subject: What is an Auto Attendant? [print this page] What is an Auto Attendant? What is an Auto Attendant?
Interactive voice response systems can provide businesses with a multitude of functionalities. The most popular function typically fulfilled by an IVR system is that of an auto attendant. An automated attendant is an interactive voice response system that answers and routes calls to various internal and external extensions in a company's telephony system, automatically and without the help of an operator.
An auto attendant typically greets callers and, through a series of manually entered (DTMF) or spoken (ASR) queues, routes callers to the proper extension or department. An auto attendant enables companies to ensure that only the most vital, business-critical calls proceed to a human operator.
While interactive voice response systems can be constructed to perform a variety of functions, the auto attendant application is often times one of the fundamental building blocks of large-scale IVR platforms. Companies looking to implement an auto attendant solution need to answer several important questions.
What activities should the auto attendant perform? An auto attendant can execute a variety of actions, and companies looking to construct a full service auto attendant should consider integrating the following functionalities:
Transfer calls to either an extension or a voice mailbox
Play a pre-recorded message that imparts information to the caller (i.e., business hours, physical address, et cetera.)
Route callers to additional menus within the system, or alternate auto attendant systems living outside the company's IVR system
Patch callers through to a live operator (typically this is done by pressing zero or requesting help)
Companies can categorize and direct calls based on time of day, type of caller or the purpose of the call. Auto attendant applications reside on multi-layered IVR platforms that enable execution of a variety of call scenarios. Companies can rely on branching, and even integrate their auto attendant with PBX (private branch exchange systems) that route calls to individual extensions through centralized phone systems. While time of day or type of caller applications do require additional branching and routing functionality, in addition to multiple dedicated ports, companies can ultimately save time and money reserving their operators for the most important, high-value clients and calls.
