The most common mistake beginners make when designing an AA is needless complexity. While there can be much joy and sense of accomplishment in the creation of a multilevel AA with dozens of nifty options and oodles of really cool prompts, your callers have a different agenda. The reason people make phone calls is primarily because they want to talk to someone. While people have become used to the reality of auto attendants, and in some cases they can speed things up, for the most part people would prefer to speak to somebody live. This means that there are two fundamental rules that every auto attendant should adhere to:
Before you start to code your AA, it is wise to design it. You will need to define a call flow, and you will need to specify the prompts that will play at each step. Software diagramming tools can be useful for this, but there’s no need to get fancy. Table 15.1, “A basic automated attendant” provides a good template for a basic auto attendant that will do what you need.
Table 15.1. A basic automated attendant
| Step or choice | Sample prompt | Notes | Filename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Greeting—business hours | Thank you for calling ABC company. | Day greeting. | daygreeting.wav |
| Greeting—non-business hours | Thank you for calling ABC company. Our office is now closed. | Night greeting. | nightgreeting.wav |
| Main menu | If you know the extension of the person you wish to reach, please enter it now. For sales, please press 1, for service, press 2, for our company directory, press #. For our address and fax information, please press 3. To repeat these choices press 9, or you can remain on the line or press 0 to be connected to our operator. | Main menu prompt. | mainmenu.wav |
| Please hold while we connect your calls. | Transfer to sales queues. | holdwhileweconnect.wav |
2 | Please hold while we connect your call. | Transfer to support queue. | holdwhileweconnect.wav |
# | n/a | Run Directory()
application | n/a |
3 | Our address is [address]. Our fax number is [fax number]. etc. | Play a recording containing address and fax information. Return caller to menu prompt when done. | faxandaddress.wav |
0 | Transferring to our attendant. Please hold. | Transfer to reception/operator. | transfertoreception.wav |
9 | n/a | Repeat. Replay menu prompt (but not greeting). | n/a |
t | n/a | Timeout. If the caller does not make a choice, treat the
call as if caller has dialed 0. | |
i | You have made an invalid selection. Please try again. | Caller pressed an invalid digit: replay menu prompt (but not greeting). | invalid.wav |
_XXX [a] | n/a | Transfer call to dialed extension. | holdwhileweconnect.wav |
[a] This pattern match must be relevant to your extension range. | |||
Let’s go over the various components of this template. Then we’ll show you the dialplan code required to implement it, as well as how to create prompts for it.
The first thing the caller hears is actually two prompts.
The first prompt is the greeting. The only thing the greeting should do is greet the caller. Examples of a greeting might be “Thank you for calling Van Meggelen and Associates,” “Welcome to Leif’s School of Wisdom and T-Shirt Design,” or “You have reached the offices of Dewey, Cheetum, and Howe, Attorneys.” That’s it—the choices for the caller will come later. This allows you to record different greetings without having to record a whole new menu. For example, for a few weeks each year you might want your greeting to say “Season’s greetings” or whatever, but your menu will not need to change. Also, if you want to play a different recording after hours (“Thank you for calling. Our office is now closed.”), you can use different greetings, but the heart of the menu can stay the same. Finally, if you want to be able to return callers to the menu from a different part of the system, you will normally not want them to hear the greeting again.
The main menu prompt is where you inform your callers of the choices available to them. You should speak this as quickly as possible (without sounding rushed).[135] When you record a choice, always tell the users the action that will be taken before giving them the digit option to take that action. So, don’t say “press 1 for sales,” but rather say “for sales, press 1.” The reason for this is that most people will not pay full attention to the prompt until they hear the choice that is of interest to them. Once they hear their choice, you will have their full attention and can tell them what button to press to get them to where they want to go.
Another point to consider is what order to put the choices in. A typical business, for example, will want sales to be the first menu choice, and most callers will expect this as well. The important thing is to think of your callers. For example, most people will not be interested in address and fax information, so don’t make that the first choice.[136] Think about the goal of getting the callers to their intended destinations as quickly as possible when you make your design choices. Ruthlessly cut anything that is not absolutely essential.
Option 1 in our example will be a
simple transfer. Normally this would be to a resource located in
another context, and it would typically have an internal extension
number so that internal users could also transfer calls to it. In this
example, we are going to use this option to send callers to the queue
called sales that was created in
Chapter 13, Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) Queues.
Option 2 will be technically
identical to option 1. Only the destination will be different. This
selection will transfer callers to the support queue.
It’s good to have the option for the
directory as close to the beginning of the recording as possible. Many
people will use a directory if they know it is there, but can’t be
bothered to listen to the whole menu prompt to find out about it.
Impatient people will press 0, so
the sooner you tell them about the directory, the more chance you’ll
have that they’ll use it, and thus reduce the workload on your
receptionist.
When you have an option that does nothing but play a recording back to the caller (such as address and fax information), you can leave all the code for that in the same context as the menu, and simply return the caller to the main menu prompt at the end of the recording. In general, these sorts of options are not as useful as we would like to think they are, so in most cases you’ll probably want to leave this out.
It is very important to give the
caller the option to hear the choices again. Many people will not be
paying attention throughout the whole menu, and if you don’t give them
the option to hear the choices again, they will most likely press
0.
Note that you do not have to play the greeting again, only the main menu prompt.
As stated before, and whether you like it or not, this is the choice that many (possibly the majority) of your callers will select. If you really don’t want to have somebody handle these calls, you can send this extension to a mailbox, but we don’t recommend it. If you are a business, many of your callers will be your customers. You want to make it easy for them to get in touch with you. Trust us.
Many people will call a number, and not pay too much attention to what is happening. They know that if they just wait on the line, they will eventually be transferred to the operator. Or perhaps they are in their cars, and really shouldn’t be pressing buttons on their phones. Either way, oblige them. If they don’t make any selection, don’t harass them and force them to do so. Connect them to the operator.
People make mistakes. That’s OK. The invalid handler will let them know that whatever they have chosen is not a valid option and will return them to the menu prompt so that they can try again. Note that you should not play the greeting again, only the main menu prompt.
If somebody calls your system and knows the extension she wants to reach, your automated attendant should have code in place to handle this.
Although Asterisk can handle an
overlap between menu choices and extension numbers (i.e., you can have
a menu choice 1 and extensions from 100–199), it is generally best to
avoid this overlap. Otherwise, the dialplan will always have to wait
for the interdigit timeout whenever somebody presses 1, because it won’t know if they are
planning to dial extension 123. The
interdigit timeout is the delay the system will allow between digits
before it assumes the entire number has been input. This timer ensures
callers have enough time to dial a multidigit extension, but it also
causes a delay in the processing of single-digit inputs.
[135] If necessary, you can use an audio editing program such as Audacity to remove silence, and even to speed up the recording a bit.
[136] In fact, we don’t normally recommend this in an AA because it adds to what the caller has to listen to, and most people will go to a website for this sort of information.