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Automated Attendant or Live Person?
Dear Colleagues,
I have been asked to find out what other universities and colleges are doing to assist those who call for information. Are they directed immediately to a live person or do you use an automated attendant? If an automated attendant answers, how many choices are there before they get to speak with a person? Do you follow any sort of best practices with regards to your implementation? Would you be willing to share good and bad experiences with me?
Thanks!
Terry
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Terry Lewis
The University of Tennessee at Martin
Director, Systems Administration and Security
Information Technology Services
215 Hurt Street
127 Crisp Hall
Martin, Tennessee 38238
tlewis@utm.edu
(731) 881-7898
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Comments
We made a decision that anyone calling the College would get a live person. That is, if they call the main number.
If you call an individual dept. then you are presented with choices. If no one is available, then you are routed to press “0” for operator.
After hours the main number is routed to Public Safety.
All main number calls go to an auto attendant – callers speak the name of the person, or dept., or extension – exceptions go to operator.
/Neil
Neil S. Sachnoff, Executive Director, Information Technology
Middlesex County College
2600 Woodbridge Ave. JLC 209
Edison, NJ 08818
V-732.906.2601/Fax 732.548.6814
PThink before you print
****IMPORTANT NOTICE****
All email communications with Middlesex County College employees are a matter of public record and subject to publication or release under both the State and Federal regulations as they pertain to their relative Freedom of Information Acts.
We do both. The main number is answered by a person but we also publish an automated system number. The automated system allows for direct entry of a known extension or name search and also options for major offices (admissions, financial aid, etc). Each of those offices have an automated system with additional self-routing options.
This is an interesting question. I think there is a gradual shift in community expectations. We used to have every call to the general university number answered by a live person. We hit a volume of calls that could not be answered by the two live attendants. Further, as they pushed calls through to departments, there wouldn't be enough people in the departments to answer the calls, so the calls would get routed back to the "switchboard", just adding to the volume. There were significant complaints from people who just wanted a phone tree. At the same time, there are people who want to talk to a person.
A few years ago, we decided to implement a phone tree (248-370-2100). One of the first options is an option to connect with a live person during regular business hours. Most callers appear to prefer to use the phone tree, but there are some who either like to talk to people or have trouble finding what they want in the phone tree.
1- Emergency / closing information
2- Personal Service
3- Commonly called Department listing - this takes you to another entire tree
4- Campus events
5- If you know the person or number, press this
We also have direct inbound numbers.
But this just did not work for our Financial Aid office. Whether an attendant answers or the call tree answers, there simply are not enough people in our Financial Aid department to answer the calls. We've met with them to develop a communications strategy that emphasizes going to the web site or the portal for information, but only with some success.
This points to the need for a strategy:
Why do people call your general number?
Are there methods to get them the information they are calling about with having them call?
Do you have enough people on the backend to handle the calls?
It is an interesting end-to-end problem.
Theresa