Classic Inbound Voice Calling Features
It’s how you use it that counts
The features listed here can be configured in any order giving your business the flexibility to have the routing rules it requires.
Standard Features
Included features which provide inbound call routing functionality.
Time & Day Routing
Lets you divert calls to alternative telephone numbers based on the time and day the call is made.
For example: You can divert calls after hours to a mobile or to voicemail to ensure potential sales leads are captured. If your business has more than one office, such as in Sydney and Perth, you could have calls to Sydney diverted to Perth when the Sydney office closes to take advantage of the time difference and effectively extend your trading hours.
Statutory Holidays
With a Pickle inbound service, you can set your service to divert on specified public holidays to an alternative answering location or message service.
You name the holiday, we will look after the dates of that holiday each year.
Calendar
You can also set your service to divert on specified days or range of days to an alternative answering location for this year and the next.
You provide the special dates and we will design your service to divert on those dates to the location you picked.
Call Overflow
With Call overflow, you can direct your incoming calls to an alternative telephone number when the original telephone number is busy or not answered within 20 seconds.
Calls can be overflowed up to three times, with a general Pickle recorded voice announcement on the final overflow.
Pro-tip: It is recommended that Pickle Voicemail be used as the final Call Overflow to ensure you never miss a call.
Area Manager
You can direct calls to predetermined telephone numbers based on Australia’s Area Codes.
There are approximately 70 metropolitan, regional, and country area codes in Australia.
You can therefore have up to 70 call collection areas. There are many combinations - all with just the one Classic Inbound number - and you can choose the combination that suits your business needs.
Mobile Manger
Like Area Codes, mobiles can be routed by Mobile Service Areas. There are over 200 Mobile Service Areas (MSA) Aust-wide.
Please note: Major cities are covered by a single Mobile Service Areas.
For example:
- Calls originating in QLD can be answered in the Brisbane office.
- Calls from Sydney, Newcastle, and Wollongong answered in the Sydney office
- Calls from the rest of NSW and other states can be answered in the Perth Office
Call Splaying
This feature allows you to share calls in 1% increments between up to 10 telephone numbers/locations based on their ability to handle the workload.
For example: A nominated percentage of calls answered at one location and the remainder of calls at another location (averaged over 1000 call attempts).
Enhanced Features
More complex features for granular geographic routing or disaster recovery & business continuity.
Local Area Manager - Fixed Originated Calls
Local Area Manager enables you to have several call collection areas within the capital cities based on Pickle’s telephone exchange boundaries. There are approximately 5000 exchange areas to choose from. This is a more flexible way of managing call traffic and offers you greater call collection granularity than Area Manager.
For example: All calls west of Melbourne CBD answered at the Werribee office, all calls south of Melbourne CBD answered at the Dandenong office, and all calls north of Melbourne CBD answered at the Broadmeadows office.
Postcode Manager - Fixed Originated Calls
Postcode Manager allows you to route your calls based on geographical postcode areas defined by Australia Post. Pickle will match the physical addresses of dialing numbers to the postcode for that address.
The Call Collection Areas will be defined using postcode numbers eg 2112 for Ryde NSW or 3220 for Geelong VIC.
Silver Service
Silver Service provides the ability to route calls originating from specific telephone numbers to a specific answer point. This gives you the ability to provide superior or “Silver Service” to certain callers. It is useful if you want to manage highly valued customers.
You can nominate up to 1000 Silver Service numbers (including mobiles) that can be routed to any nominated answering locations (max 20 answer points).
Benefits of Silver Service: Many businesses find that a few customers can generate a large portion of the business. As a result, there is a need to ensure that the top customers are given premium service.
Business Continuity / Disaster Recovery
Pickle has various options and tools to manage your service if 1 or more of your answerpoints become unavailable.
For example, in 2011, businesses in the Brisbane CBD were evacuated due to floods. It is important that your business has a plan to handle calls if one of their offices becomes unavailable.
Pickle Contact Options
Emergency Redirect – Allows the service owner to redirect calls to a pre-determined routing plan if a contact centre becomes unavailable. Service Manager – For simple services, Service Manager allows customers to fast-track simple moves and changes within 15mins, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Eg Change of answer point. Call Plan Manager (ACS) – An online fully featured service management tool that enables you to change all routing options on their Inbound service in real time.
Network IVR
Pickle Network IVR is a suite of touch-tone response features for use with Pickle’s inbound services such as Classic One3, Classic 1300 and Freecall.
It provides customer self-service by identifying and understanding their requirements at the network level and distributing the call according to predefined criteria through touch-tone recognition.
Cencus Collection Districts (CCD) Manager - Fixed Originated Calls
CCD Manager is the most granular level of routing and uses mesh blocks from the last Census.
The call collection regions will be based on the Statistical Area 1 level defined by the Australian Bureau of Statistics as the lowest level to aggregate census demographic data.
This feature is used by franchise companies with stores in close proximity eg Domino’s Pizza.
Sample Routing Tree
TIME & DAY, IVR, AREA MANAGER & OVERFLOW
Online Tools.
Tools to manage your services and call reporting.
Pickle Analytics
Pickle Analytics is a call reporting tool that assists in identifying call handling times, location of incoming calls, call completion rates, etc in the form of maps, reports, charts, and graphs.
Two versions of Analytics are available – Online and a Monthly Statement. The Online offer provides a set of predefined, standard reports. These are a set of frequently requested reports in a format that cannot be changed. They have been set up to assist in conducting a query on your data plus some basic filtering and do call extracts (with the last 2 digits masked for privacy reasons).
The Monthly pdf version offers additional pre-defined reports allows you to create customised reports, schedule regularly required reports and do call extracts (with the last 2 digits masked for privacy reasons).
Benefits of Pickle Analytics Online
- You are able to use call data for market research and call analysis.
- Staff management.
- Monitoring call traffic statistics.
- Monitoring operational costs.
- Checking market trends.
- Monitoring customer buying patterns.
- Analysing the success/failure of marketing & sales campaigns
Pickle Portal
The Pickle Portal is a web browser based self-management tool, that allows you to change the answer points of your Inbound services in near real-time without having to contact Pickle. It enables you to view and modify the existing configuration of their Inbound service. Pickle Portal is an entry-level offering within the IN-Control group.
The Pickle Portal enables the customer to:
- Change an answer point in a call routing plan
- Change an overflow sequence in a call routing plan
- Change an answer point location to an overflow sequence or vice versa
- Open and manage service trouble tickets 24/7
- View call history
- Send a request to Pickle to change other features in your call routing plan (for example Caller Origin, Time of Day, Day of Week, Statutory Holidays)
