ports if you only have 4 let say)

MOH option, you can put a source on a Trunk TN and pipe it to all callers to that queue, that way you call is terminated and should not revert back to the IVR. You can test it, it's probably the cheapest option if you are trying to save money.

Callpilot option is good to, so long as callpilot does not get overloaded with calls. pronei is suggesting a basic menu with a transfer to a DN. If you keep the message really short then you might not need that many ports (and you can limit the application as to how many it can use Maximum at any one time)


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[dynamos2000]

Triton101 / Trvlr That sounds like a winner, anything other than ringing would fix our issue once the call hits the nortel switch. I'll dig in and see, thanks everyone for your valuable input