| So, there's a lot of confusion over the technical terms | | | | people waiting to receive the calls. That sounds like |
| that are slung around in the telecom industry. PBX, | | | | those hunt groups mentioned above, but don't mix |
| VOIP, SIP, live extensions, virtual extensions, physical | | | | them up - an ACD queue is a piece of advanced |
| extensions, it's a mess. It gets worse when you think | | | | technology that prioritizes, ranks, and manages both |
| you're getting one feature and it turns out to not | | | | the incoming callers and the people waiting to take the |
| function like you thought, or worse yet, how it was | | | | calls. |
| marketed. | | | | Where Virtual PBX comes in is taking that big fancy |
| Lots of businesses setting up their automated menu | | | | expensive hardware and making it available for a |
| for the first time know that they're going to need calls | | | | much lower cost -- call center technology at a small |
| to come in, the caller hits a button, and they go to | | | | business price. Virtual PBX's ACD queuing service is |
| whoever's available to handle the kind of call they | | | | the match for any call-center hardware or software, |
| chose. Sales teams, or support teams, or the billing | | | | capable of handling and distributing calls to hundreds of |
| department. It doesn't always go to just one person. | | | | people simultaneously, keeping track of who's on a call |
| And the idea of something called a "ring group" that | | | | and who's not so there's no wasted time, and making it |
| hunts through your numbers looking for an available | | | | easy to add or remove people from the queue. None |
| person sounds like what they're looking for. That's not | | | | of those things are the case with hunt groups. They |
| really accurate, however. | | | | take a call, they run down their list of numbers one |
| Most systems that have phone number groups that | | | | after the other, one at a time, and then they go to |
| are run when someone makes a menu selection are | | | | voicemail. |
| the most clumsy sort of patch on the problem. It's a fix, | | | | At the end of the day, when it comes to getting the |
| but it could be a lot better. The calls don't get | | | | caller to a person the fastest way possible, an ACD |
| distributed evenly to the correct extensions, callers | | | | queue is definitely the way to go. A hunt group is too |
| have to wait on hold longer, and managing the groups | | | | inefficient. Also, be careful of the advertising the you |
| require significant personal effort. | | | | see on the features pages of these virtual phone |
| For a couple thousand dollars, fancy pieces of PBX | | | | services. What is describes as "queues" turn out to be |
| hardware can string together what's called an | | | | fancy hunt groups. Ask the tough questions about |
| Automatic Call Distribution Queue. That's a lot of | | | | exactly how they work. Once you work with a true |
| money. These ACD queues take in the calls and | | | | ACD queue, there's no going back. |
| automatically distributes those calls to the group of | | | | |