I have a private school that allows the parents to press 7 in the IVR which then calls a dedicated cell phone. Issue is the person with the cell phone ends up answered a bunch of telemarketing calls etc. not knowing if it is a parent.
I currently have 7 go to a ring group that dials the cell phone.
Is there a way to have them set at dummy number in their cell phone (say 999-888-7777) that says something like “Parent” so the person knows it is not a telemarketer and also pulse a fake number such as 999-888-7777 so the cell phone recognizes this number and displays the parent contact?
I don’t recommend sending a fake number, because it’s likely to be soon blocked by the mobile carrier. Either send the main or other number of the school, or an inexpensive number that you acquire for the purpose.
Since you have already set up a Ring Group, in Change External CID Configuration select Outside Calls Fixed CID Value, then set Fixed CID Value to the desired number.
You enable Call Confirmation so that when they answer the call it plays back a recording for them and prompts them to press 1 to accept and 2 to ignore (or just not press anything). They don’t accept the call it routes back to the system and you can put them in a voicemail to leave a message.
I guess. I do this for a school district that has multiple schools and after school programs. People call in and select the school program from an IVR/directory, it uses FollowMe to send to the call, no confirmation send call to voicemail which emails attachment of voicemail to person that was called. They want the callers CallerID for callbacks and they seem to manage fine doing it this way.
Also nothing is to say they can’t force a fixed CallerID for the school’s CallerID so it looks like the school is calling them like you suggested just setting Call Confirm helps control the call. However, I wouldn’t bother messing with CallerID Name as the receiving carrier could just ignore and do their own dip on the name.