Auto Dialer Ghost calls

[jcmoffitt]

Good morning

Please forgive me if this has already been asked and answered.

We have a Mitel 3300 in our call center.  We have approximately 10 reservation agents that are logged on as ACD agents and they receive calls from our 150 TFN's.  We have had an irritating Ghost call problem.  The res agent answers the phone and goes through the announcement they have been instructed to say and then dead air.  No one is there.  So, they waste a lot of time fielding these types of calls.  My Mitel vendor is telling me that there is no way for the Mitel controller to drop these types of calls and not send them to the ACD agents.  We have several locations that have NAVIS which has an IVR that automatically drops dead/ghost calls and they never get to the Res agents at those call centers.

Last year we spoke to someone in one of our northern locations that uses something called RouteIT with ATT (who is our LD and Local PRI providers) to block calls.  When they inputed a couple of numbers that we had identified as a problem number our call reporting from ATT immediately got screwed up and broken.  That took us almost 8 weeks to get it fixed which means ATT had to completely reverse that number from being blocked.  RouteIT is apparently not a viable option to block Ghost calls.

Any assistance would be appreciated. 

Thanks

[ralph]

Is the ghost call coming from the same number all the time?

If it's something dialing you, there isn't much you can do.  The Mitel thinks it's a valid call.
Are the calls front ended by an IVR or Auto Attendant or do the calls ring directly into the ACD path?
If it's ringing to something else first and the caller is simply hang up then there may be some timers that can be adjusted.

Ralph

[jcmoffitt]

Is the ghost call coming from the same number all the time?

If it's something dialing you, there isn't much you can do.  The Mitel thinks it's a valid call.
Are the calls front ended by an IVR or Auto Attendant or do the calls ring directly into the ACD path?
If it's ringing to something else first and the caller is simply hang up then there may be some timers that can be adjusted.

Ralph

Thanks for the response.  All calls get sent to our Mitel controller and then land on our Auto Attendant that has several options.  Our Res agents do log into ACD to receive calls.  The only calls that ring straight through would be DID numbers or local calls.

Thanks

[ralph]

Run a few test calls:
Call your AA and hang up.  Does it still ring through?

Ralph

[matthew]

Sounds like abandoned calls and you are using PSTN trunks.

[jcmoffitt]

Run a few test calls:
Call your AA and hang up.  Does it still ring through?

Ralph

Sorry for the late response.  If I call the AA and hang up the call is dropped. I have also stayed on the line and it goes through the queue and it gets answered.  I say nothing and the res agents hear a dead air and they hang up the call.  The only difference today is that I hung up.  So, the bottom line is this. If the call is dropped it never gets to the res or guest service agents. 

[ralph]

So the next thing we need to look at is the source of the call.
Be sure your SMDR is turned on in all gateways.
Have your agents let you know when it happens, time, date and what it says on their screen (such as caller ID, trunk name, anything)
Then check your smdr logs for the record(s).
Once you understand the source you may have a better idea of what may be causing it.
Worse case you may have to call the number that called in to see who/what placed the call.

Ralph