What Is A Virtual Auto Attendant?

A virtual auto attendant, or virtual automated attendant, is a voice menu system used in telephony to automatically route incoming calls to extensions as identified by the callers, without the need for a human operator. It is an automated phone system feature that offers a simple menu system directing callers to a specific services or department within an organization. Typically, a virtual auto attendant acts as the first point of interaction for inbound callers to avoid missed callers, make a company look professional, and deliver a seamless experience to all callers.

How An Auto Attendant Works

With auto attendants, callers can press different keys on their telephones to spawn dual tone multi-frequency (DTMF) signals or touch tones that are detected and interpreted by the telephony application program interface (TAPI) to transfers calls to different extensions. Generally, auto attendants are engineered to route calls to VoIP virtual phones, mobile phones, and other AA/IVR systems. They can also deliver standard pre-recorded messages, transfer a call to sub-menus, and link a caller to a customer service representative.

What Are The Key Benefits Of A Virtual Auto Attendant?

In the business world of the past, every office featured a switch room with live operators answering calls and taking messages. Today, those operators have been replaced by with sophisticated PBX virtual auto attendants that deliver economy, efficiency, and professionalism. We’ll explore some of the key features of a virtual auto attendant:

Consistency & Professionalism: A properly implemented auto attendant system is efficient and consistent. It allows you to carefully manage and route inbound calls appropriately. Auto attendants follow rules, have logical routing trees, and deliver the same experience to all callers flawlessly, regardless of call volume. Because the right calls gets to the right agent with the right context, you can deliver better service. Many companies prioritize calls by type (e.g. sales calls over billing calls), which becomes especially important when the same workforce handles multiple types of calls. The auto attendant can be configured to put sales calls ahead of billing inquiries, and agents can be notified which type of call to expect.
Custom Voice Prompts For Branding & Sales Promotions: Auto attendants also help to build client relationships when used creatively. Hold music and messages are an opportunity for branding. Online services make it fast and inexpensive to hire voice talent to produce creative, professional, custom voice prompts. Custom recordings can also be updated continuously to help drive sales and promote new products. Current generation PBX systems make it easy to replace default messages with standard audio files such as WAV and MP3.
Call Routing & ACD Queues: A virtual auto attendant also makes it easy to customize inbound call routing based on individual caller and department needs. For example, a call to a sales department might ring individual representatives sequentially, while a call to a service department might ring all phones in that department simultaneously. Executives or outside sales reps might need a find-me-follow-me feature that rings their desk, then their cell, then routes to voicemail if other options fail. Advanced applications can even determine call flow based on live status of availability of resources. For example, if your sales team is overwhelmed with calls, you could configure the system to start routing calls to your support staff.

Looking for a PBX with virtual auto attendant features? Learn about MiCloud Connect >

Common Auto Attendant Uses

Auto attendants can be offered in multiple ways. The complexity of the auto attendant is anchored on how the service provider chooses to deliver it or how a business decides to use it. That said, businesses can implement different forms of auto attendants, including a simple menus system, a recorded greetings system, or an interactive voice response (IVR) system.

Top Advantages and Benefits of Auto Attendants

All in all, an auto attendant will help a business eliminate human error from the telephony system, save on overhead, increase efficiency, and improve call navigation. Auto attendants also:

Ensure business continuity: If the power and network connectivity in your office goes out, can customers still reach you via phone? With a cloud-based virtual receptionist, business continues normally, even allowing your sales team to route calls to their cell phones so customers are cared for.
Conserve bandwidth: If your phone system supports a mix of at-home workers, extensions mapped to mobile phones, and traditional phones, a premise based VoIP system uses network bandwidth to route calls to any off-premise extensions since all lines must be managed by the PBX. A cloud-based system avoids wasting bandwidth for off-site connections because it only uses bandwidth required to connect the phones located in your office.
Unite on- and off-site workers: Cloud-based phone systems are by far the easiest way to support a call group with remote workers.
Make configuration easier: The primary interface for cloud-based systems is web-based, making them easy to configure from any standard web browser. With a better user interface, you can create highly customized call flows and schedules that better match your callers’ needs.
Make off-site configuration possible: Sick at home and need to remove yourself from the queue for sales calls? With a premise based system, the IT department will have to configure that for you. With a cloud-based system you can make this configuration change yourself remotely.
Integrates with third party apps more easily. Cloud-based systems provide standard APIs for integrating with third-party apps, such as CRMs. With a premise-based system, you have to handle the integration and security issues yourself. With a cloud-based system, access is tightly controlled in a standard, tested way and integration is simplified via API’s.

Virtual Auto Attendants Are Better In The Cloud

Auto attendants are available in both premise-based and virtual PBX systems and offer several advantages for IT professionals and their organizations. An old adage in business is, “do what you’re good at.” Most likely, your company’s focus is something other than managing phone systems, and your IT infrastructure is there to support your company’s core business. Not only does a cloud-based virtual auto attendant give you better focus on your business, but it also simply works better in the cloud.

If you’re buying a phone system and virtual auto attendant features are critical, you will find the real cost of ownership is lower than premise-based systems, and many key phone features work better.

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