One of our clients, Tim, the owner of a property management company, had this dilemma. “My receptionists are good, but they don’t know everything. I have some recorded messages prepared for the most common problems my customers have, for example, their rental may have an issue with the fireplace, satellite TV, hot tub, etc. I set up an after hours menu for guests to access this menu driven system (i.e. “if you have problems with your hot tub, press [1]” etc.).

“Now I would like these menu options to be available during business hours, too. If someone in the office can’t answer a guest’s question, I’d like them to say “I am not an expert, but let me transfer you into a menu system that might be able to provide help.”

Tim wanted to transfer callers to one general help menu on his Halloo phone system that provided an additional list of options, but had difficulty because calls can only transfer to a direct extension.

Auto Attendant Solution

The good news is that within the Halloo phone system, you can create a menu that acts like a help desk. While there is not currently a direct way to transfer into a sub menu of an auto attendant, you can set up another auto attendant to do this by creating a new attendant. Go to All Extensions and click [New Attend…]. Give it an extension number (like 96) and a name. Then, set up the “default” menu of this attendant to offer help to your customers. So, when your operators want to transfer callers here, they would simply transfer to extension-96 (for example).

For more on this topic, check out our Ultimate Guide to Auto Attendant Phone Systems.