Breaking out of a Queue to Leave Voicemail

[GregTX]

Is there any way to allow a caller who is waiting in a queue to break out to a designated voicemail box if they get tired of holding. 

Ex. we've all heard the on hold verbiage, "we're sorry, we're experiencing an extremely high call volume, if you prefer to leave a message, please press 1.  Otherwise, please continue to hold and the next available agent will be with you shortly."

It looks like this can potentially be fudged via a series of queues or overflowing back to the same queue, but then you get into infinite loops and broken call stats... 

Zoom Phone doesn't even appear to be able to play intermittent on hold messages or announce what caller they are in line or other similar things to help engage the caller.  It looks like these may be possible in Contact Center, but that is way overboard for this type of basic functionality.   How are y'all working around this?

[Eliot]

hi gregtx,

if you have your call queue overflow set to voicemail, you have an option to allow the caller to get to an operator or voicemail.  please see attached screen shot. 

when the call overflows after your specified time, the caller is connected to an ivr with the two options, - 0 forward to an operator and 1 leave voicemail. 

you can decide what an operator really is and change the prompts accordingly.  the operator could just be a return to the call queue or maybe a real operator.  for voicemail, the caller can leave a vm.

i suspect you are correct that zoom contact center has the latest features relating to contact center call queues.

thanks,  eliot

[GregTX]

Thanks.  I actually tried this route.  It kind of works, but it also completely butchers reporting.  Ex. it makes the number of overflows skyrocket and it prevents us from being able to see the average and longest hold times in the queue.  It definitely isn't a workable solution.

It's definitely a shame that our 10-15 year-old OLD phone system is capable of allowing the caller to break out of the queue, announce the estimated hold time and caller number in the queue, and allows for escalated recordings (5 different sequential recordings as the callers hold longer) built in built in, without having to purchase the advanced call center functionality, while Zoom doesn't seem to even have a viable workaround.

Any other ideas?

[Eliot]

hi gregtx,

one of my clients moved from a legacy pbx to zoom phone.  they did not need a full blown contact center for their 10 agents and decided to go with zoom power pack.  the contact center manager has been happy with power pack because it is a big improvement from their legacy system.

in addition to power pack, zoom offers its own contact center and tight integrations with most of the top contact centers.

here is some information on zoom power pack.

Zoom Phone Power Pack is an add-on for Zoom Phone that offers three features:

• Enhanced call queue (CQ) analytics for real-time and historical insights with wallboard support, and customizable KPI and report subscriptions for queue analytics and access reports
• A desktop user experience that streamlines call handling with an expanded contacts window for users with a steady call volume
• Team SMS functionality to enable auto receptionist and call queue phone numbers to be reached via SMS/MMS

zp_power-pack_whitepaper3.pdf (zoom.us)

What is Zoom Phone Power Pack?

Zoom Phone Power Pack is an add-on feature for Zoom Phone customers that enhances customer support through advanced tools that enable admins and agents to work more efficiently. Designed to support users with high call volumes and surface insights into performance metrics, Power Pack is the missing link to improve the customer experience.

Supercharge Your Customer Support with Zoom Phone Power Pack | Zoom Blog

Zoom Phone customers use the call queue feature to handle calls for various departments such as sales, support, and service. Call queue admins and members can use the call queue real-time analytics and historical dashboard to make effective data-driven decisions. The call queue historical dashboard is part of the Power Pack add-on, which also includes the Zoom Assistant experience. You can also subscribe to email notifications for historical reports.

Call queue historical dashboard (Power Pack) – Zoom Support

Call queue admins and members can use the call queue real-time analytics dashboard to make effective data-driven decisions. The call queue real-time analytics dashboard provides critical details like service level, average call handling times, call volume counts, average/longest wait time, completed/abandoned/overflow call counts, and more with the ability to drill down further into specific sites, call queues, and agents.

You can also set up email notifications for call queue real-time analytics.

Call queue real-time analytics dashboard – Zoom Support

Zoom Assistant is a compact desktop panel that allows phone users to quickly find their contacts, access and manage speed dial, make and receive calls, and transfer calls. The panel can be docked to the left and right sides of a computer screen. With the addition of a Power Pack license, Zoom Assistant functionalities expand to include the Power Pack Desktop experience such as answering and transferring calls for call queues, shared line appearance, and shared line groups. If enabled by their admin, users can decide if they want to enable or disable it from their own web portal settings and control its functionality from their clients.

Note: Zoom Assistant is not available to Zoom Phone Basic users and requires a Zoom Pro license.

Using Zoom Assistant – Zoom Support

Zoom Pricing & Plans | Zoom  starts at $300/user/year

thanks,  eliot

[GregTX]

Sorry, but this is not helpful as we are using physical phones not the soft client (nor does it actually solve the original question).

[capden]

I'm bumping this because our company is actively wanting to switch phone system because of this issue.  I'm doing the route to an IVR option (press 1 to wait more or 2 to leave a VM) but as Greg stated, this destroys the log data