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I am using Microsoft Teams Voice for my company.
I have a situation where a couple staff members service 3 different 1-800 numbers. We have a low volume of calls (about 20 per day). The 1-800 numbers are connected to call queue. This is working fine, but when the agents are not available, I want the call to go straight to voicemail. Right now the caller hears hold music until the MAX Call length is reached, then it goes to voicemail.
I have set the max call length to be 30 seconds, but this is still a poor user experience.
Hi Robert,
Yes, this has been the behavior on call queues in Teams, Skype for Business and Lync since launched back in 2010.
Regardless of how you configure the call routing within a queue/group, and regardless of how many agents in the group and their status (DND, in a call, offline etc), the caller will stay in the queue listening to the on hold music until the specified timeout.
Even if you use attendant routing (that doesnt care if you already have a call), and even if all your agents are totally offline, the caller will stay in queue until the specified timeout.
To solve cases like these I use third party tool from Tendfor, that gives you all these additional settings that MS is missing, allowing you to use Teams as a real call center.
Totally agree, there should be a settings how to handle calls when no agent is available. But since I've been missing it for some 11 years I don't think it will be added sometime soon.
Check out Tendfor, or Competella, both allowing just that.
PM me if you want a quick demo... :)
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I added it as a reply to the comment thread, but I guess I'll add it here for visibility.
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It looks like they've updated call queues in the Teams Admin Center to have a consolidated Exception Handling section that contains a section to handle calls when all agents are signed out or opted out:
That seems to be in line with what you were looking for, yeah?
wow - this is very helpful. Thank you.
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You could try to set the maximum wait time in Call time handling and enable presence-based call routing. To configure it, please login to Teams admin center, then click Voice> call queues, set the wait time and redirect the call to Voicemail. The following settings like below:
This article described the summary of recommended call queue settings for your reference.
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Thanks for the response. I have already set my max time to 30 seconds, but if for example someone calls and my agent is on a break (and has set their status to Do Not Disturb), it is not a great experience for the caller to have to listen to hold music when we know that call will not be answered.
Presence-based routing uses the availability status of call agents to determine whether an agent should be included in the call routing list for the selected routing method.
So please check if you have enabled the Presence-based call routing like the following picture:
It has been a while, how is everything going?
If you have any update about this issue, please feel free to post back.
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As of 2023-June-08, this still does not work.
Presence-based routing: Enabled.
Call timeout handling > Maximum Wait Time: 45 seconds.
Call timeout handling > Redirect to voicemail: Enabled.
Callers are still waiting / on hold until the "Maximum Wait Time" completes.
It looks like they've updated call queues in the Teams Admin Center to have a consolidated Exception Handling section that contains a section to handle calls when all agents are signed out or opted out:
That seems to be in line with what you were looking for, yeah?