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Setting up call flow
Information for administrators
What is call flow?
Call flow is how calls from your customers reach your people. The very simplest flow is just a phone call - the customer calls and you answer. If your organisation is just you, this is all you need, but if you have more customers and more people you might want a more sophisticated system to handle incoming calls.
In this article
Choosing your call flow
Setting up receptionists
Setting up busy and out of hours behaviour for small organisations
Setting up call centres to queue calls
Setting up an auto-attendant to answer calls
Choose your call flow
Before you start setting up your call flow, it's a good idea to take a look at some examples. The examples show typical call flows for small, medium and large organisations. You can choose which elements make up your call flow.
Read about choosing your call flow
Set up one or more receptionists
Receptionists are a special type of user. Administrators can add and modify users.
Most organisations need a receptionist. For a small organisation call flow, a receptionist is just a user who is assigned your organisation's phone number. Larger organisations can have more than one receptionist. Several receptionists can receive calls from the same phone number when you use a call centre to queue calls.
You might want to assign your receptionists a licence to use One Net Receptionist for more efficient call handling.
When you add a new user to your site, you specify the licences they need and the phone number and type of desk phone they will use. If the user has a One Net Business mobile, you also add their mobile phone number and contract number.
The user is created in a 'Pending' state, which means they can make but not receive calls. When Vodafone has activated the user, it changes the state to 'Activated' and the user can receive calls. If the user can't be activated, their state shows as 'Failed'. Contact the One Net Business team for advice.
To add a receptionist
Information for administrators
- In One Net Manager, select Benutzer einrichten.
- Select Benutzer hinzufügen.
-
Select an available phone number from the list.
- If you are creating a simple call flow and you want your organisation's calls to come straight to your receptionist, select your organisation's phone number.
- If you intend to use a call centre to queue calls for your receptionist, select another number.
- If you intend to use an auto-attendant to answer calls, select another number.
- From Lizenztyp, select a type of user.
-
From , select any additional services that the user needs.
- If you want your receptionist to use One Net Receptionist to handle and distribute calls, select One Net Receptionist.
- If you intend to use a call centre to queue calls for your receptionist, select One Net Call Center Agent Basic or One Net Call Center Agent Standard.
- Enter details of the new user and assign a desk phone.
- If the user has a One Net Business mobile phone, enter the mobile phone number and password.
-
Select Benutzer hinzufügen.
The user's desk phone login details are displayed on the screen. You need to make a note of these so they can be used to log in to the phone. Select Weiter when you have done this.
To make an existing user a receptionist
Information for administrators
- In One Net Manager, select Benutzer einrichten.
- Find the user you want to change and select Bearbeiten in that row.
-
Make the required changes to the receptionist's settings.
- If you are creating a simple call flow and you want your organisation's calls to come straight to your receptionist, select your organisation's phone number from Nummer auswählen. If you're using a queue or an auto-attendant, you don't need to change the receptionist's number.
- If you want your receptionist to use One Net Receptionist to handle and distribute calls, select One Net Receptionist from .
If you intend to use a call centre to queue calls for your receptionist, select One Net Call Center Agent Basic or One Net Call Center Agent Standard.
-
If the user has a new desk phone, select .
The user's desk phone login details are displayed on the screen. You need to make a note of these so they can be used to log in to the phone. Select Weiter when you have done this.
- Select Speichern & Weiter.
I couldn't see my organisation's phone number in the list
The phone number might be assigned to another user.
Assign that user a new phone number, and your organisation's number should return to the list of available numbers.
Changing a user's phone number
Take care when you change a user's phone number. The user might belong to a group, for example a hunt group. The user's number might appear in other users' speed dial lists.
Read about changing a user's details
Which call centre edition?
Different call centre editions, such as the call centre basic edition have different features to best support different roles.
Set up busy, unavailable and out of hours behaviour
Busy or unavailable greeting message
Administrators can add and modify greetings messages for all users and set up default messages for a site. Users can add and modify greeting messages for themselves.
Busy message
Small organisations where all incoming calls come directly to the receptionist will benefit from a busy greeting message. A busy greeting message can tell your customers to call back later, or to leave a message.
Unavailable message
All sizes of organisation will benefit from an unavailable greeting message. When a call remains unanswered, this message can tell your customers that your office is closed, and to call back later, or to leave a message.
Small organisations where all incoming calls come directly to the receptionist can set up an unavailable greeting message and enable call forwarding when unanswered. When a customer calls and the call can't be answered, they are forwarded to voicemail and hear the unavailable greeting message.
Larger organisations that use a call centre to queue calls or an auto-attendant to answer calls can choose business hours and set specific messages and behaviour for calls outside of those hours. Do this when you set up a call centre or auto-attendant.
If you have a small organisation call flow where all incoming calls come directly to the receptionist, you can set up your organisation's greeting messages as your receptionist's personal greeting messages. If you want to include an unavailable message for when calls can't be answered and out of hours, make sure you enable call forwarding when unanswered.
If you intend to use an auto-attendant to answer calls, or a call centre to queue incoming calls, you can set up greeting messages when you set up the auto-attendant or call centre. Skip this step for now.
To add a greeting message
Information for administrators
In One Net Manager, select the receptionist from Benutzer.
- Select Anrufdienste > Eigene Begrüßung > Bearbeiten.
-
Choose the type of greeting you want to activate:
- For a busy greeting, in Begrüßung bei Besetzt, select Eigene Begrüßung.
- For an unavailable greeting, in Begrüßung bei Keine Antwort, select Eigene Begrüßung or one of the options in the Alternative Begrüßungen bei Keine Antwort.
- From the drop down, select the greeting you want to use.
- For Alternative Begrüßungen bei Keine Antwort, in Begrüßungsname, enter the name of the alternative greeting.
- Select Speichern.
Available greetings
The available greetings are the ones your administrator recorded or added, or the ones you added using the announcement repository.
You can use One Net Manager to record your greetings, or you can use any other application that produces WAV or WMA audio files. Your recordings must not be longer than two minutes.
Forward calls when busy or out of hours
Administrators can set up call forwarding options.
Small organisations where all incoming calls come directly to the receptionist can choose to forward incoming calls to a colleague or to voicemail when the receptionist is on a call or it is outside of business hours.
If you intend to use an auto-attendant to answer calls, or a call centre to queue incoming calls, you can set up busy and out of hours behaviour when you set up the auto-attendant or call centre.
Information for administrators
In One Net Manager, select the receptionist from Benutzer.
To forward calls when the line is busy
- Select Anrufdienste.
- Set Anrufe umleiten bei Besetzt to Ein.
- Enter the number you want to forward your calls to. You can use digits and the - character. The phone number can begin with 0 or the + character, for example: +49 211-555-1111.
You can enter the number of another user, or you can forward to voicemail using the option in Mailbox-Verwaltung.
To forward calls when the line is unanswered
- Select Anrufdienste.
- Set Anrufe umleiten, wenn nicht erreichbar to Ein.
- Enter the number you want to forward your calls to. You can use digits and the - character. The phone number can begin with 0 or the + character, for example: +49 211-555-1111.
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Choose how many times the phone should ring before it forwards the call.
The number of rings you enter here is also used by voicemail and sequential ringing.
If multiple devices are assigned to one user, set the number of ringtones to at least 5. Otherwise, because of different signalling time, the phone may ring only once or not ring at all before forwarding the call.
Optional - forward selected calls
Small organisations where all incoming calls come directly to the receptionist can choose to forward selected calls automatically to another number.
Example 1 - forward calls from a specific number
You have a supplier that calls regularly to speak to Erika. You can choose to always forward calls from the supplier's number directly to Erika.
Example 2 - forward calls to voicemail after hours
Your office hours end at 6 pm. You can choose to always forward calls to voicemail after 6 pm.
Information for administrators
In One Net Manager, select the receptionist from Benutzer.
To forward selected calls
- Select Anrufdienste > Selektive Anrufumleitung > Ein.
- To choose which calls to forward, select Bearbeiten.
- Enter the default number you want to forward your calls to. You can use digits and the - character. The phone number can begin with 0 or the + character, for example: +49 211-555-1111. This number will be used unless you specify another number in the rules you set up.
- Select Dienst ist aktiv to turn the service on.
- Select Klingelzeichen abspielen, wenn ein Anruf umgeleitet wird if you want to hear a brief ring tone and see details of the caller on your desk phone each time your phone forwards a call.
Desk phones only
The ring reminder only works on desk phones.
- Select Regel hinzufügen ... to enter the criteria for when forwarding selected calls is active.
One Net Business forwards only calls that meet all the specified criteria.
Set up call centres
Administrators can set up and modify call centres.
Organisations that want to use a call centre to queue calls for receptionists or other teams.
A call centre is a type of virtual user. When you set up a call centre you can choose what happens to calls out of hours and choose a call distribution policy to say how calls are presented to receptionists or other team members.
People that receive automatically distributed calls from a call centre are called agents. When you create a call centre to queue calls for your receptionist or receptionists, make sure you add them as agents.
What phone number should I assign to the call centre?
If you are using a call centre to queue calls for a team of receptionists and are not using an auto-attendant, select your organisation's main phone number for the call centre. If you are using an auto-attendant, select another number for the queue.
What are comfort messages?
Comfort messages are announcements that customers hear while their call is queued. Messages might include the position in the queue and approximate waiting time.
You set up comfort messages when you set up a call centre. Comfort messages are part of setting up announcements and music. You can record your own messages or use the default messages.
Set up an auto-attendant
Organisations that want to use an automated system to answer and direct calls.
An auto-attendant can present calls directly to people, send calls to a queue, or you can have a combination of direct and queued calls.
An auto-attendant is a type of virtual user. Assign your organisation's phone number to the auto-attendant.
When you set up your auto-attendant, you can choose your business hours and have unique welcome greetings and dialling menus for business hours, out of hours and holiday hours.
What happens if a customer doesn't choose an option?
If you include the Weiterleiten an Vermittlung option in your dialling menu, when a customer doesn't choose an option their call is automatically transferred to your receptionist.
If you don't the Weiterleiten an Vermittlung option in your dialling menu, when a customer doesn't choose an option their call is automatically ended.
Examples
The examples below show typical dialling menus.
Example business hours dialling menu
|
Key |
Description |
Action |
Details |
What happens |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
0 |
Transfer call to Mario |
Weiterleiten an Vermittlung |
1234 |
When a customer presses 0, the auto-attendant plays a message to tell them their call is being transferred, and their call is transferred to Mario the receptionist. Mario's extension is 1234. |
|
1 |
Transfer call to Sales |
Weiterleiten ohne Ansage |
9876 |
When a customer presses 1, the auto-attendant plays a message to tell them their call is being transferred, and transfers the call to extension 9876, the hunt group for the sales team. |
|
2 |
Transfer call to Support |
Weiterleiten ohne Ansage |
Support team |
When a customer presses 2, they enter the submenu for the support team. This is particularly useful if your team deals with multiple products or types of call. |
|
3 |
Repeats the menu |
|
- |
The customer hears the options again. |
Example support team submenu
|
Key |
Description |
Action |
Details |
What happens |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
1 |
Support product A |
Weiterleiten ohne Ansage |
2425 |
When a customer presses 1, their call is transferred to extension 2425, the call centre that queues support calls for product A. |
|
2 |
Support product B |
Weiterleiten ohne Ansage |
2426 |
When a customer presses 2, their call is transferred to extension 2426, the call centre that queues support calls for product B. |
|
3 |
Return to main menu |
|
- |
The customer is returned to the previous menu. |
Example out of hours dialling menu
|
Key |
Description |
Action |
Details |
What happens |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
1 |
Leave message |
Weiterleiten ohne Ansage |
1111 |
When a customer presses 1 their call is transferred to voicemail. |
|
2 |
End call |
Beenden |
- |
When a customer presses 2 their call ends. |
Read more about auto-attendants
One Net Business enables you to record and upload your own auto-attendant welcome message and menu options. Your auto-attendant menu is the public voice of your company. Below are some tips to help you provide the best possible customer experience.
- You can use anyone from your organisation to record the message, or you can consider hiring a professional voice actor.
- Once you have decided what options to include in your dialling menu and submenus, write a script that matches your dialling menu. Your welcome message and menu options can be up to five minutes long.
- Use the best possible quality microphone. If you are recording on a computer, a USB microphone will give you the best quality recording. Try recording in a quiet space. Soft furnishings can help reduce echoes and other noise.
- Record your message as many times as you need to, and then upload the best take.
