Auto attendant

The auto attendant originally appeared and still remains a device for corporate use only (not personal).

The appearance of auto attendants has historically been associated with the need to reduce the burden on ordinary secretaries (people) who carried out the initial processing of telephone calls received by various companies.

According to statistics, an auto attendant allowed to reduce the staff of secretaries by half. For example, instead of ten people, leave five.

Currently, an auto attendant and regular secretaries work in parallel.

A modern auto attendant connects to the subscriber line of an office telephone exchange and processes the call according to the following scheme:

1. “Picks up the phone”
2. reproduces a greeting (for example, "Hello, you called the company such and such! Dial the internal number of the subscriber or wait for the operator to answer!")
3. allows you to redial an extension number
4. transfers a phone call

The presence in the auto attendant system of multi-level nested voice menus allows you to implement various algorithms for processing incoming calls. A typical example of nested voice menus is a call to the help desk of any large company. It looks like this:

• “If you want to receive information about new tariffs, click one”
• “If you need technical support, click two.”
• and so on.

Upon entering each of the points to the voice subscriber, additional transition options may be offered.

Advanced models of auto attendants are also equipped with a voice mail function , which allows you to leave voice messages to subscribers.

Automatic attendants are produced by the PBX manufacturers themselves, in which case the devices are expansion cards for installation inside the telephone exchange.

Auto attendants are also available as stand-alone devices. Unlike a PBX extension card, such an auto attendant can connect to an office PBX of any manufacturer.

Also, an auto attendant can be made in the form of a hardware-software complex. In this case, the intelligent processing of incoming calls falls on the software part. The device, on the other hand, performs simple operations on a telephone line of the type: pick up the phone, hang up, issue a DTMF signal, etc., and is controlled by the software part of the complex.

The auto attendant service is also provided by telecommunication companies: the service is connected to a virtual SIM card, which will act as an auto attendant platform. The platform keeps statistics: it stores information about the incoming customer flow and automatically sends reports to e-mail. It also records the conversation and makes it possible to record a greeting in your account. In fact, an auto attendant is an intelligent service that allows you to organize multi-channel communication without the cost of additional equipment. Another example of a constructive solution can be the connection of an auto attendant to a PBX using the SIP protocol and the "landing" of all traffic to the PBX platform.

Typical Auto Attendant Features:

• 1-4 telephone lines
• the number of voice menus - up to 40 (for unlimited auto attendant)
• 1-8 mailboxes (for software auto attendant unlimited)
• fax signal detection
• programming from phone and PC

• Voice mail
• Autoinformer
• Additional services