Hey all -

OK, here's the situation. My brother owns a small business (plumbing company, usually meaning immediate service required), and recently had a Panasonic (I think) KSU/keysets installed (I'll post back later with mfr/model info as appropriate).

Anywhoo - he has 5 incoming POTS lines to the KSU.

Customers may know and/or call any of the 5 numbers.

When shutting down for the day, the phone system is set to "night". After that, any customer calling in on any of the lines gets a pre recorded message saying ".. press 1 to be connected to a service tech... blah blah blah".

The problem is one of 2:

1) The customer isn't immediatly connected with a human, and hangs up.

2) The customer presses 1, which calls the on call person, who doesn't have his on cell phone on, is out of range, or whatever. Bottom line is the customer never gets to talk directly to a person ... more often than not.

For reasons I won't go into here, they have been staffing the shop till 7 lately; and have found that a significant # of service call requests come in betwen 5 PM and later then they ever knew about.

Most likely the on call person had their phone off, or was out of range, or whatever. Bottom line is the customer never got to talk to a human.

So, change in plans. ALL calls coming in need to be routed to one phone, without the "press one to..." message. My brother, or someone he can trust to actually pick up the call will be the one the calls are forwarded to.

Here's the (I guess) sticky bit. He doesn't want the message "press one to be connected..." greeting. He wants the call to roll straight to his (or whoever is on call) phone without the customer having to hear a message and then press 1 to be connected.

This seems to me to be a simple matter of KSU programming, but the people who provide his KSU maintenance say it can't be done.

My suggestion to him (and you knew it was going here eventually) was that I could easily hook up a 1A2 touch a matic to the 5 incoming POTS lines. At night he would turn on call forwarding on each of the lines manually, bypassing his KSU entirely.

Just seems to me this is something the existing KSU should be able to handle.

End goal: Get the customer in touch with a human, any hour, any day, on their first call. Again, I realize there has to be someone to take the call, but that's a process problem, not a techinical one.

Ideas?

Thanks
Matt

Why not just add call fwd variable from the service provider to the main line...then he can fwd his calls to wherever he wants. He can also add the remote access feature and be able to control call forwarding from any where at any time.

Answering services can do this for you. I'm sure for a monthly fee.

This seems to me to be a simple matter of KSU programming, but the people who provide his KSU maintenance say it can't be done...
Just seems to me this is something the existing KSU should be able to handle.

Coming from someone who's total telecom knowledge is limited to 1A2 as a hobby I'll take that with a grain of salt.

There are several ways to handle this:

1) Get a system that IS capable of forwarding calls.

2) Many of my customers simply have call forwarding/variable on the lines and will forward the calls to whoever whenever.

3) Forward to an answering service which will call down a list of numbers until someone answers.


-Hal

"Coming from someone who's total telecom knowledge is limited to 1A2 as a hobby I'll take that with a grain of salt."

PM sent.

PM sent................

Back on topic.

If your brother has a new system, you're right, it probably should have external call forwarding. However, most of the time, that feature just doesn't work too well.....on most all systems.

We have programmed it on Comdial DX-80s and 120s. It has worked as good as can be expected, but there are too many outside factors--e.g. line quality at various times of the day, the callers line quality, the callee's line quality---they all play a role in volume. Many times, it just doesn't work too good. Sound quality just isn't there on a consistent, reliable basis.

We have an Allworx system in our office, and transferring to a cell phone and going to a cell phone with a menu selection from an AA has worked surprisingly well---but to tell you the truth ---if my business was relying on it---I'd call forward the lines using call forwarding variable on the C.O. line. You can't beat it.

The interesting part of that is---we have that feature on all 5 of our lines---it comes with the line service. Most CLECs have that as part of a package for business service. All 3 of the CLECs in our area have this---plus CID and other features. It just comes as part of a business line.

We don't use it, because of too many telemarketers, and sales people calling at all times--it drove us crazy. I like our customers to leave a message---it is changed to an e-mail and can be heard on all of our laptops and desktops at any time. What with our techs also having remote phones in their houses---we've really got good coverage. But our customers HAVE TO leave messages if they want quick service or a quick call back. Even if they don't, I can get into the phone system remotely and look at the SMDR and find out who called---but that just irritates me---I tell all our customers to LEAVE A MESSAGE!!

Your brother doesn't have that advantage.

Good Luck.

Thanks All!

I'll print out these replies and PM's and take them to the people that provide the maintenance for the system, and I'll also check into what features are available as part of the standard business C.O. line.

Thanks again --

Matt

Having the call forward option from telco would be the best, because you don't get the volume drop from the pbx when performing a conference for the forward.

Matt, I wanted to do the same thing for my little company that has only one incoming line. Verizon could not accommodate me, so I went with Vonage. On the Vonage website, after you log in, you can set CF to any number of rings (actually, seconds) or immediate CF if the line is busy, and can elect to have the call forwarded to as many as three different telephone numbers (cell numbers, in your case). In the event of a power or internet failure, the Vonage system automatically transfers all calls to a subscriber-specified number or numbers until such time that the SNAFU is fixed. This is another service that Verizon cannot provide.

BTW, my hobby is 1A2, too.

Our company uses call forwarding from Embarq. We have the remote feature as well. We have been using that for years and it works well. Whenever we are all out of the office I can get all the calls to my cell, same at night.

that sounds like the easy way to do it.

Cosmo