AT&T 555-230-520 manual Delay Announcements, Forced Announcements

Basic Call Vectoring

Delay Announcements

Here is an example of a delay announcement:

announcement 2556 (‘‘All our agents are busy. Please hold.’’)

Figure 4-1. Delay Announcement

If the caller does as suggested but ends up waiting an appreciable amount of time without receiving further feedback, he or she may tire of waiting and hang up. To keep the caller on the phone at least a little longer, a supplementary delay announcement similar to the one following might be used:

announcement 2557 (‘‘Thanks for holding. All our agents are still busy. Please hold.’’)

Figure 4-2. Supplementary Delay Announcement

A delay announcement is usually coupled with a delay step, which is provided by the wait-timecommand (discussed later).

The customer should incorporate as many supplementary delay announcements as he or she deems necessary, given the resources available.

Forced Announcements

There are times when the customer may find it advantageous to have the agents not answer calls. Usually, this option is exercised whenever the customer anticipates a barrage of calls concerning an emergency or a service problem of which the customer is already aware. Accordingly, the customer can incorporate an appropriate announcement as the very first step in the vector. Such an announcement is referred to as a forced announcement. Here’s an example.

announcement 1050	(‘‘We are aware of	the	current
situation and are	working to rectify	the	problem. If your
call is not urgent, please call back		later.’’)

Figure 4-3. Forced Announcement

4-4Issue 4 September 1995