Park Customer Dial vs Dial With Customer: which 3-way button to click

Both buttons live in the transfer-conf frame and both place a call to a third party. The difference is what happens to the customer while the third party's line rings. Dial With Customer keeps the customer live in the conference; Park Customer Dial sends the customer to hold first.

What Park Customer Dial does

When you click Park Customer Dial, VICIdial drops the customer into Call park and then places your call to the number or in-group you chose. The customer hears hold music, not your conversation. This maps to the PARK_CUSTOMER_DIAL value of the transfer_conference function, and like Dial With Customer it accepts a phone_number or an ingroup_choices value.

Parking the customer first gives you a private moment with the third party. You can brief a Closer on the deal before they ever hear the customer, which is the heart of a consultative handoff. Then you pull the customer back off hold and the three of you are together.

What Dial With Customer does

Dial With Customer never parks anyone. The customer stays in the live Three-way call and hears the third party connect. Use it when there is nothing private to say and you just want a fast Warm transfer with an introduction.

The consultative angle

Park Customer Dial is the button most people pair with a consultative transfer. At the API level, the consultative option is valid only with PARK_CUSTOMER_DIAL or DIAL_WITH_CUSTOMER, and it expects an ingroup_choices value pointing at a single active in-group. The reserved DEFAULTINGROUP value picks the default in-group for the campaign the call came from, so you do not have to type a name. Because the customer is parked, you get the private moment that makes a consultative handoff worth doing.

You no longer need the old CXFER prefix for this. There is a CONSULTATIVE checkbox on the agent screen now, and ticking it before you click Park Customer Dial is all it takes. On some systems a small AGI helper runs when the fronter releases the consultative call, keeping the live agents record accurate as the call moves to the new channel.

Picking the button

flowchart TD
  A[Agent on live call] --> B{Need a private word with third party}
  B -->|Yes| C[Click Park Customer Dial]
  B -->|No| D[Click Dial With Customer]
  C --> E[Customer hears hold music]
  E --> F[Brief the closer privately]
  F --> G[Pull customer off park]
  D --> H[Customer hears third party connect]
  G --> I[Three way conference]
  H --> I

Quick rule of thumb:

• Customer should NOT hear your prep talk: Park Customer Dial.
• Customer should hear the intro and stay engaged: Dial With Customer.
• You want the closer to take over with full context: park, brief, then unpark.

Both buttons obey the same 3-Way Call Outbound CallerID and 3-Way Call Dial Prefix campaign settings, so the third party sees the same caller ID either way. And both can trip the 3-Way Recording Stop option, which halts the session Call recording the instant you click either Dial With Customer or Park Customer Dial. The Agent keeps the Disposition until they leave or hang up the extra leg.

One more shortcut: the Custom 3-Way Button Transfer campaign option can add a one-click button to the agent screen, and its PARK_ choices park the customer before dialing automatically. If your floor parks on almost every transfer, wiring a PARK_ preset saves agents from typing a number at all. That is a per-campaign choice, so you can keep it off where live 3-ways are the norm.

For the live-versus-parked walkthrough of just the live option, see what Dial With Customer does, and for how every handoff path fits together start with the transfers and closers guide.

Want park, brief, and unpark to just work without wrestling campaign fields? Check our pricing and we will set the transfer-conf frame up for your floor.