[Asterisk-Users] Re: transfer with threeway calling

[Steven Critchfield]

On Mon, 2003-12-15 at 13:14, Cees de Groot wrote:
> Steven Critchfield  <asterisk-users at lists.digium.com> said:
> >You are just as capable of dialing the parked call number as the other
> >person.
> >
> I don't completely understand that remark, but it seems to imply "don't
> whine, you can emulate feature X by telling your users to use feature
> Y". 

Not exactly. The complaint here was that if a call was parked the user
thought they had to wait for the timeout to have the call bounce back to
their phone. My comment was that the user was just as capable of dialing
the parked call as the intended transfer target, thus removing the wait
for timeout.  

> Which is a completely and utterly wrong answer to users complaining
> about usability.

Not always. Sometimes it is absolutely necessary.

> If they want to transfer, they do not want to park, write down a number,
> dial the other party, etcetera. Just flash and dial, and if the
> other party doesn't respond flash again to retrieve the call on hold.

This is where it might come down to redesigning the way calls are dealt
with in an organization. Sometimes new phone systems do this, and
hopefully the company sees new efficiencies with dealing with the
customer in general. 

Not wishing anyone out of a job, but at some point you don't need the
attendant at the front desk answering every call. You may need to figure
out what it is you think it gets you and decide if it is worth the FTE
you spend on it when technology will do it all the time for the original
expenditure. 

> You might think it's dumb, and call parking is way more cool, but it
> happens to be the way that almost every phone system in the world works,
> and if you don't want to screw up one thing with phone systems, it's the
> user interface. Hold-and-transfer is about the most sophisticated
> feature users can handle on the average phone system, and * even puts up
> a barrier here...

All phones more complicated than a home phone start as a barrier to a
new user. So does that thing usually on the right of the keyboard.
Eventually they learn to use it and understand it, if it was implemented
well to begin with.

In my office, we tend to do a mix of parking and flash transfer of
calls. Parking is less error prone. We have had times where flash
hooking doesn't work as expected, and parking always works well. Also on
the occasions I have to park a call, I can usually walk over to the
person about to answer the call and give them the quick 10 second
briefing before they take the call.

-- 
Steven Critchfield  <critch at basesys.com>