Forward calls AND handle faxes

Question

I hope I describe this well enough.

I have a number used as the main line for our small pharmacy. All calls to that line get transferred to a cloud-based pharmacy IVR system. It’s a standard prescription refill IVR, same as we’ve all used before.

The call transfer part is easy. The hard part is that this line also needs to handle faxes because the cloud IVR cannot. A regular queue can do it…..until I forward all calls and then the queue doesn’t handle faxes. A ten-second wait before forwarding works, but that’s a lot of dead time for callers. Two seconds would be perfect, but that’s not an option.

I tried adding a dummy member to the queue and forward from there….but then I remembered queue calls can’t be auto forwarded.

Ideas?

john-oliphant · Answer

So I figured this out, and it’s workable.

I created a fake user with a mobile license.
Incoming calls go to queue1, which has the fake user as its only member.
10 second wait, then forward calls to queue2
Queue2 forwards all calls to the cloud IVR.

It handles both faxes and forwards calls. The only downside is a ~ten second wait before the transfer.

FWIW….the medical community lives on faxes because they’re HIPAA-compliant. Theoretically faxes never sit in any storage, they go paper-direct POTS-to-paper. But in reality, today’s faxes are exactly the same as email. Just try explaining that to a clerk or manager at a medical office. 🤣

Sign up

Login with SSO

Login to the community

Login with SSO