Transfer to on-call and prompt for agent to press DTMF digit to accept call

[adamtomalty]

I have a bit of an interesting challenge brought to me by the business, which I'm not sure is possible to do with UCCX.  We have a script that currently transfers after hours calls to a specific cell phone number for after hours support.  It's working fine with a normal call transfer right now, except for the fact that sometimes the on-call person doesn't answer, and the call goes to voicemail.  

What they would like to do is have a list of multiple cell phones, and call them one by one until someone actually answers.  This is a bit of a challenge, as even if we do a call consult transfer and pull the call back after 3 rings, we'll still run into the possibility that someone declines the call, or they are out of range, and the call just goes to voicemail on that cell phone. 

What I was thinking would be the only way to achieve this would be if we could make the person receiving the call hear a prompt and press a DTMF digit before being transferred the call.  So for example, someone calls in after hours, we transfer to cell phone #1, they hear "Incoming call for x queue, press 1 to accept".  If it was voicemail picking up, 1 won't be pressed, and we'll try cell phone #2 and play the same prompt.  As soon as someone picks up and presses 1, we will hand the call over.

Anyone have any ideas on how we could achieve this with UCCX?  Or maybe there is another way to achieve something similar?

[david.macias]

This has come up a few times here, at least once every 6-12 months. Unfortunately, this is not going to be possible with UCCX the way you're imagining or any way which is not a huge head ache to manage. I've suggested this a few times, but I don't know of anyone actually doing it. Here's how I would solve it.

1. Route call to a Twilio number where it sits on hold.

2. Twilio number creates a conference call and it start making outbound calls going down a list of phone numbers.

3. The outbound call will ask the caller to press 1 to confirm they are alive. If not response, then  hang up and go to the next person.

4. When outbound calls has a live person conference the original caller and outbound call together to talk.

This method also allows you the ability to send SMS/emails as calls are not being answered. If I make some time maybe I'll put together a blog post on how to do this, but it might be a few weeks away. PM me if your business would be open to such a solution and maybe I can help you out and use your a guinea pig for my blog post.

david

[Anthony Holloway · Accepted solution]

I agree with everything you said.

I have however used single number reach's voicemail policy of user controlled, which forces the cell phone user to press a key to accept the call. I actually tie the RDP to a DN on a CTI Port, and that CTI Port is a member of a Hunt Group. UCCX Call Consult transfers to the Hunt Group. It's overly complex, and I don't really like it. I feel like it will break at any moment. I'd much rather that UCCX allowed us to join two contacts together. Then you could just use Place Call steps, and then merge the Triggering Contact in with your secured Place Call contact.

Sigh...

[david.macias]

That's pretty genius, so to make sure I understand. You create a HG with X members. Each of those members needs to have single number reach configured to their on call number. From there, you route the call to the HG and let single number reach take it from there?

david

Edit: I like my untested solution better because in theory everything works exactly how you want it to. :)

[Anthony Holloway]

Yeah, you got it. And the members are bogus phone numbers on bogus CTI Ports.

[adamtomalty]

Thanks very much Anthony, this is a pretty ingenious solution!  I had thought of using SNR but didn't realize there was the "User Controlled" option which makes you press a key to accept the call.  After testing it, it works quite well!

[Bill Mungaven]

I have done this a number of times in IP-IVR/UCCX. I use this method to reach on-call technicians. The caller calls in, enters an access password, the script reads the caller ID and asks the user to use this number or specify a different callback number. If the caller ID is blocked or null, prompt the caller for the callback number.

Once the callback number is set, hang up on the caller, read a list of on-call phone numbers from an XML file and start dialing on-call technicians one at a time (Place Call step). When an on-call tecj answers the call, it plays a prompt about an after hours call from the caller's phone number. To accept the call, press 1, to reject the call, press 2. If the on-call tech presses 1 to accept the call, I do a Call Redirect step to call the caller back. Once the caller answers the phone, the parties are connected together and an email is sent.

The Place Call step waits 25 seconds to see if it gets a DTMF 1. If not, it hangs up and goes to the next number in the XML file. It the script reaches the end of the XML file, it places a call back to the original caller telling them we were unable to find an on-call technician. I give the caller the option to traverse the list again or leave a message. If they choose to leave a message, the recording is attached to an email and sent to an email distribution list which is sent to the technician supervisor and all technicians.

The call out XML file has a fixed number of technicians. It includes their phone number, name, and email address. These are used in the email messages. I have a separate admin script which allows the supervisor to change the call out order of the technicians. There is a separate XML file with the technician call out order and it's modified by the admin script. If there is a technician change, I have to manually change the technician call out list. Thankfully, the technician list doesn't change often.

I'm a UCCE environment with CVP but I had to install a separate IP-IVR (UCCX) server specifically to support these scripts since I can't duplicate this functionality in CVP. The script has to continue running after the caller hangs up.

This has worked pretty reliably for the past 10 years. This script was originally developed in IP-IVR 7.0 and still works great on 11.6(2).

I upgraded my UC environment from 9.x to 11.5 in February 2019, migrated from IP-IVR to CVP but had to install a separate IP-IVR specifically for this application.

I hope this makes sense.

[david.macias]

+5 this is an excellent solution!

david

[PierPaolo Pittavino]

Thanks for that wonderful solution!

this match exactly what  was I looking for.

i can't do a Call Redirect step to call the caller back.

how do you implement it?

which call contact and call destination you put in Call Redirect?

i can't figure out that  step