Multilingual Automated Attendants

You can set up a multilingual automated attendant, the first level of which might ask the caller to select a language. Subsequent levels implement the automated attendant in the language chosen. You can implement a multilingual automated attendant using multilingual system announcement sets or the Multiple Personal Greeting feature.

Multilingual Feature

If you have purchased multiple language announcement sets, the Multilingual feature should be set to ON (check the Feature Options window accessed from Customer/Services Administration on the Main Menu). Your automated attendant can use 2 languages to greet callers during prime and non-prime hours.

The first menu in the automated attendant should be one where the caller chooses a language (such as "Press 1 for English or press 2 for Canadian French"). You can then set up separate menu trees for each language.

For example, your company operates in a U.S. English/Canadian French bilingual environment and uses an automated attendant to redirect calls to the appropriate extension. The following scenario is typical of nested, multilingual automated attendants.

  1. The recording for the main or firstlevel automated attendant is in US English (except for the invitation to press 1).

  2. "Hello, this is ABC Company."

    "Pour Fran硩s, appuyez sur le un."

    "To talk to a sales agent, please press 2."

    "For billing problems, please press 3."

    "If you know the number of the person you want to reach, please enter it now, or you may wait and an operator will be with you shortly."

  3. The caller presses 1. The recording for the secondlevel automated attendant is in Canadian French.

  4. (In Canadian French)

    "To talk to a sales agent, please press 2."

    "For billing problems, please press 3."

    "If you know the number of the person you want to reach, please enter it now, or you may wait and an operator will be with you shortly."

    (If the caller presses * 4 for help, Canadian French prompts are used if the primary announcement set is Canadian French.)

  5. The caller enters extension number 432.

  6. (In Canadian French)

    "Please wait."

  7. The call is transferred to extension 432. If the call covers to the messaging software, call treatment in the call answer scenario will be as described above.

To administer an automated attendant to make use of this feature, see Step 2: Administering the Automated Attendant as a Subscriber.