Handling incoming calls in Teams

[NikHut]

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 who answer calls as they come in.  Often they receive several calls at once and have to put calls on hold while they answer a second or third incoming call.  Picture this scenario, the receptionist answers call 1 and a second call comes in.  The receptionist puts call 1 on hold and answers call 2 and a third call comes in.  The receptionist answers call 3 automatically placing call 2 on hold.  The receptionist transfers call 3 to the intended recipient and wants to go back to call 1 but there is no option to select caller 1, once call 3 has been transferred the queue presents call 2 to the receptionist and they are not given any option to select call 1.  The call queue management within Teams appears to be strictly on a "First in First out" basis.  Is this actually the case and if so WHY?  That seems to be to be one of the most basic functions of a phone system, the ability to answer a call of your choosing and direct it accordingly.  Or am I missing something and there is some strange MS terminology used to describe this call management function?

[#2]

Pretty sure what you need to do is set up Park a Call in Teams. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/call-park-and-retrieve

[#3]

@samanthaeasterday Thank-you for taking the time to respond to my query but as it turns out I finally figured out what is going, thanks in no part to the GUI design which is terrible and needs changing.  Teams seems to default to opening a new window for each call, exactly on top of the last window completely obscuring its view.  If you manually drag each window from each call to another part of the screen you can see the other calls and select them as necessary.  It would be much more user friendly IMHO to have all concurrent calls in the same window somehow so that one can easily switch from one call to the other. 

[#4]

Hi, have you looked at Teams attandant console which might be the solution for your reciptionist. This will introduce additional cost but should make the multiple call handling much easier. You can use the fully functional 30 day trial to validate if this fits the requirements - https://landistechnologies.com/landis-attendant-console-for-ms-teams-now-available/

[#5]

Thanks for the info Satyendra. We are looking for something like that, the native Teams console is awful, completely inadequate for our reception staff.

[#6]

@NikHut  there is also a good solution from Luware calles Nimbus Attendant.

[#7]

Thanks Chris, I'll check it out.

[#8]

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.

[#9]

Great question. In this scenario, the customer's primary focus is having a live person answer incoming calls. That being said, they have one person answering incoming calls...I do realize that is not ideal. But I can only advise so much. So she may answer the first call, have a second ringing in right away, say thank you for calling, can you please hold? Answer the second call, process that as needed, then go back to the first call, but if she (or caller) hangs up on the second call, before she takes the first call off hold, Teams hangs up both calls.

[#10]

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

[#11]

@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.