Inside ASI-AP

Over the weekend the automated attendant function of our telephone system was turned on. This means that anyone calling our main Melbourne (03 9869 7500) or Sydney (02 8913 9200) office phone numbers will no longer talk to Jennifer or Danielle right away – they will hear a recorded message giving them options for either redirection to an appropriate extension or recorded information.

The main options given to callers are as follows:

1 - Events & Training information (recorded message)
2 - Technical Support
3 - Sales information
4 - Address, fax number and website information (recorded message)
5 - Customer Care
9 - Staff directory
hold - operator

I know there are many people who object to these types of menus, but we have to find ways to do more with less while keeping costs down so that we do not have to pass on massive cost increases to customers. One of those areas is Jennifer and Danielle having to play a time wasting role of finding people because calendars are out of date or voice mail messages are not helpful. Over the past 4 weeks alone, over 130 calls were answered by Jennifer/Danielle from internal ASI staff – about 20% of the total calls to our main number. A further 340 calls were from customers – about 56% of the total calls.

Note that people calling your extension directly do not get answered by the auto-attendant so there is really no hassle for those callers.

For those interested in the technicalities - we use a Mitel www.mitel.com IP phone system globally. Each major location (Melbourne and Sydney in AP region) have a Mitel 3300 controller which sits in our server racks. It has both IP connections (to connect to the handsets plus to all the other Mitel controllers in ASI globally) and ISDN connections to link us into the Telstra phone network. The auto-attendant feature is a standard feature of the 3300 controller and actually uses the voice mail system to allow us to change the messages ourselves - from any handset on the system.

Coming next - Sonexis conferencing, automatic call distribution (so for example an after hours call to tech support in Australia will route to whoever in the world is open), and voicemail messages via your email.