Forum Discussion

Copper Contributor

Jan 31, 2022

Handling incoming calls in Teams

Please help, we are fairly new to the Teams application and are trying to implement Teams calling within our organisation. As with any normal PABX system we have one or two reception staff on duty w...

calling

microsoft teams

Ryan Steele

Bronze Contributor

Mar 03, 2022

I am interested to know why your receptionist would put a call on hold to answer another incoming call instead of just completing the first call and then answering the next one. If they answer a call from a Call Queue and immediately place that call on hold to speak to another caller, that defeats the purpose of the Queue, as the other receptionist cannot pick up this call.

AntCraig

Brass Contributor

Sep 20, 2022

You obviously have not seen a busy reception before. Receptionists can be juggling 4-5 calls at a time.

Ryan Steele
Bronze Contributor
Sep 21, 2022
AntCraig Yes, receptionists can be juggling multiple calls, but should they?

Which is better: waiting in a call queue and having the receptionist's full attention when it is my turn, or having my conversation with the receptionist be interrupted every time another call comes in?

To be clear, I'm not trying to argue that Microsoft's implementation of Auto Attendants and Call Queues is perfect. On the contrary, I think there are some major gaps, such as the lack of an "approximate wait time" feature, and no ability to request a call-back. But I just don't see the benefit of interrupting one call to answer another one and put it directly on hold. To me, that is an obsolete practice, born out of necessity due to a lack of functionality which is now widely available.