Master Call Management with 3CX

3CX makes call management a breeze. Their system is built to scale up, allowing you to maintain complete control over phone communications, no matter the call volume.

Here are five call management features you need to know about:

Digital Receptionist/Auto-Attendant

Like most phone systems, 3CX automatically includes a digital receptionist (or auto-attendant) that answers calls automatically and presents callers with a menu of options. 3CX adds to ability to configure multiple digital receptionists with their own extension number, and allows you to set different prompts based on whether a call is received during regular business hours or after-hours. You also have the option to allow callers to dial an extension directly, or enable the call-by-name feature.

Ring Groups

Ring groups allow you to route calls to multiple people at the same time. For example, if you have more than one sales person, you can create a ring group for general sales calls that rings all sales people at the same time until one of them picks up the call, or set it to call them one after the other.

Call Queues

With call queues, you can ensure that no call goes unanswered. This feature allows calls to be queued while agents (members of the queue) answer other calls. If all agents are busy, calls will be kept in the queue until the next agent is free.

Agents can easily sign in and out of the queues of which they’re a member, and employees that have been granted the proper permissions can also sign agents into or out of queues.

Based on permission level, employees may be granted additional options for handling calls once they have been answered, including:

• Transferring the call to a particular extension
• Creating a conference call
• Dropping the call
• Recording the call
• Listening in on a call

Overall statistics for the queues are also visible, including the number of calls waiting, serviced, or abandoned; longest and average wait time; and average talk time.

The 3CX Pro edition gets you access to the following queue strategies:

• Longest waiting time – this will forward a call to the agent who has been waiting the longest to take a call
• Least talk time – this will forward the call to the agent with the least total talk time
• Fewest answered – this will forward the call to the agent who has answered the least number of calls
• Hunt by threes, prioritized – this will forward the call to the top three agents of your choice
• Hunt by threes, random start – this will send the call to three random agents simultaneously
• Round robin – this will target only active agents that are logged into the queue in a round-robin manner, e.g. the first call will be sent to Agent 1, the second call with be sent to Agent 2, etc.

Additional advanced queue options are available in the Pro edition, including (but not limited to) a callback option, a priority queue, and the ability to specify the maximum number of callers in a queue.

Presence Status

The presence status allows employees to see the presence of their own colleagues, and set their own status and forwarding rules. This can prevent calls from being transferred to someone who is temporarily away from their desk.

Forwarding rules can be set based on status, and scheduled to switch back to a different status after a certain amount of time has passed. This feature is particularly useful for lunch breaks or scheduled meetings.

The 3CX client for Windows is capable of automatically detecting whether an employee is in or out of the office and will automatically switch to the appropriate setting as determined by an administrator. Statuses can also be automatically set to “do not disturb” or “available” based on office hours.

Switchboard

The 3CX Switchboard is a feature from which you can view all the extensions and their presence in the same place, tailored to the way you want to manage your phonecalls.

The Switchboard includes five different views:

• User – to quickly and easily see the statuses of colleagues
• Receptionist – for operators that need to quickly and efficiently answer and transfer calls
• Manager – to monitor staff, incoming calls, and queues
• Q-Manager (only available in the Pro edition) – to manage queues and monitor response times and quality
• Wallboard (only available in the Pro edition) – gives you the ability to view call statistics at the click of a button. This can be viewed individually or displayed on a large screen to keep agents informed.

3CX gives companies the ability to maintain control over all incoming and outgoing calls, while providing advanced call statistics in real-time. For a brief overview of 3CX’s other benefits, please click here.

If you have any questions about the information contained in this blog post, please give us a call at 604-628-6961. Our knowledgeable technicians will be happy to discuss the advantages of the 3CX phone system with you.