Call parking

Call park is a feature of some telephone systems that allows a person to put a call on hold at one
telephone set and continue the conversation from any other telephone set.

The “call park” feature is activated by pressing a preprogrammed button (usually labelled “Call
Park”) or a special sequence of buttons. This transfers the current telephone conversation to an
unused extension number and immediately puts the conversation on hold. (This is called parking
the call; and the call is said to have parked onto a certain extension. Essentially, call parking
temporarily assigns an extension number to an incoming call.) The telephone system will then
display the extension number of the parked call so that the call can later be retrieved.

At this point, the telephone system will often provide an option for the person to make an
announcement through a public address system (often consisting of some or all of the telephone
sets and or overhead paging speakers controlled by the telephone system). Making such
announcements in such a way is referred to as paging. To access the paging system, the user
must enter the paging access code or press the "page" button on the telephone, and announce the
call parked extension. An example would be at a grocery store where the bakery has a call
parked. The user would say "Bakery you have a call parked on 627" and the bakery department
would then dial 627 to access the call on hold.

Uses of call parking

Call parking is often useful in buildings with many offices or with more than one floor, and with
most of the areas having access to one or more telephone sets.

• If the desired called party is not the person who picked up the call, and the desired called
party is at an unknown location, the person who picked up the call may park the call and
then use the public address system to page the desired called party to pick up the call.
• During a conversation, a person may need to go to another office for some reason (for
example, to retrieve an important file); parking the call allows this person to continue the
conversation after arriving at the other office.

Call pickup
Call pick-up is a feature used in a telephone system that allows one to answer someone else’s
telephone call. The “call pick-up” feature is accessed by pressing a preprogrammed button
(usually labelled "Pick-Up"), or by pressing a special sequence of buttons on the telephone set.

In places where “call pick-up” is used, the telephone sets may be divided into zones. Under such
an arrangement, using “call pick-up” will only pick up a call in the same zone.
Uses of call pickup

• If a colleague's telephone set is ringing, one can answer that call by picking up one’s own
set and then using the “call pick-up” feature, instead of walking to the colleague’s desk.
• “Call pickup” is often used in workgroup settings, for example offices that answer
customer enquiries. In such settings, the service may be called "group call pickup" and it
usually does not matter who picks up a call.
• Call pickup is also useful in large offices or in slack periods when fewer staff are present
than telephone sets.

Call transfer
A call transfer is a telecommunications mechanism that enables a user to relocate an existing
call to another telephone or attendant console by using the transfer button and dialing the
required location. The transferred call is either announced or unannounced.

If the transferred call is announced, the desired party/extension is notified of the impending
transfer. This is typically done by putting the caller on hold and dialing the desired
party/extension; they are then notified and, if they choose to accept the call, it is transferred over
to them. Other terms commonly used for an announced transfer include consult, full-consult,
supervised and warm transfer.

On the other hand, an unannounced transfer is self-explanatory: it is transferred without

notifying the desired party/extension of the impending call. It is simply transferred to their line
by way of a "transfer" key on the operator's phone or by keying in a string of digits which
achieves the same function. Other terms commonly used for an unannounced transfer include
unsupervised, cold and blind transfer.

Call waiting
Call waiting (or catch phone in Japan), in telephony, is a feature on some telephone networks.
If a calling party places a call to a called party which is otherwise engaged, and the called party
has the call waiting feature enabled, the called party is able to suspend the current telephone call
and switch to the new incoming call (Typically, this is done by pushing the flash button), and can
then negotiate with the new or the current caller an appropriate time to ring back if the message
is important, or to quickly handle a separate incoming call.

Call waiting, then, alleviates the need to have a separate line for voice communications. Note
that since the signal to the called party is audible (for example, a 440 Hz beep every ten seconds
in North America), call waiting often can cause Dial-up internet access connections to terminate,
unless the modem supports the most recent V.92 modem standard. For this reason, call waiting is
often disabled on shared voice/data telephone lines. In North America, the NANP uses *70
before a call to suspend call waiting for that call. A stuttered then regular dial tone confirms the
de-activation
Conference call
A conference call is a telephone call in which the calling party wishes to have more than one
called party listen in to the audio portion of the call. The conference calls may be designed to
allow the called party to participate during the call, or the call may be set up so that the called
party merely listens into the call and cannot speak. It is often referred to as an ATC (Audio Tele-
Conference).

Conference calls can be designed so that the calling party calls the other participants and adds
them to the call - however, participants are usually able to call into the conference call
themselves, by dialing into a special telephone number that connects to a "conference bridge" (a
specialized type of equipment that links telephone lines).

Companies commonly use a specialized service provider who maintains the conference bridge,
or who provides the phone numbers and PIN codes that participants dial to access the meeting or
conference call.

Three-way calling is available (usually at an extra charge) for many customers on their home or
office phone line. To three-way call, the first person one wishes to talk to is dialed. Then the
Hook flash button (known as the recall button in the UK and elsewhere) is pressed and the other
person's phone number is dialed. While it is ringing, flash / recall is pressed again to connect the
three people together. This option allows callers to add a second outgoing call to an already
connected call.

Usage
Business

Businesses use conference calls daily to meet with remote parties, both internally and outside of
their company. Common applications are client meetings or sales presentations, project meetings
and updates, regular team meetings, training classes and communication to employees who work
in different locations. Conference calling is viewed as a primary means of cutting travel costs
and allowing workers to be more productive by not having to go out-of-office for meetings.

Common causes of poor conference calls

There are three common causes of poor quality conference calls:

• People simply not showing up.

• Lack of familiarity with behaviour and protocol.
• Technology.

Each of these causes requires a different kind of corrective action. However, there is usually one
primary root cause; for example, people may not be showing up because the technology does not
work, or the technology may not work because people are not familiar with it.
Technology problems tend to fall into two kinds: lack of bandwidth and poor equipment. Again,
it is worth checking which of these apply in the case of technology problems.

Night service
In general, a night service is any service that operates at night, such as a night-time public
transport service or a 24-hour telephone support service.

Night service in particular is also a feature of private branch exchanges and business telephone
systems, whereby for a set period during the day (usually those hours outside of normal office or
work hours, when normal operator services are not provided), incoming calls are automatically
redirected by the switchboard to particular telephones or other equipment (such as an answering
machine, auto attendant, voice mail system, or the duty station of a night watchman).