Implemented Allow multiple calls for Queue and Ring Group

[bluetel2]

call queue

Hi

we have call center customer who ask us every update if it's possible to receive more than 1 call per 3cxphone where agent is on call queue. For Example agent take off 1 call from queue and the can take off another call for another queue or the same ( maybe they can choice number of simultaneous call they can have for all call queue)


tks

 

[David Roulleau]

Hello everyone,

It would be great if it could be on the next release. I vote for it.
It's a standard function in Mitel, Alcatel ... PBX

 

[stever]

Also standard in Freepbx, Grandstream and Switchvox.

 

[sentrianjames]

+1

 

[jhn]

There are some threads where I wished I could vote multiple times!
This is something we've been waiting for really long time.
With ring groups, one can do this. We need the same with call queues.

 

[Fred Garcia]

+1
We needs multiple call for queue. It will be nice !

 

[Nikolas]

+1......

 

[EdLee]

We're new to 3CX from Mitel.. MITEL allowed buttons to be pressed to pick up a specific queue, and multiple buttons (hence queues) per handset... This is STANDARD on most systems.

We have some handsets with multiple Queues assigned, the ability to select which queue to answer is needed, is there a way to do this ?

 

[stever]

It will not ring automatically and wouldn't make sense, you will drive the agents crazy. I think until we invent agents that can speak to two people simultaneously this behaviour is correct

3CX is a great system, but this one feature caused us to make the decision this week to go with a competitor. I guess that is why there are choices. I really, really wanted 3CX to work for us. Their mobile client is one of the best that we looked at but we had to have the ability for our employees to at least be aware that there was a second call coming in on the ring groups and queues. The fix for ring groups mentioned by several was not considered by us since it is not supported by 3CX or our vendor. We never intended on our employees talking to two people simultaneously (as Nick mentioned above), but rather potentially end or transfer a call a little quicker if they see that another caller is on the phone. Yeah, we could have put additional line buttons on the phones but that would have involved custom templates that also aren't supported.

 

[N_G]

Hi Stever - Thank you for your feedback. But wouldnt monitoring on the web client help see incoming calls in queue?

 

[stever]

Nick,

I appreciate you responding.

We are a car dealership group, so we operate much differently than a standard office or call center. One of our franchises is a luxury line, so we try to live answer our calls. People are on their feet working with customers as well as taking and making phone calls. We have 5 people that are included in our main ring group. There could be anywhere from 1 to 5 of these people present at their phone at any time. The number fluctuates as each of them have responsibilities other than answering phones. There is lunch, breaks, greeting customers, cashiering, or other duties that take them away from their phone. Some don’t have a PC but rather work with an iPad or other device. The web and Windows clients are great, but they can’t be available to anyone all the time. I foresee other areas that this will be a problem. On Saturdays, our parts ring group will only include one counter person (down from 5 during the regular work week) and they need to know if a call is coming in, so they can potentially put the current call on hold and answer the incoming one. It might mean a lost sale if it goes to voice mail. There are times that I am out of office and have called in to our dealership and am talking to someone and they say “Hey, I got to go, I got another call” and we quickly end our call, so they can take the incoming customer call.

If I had one receptionist that sat at a desk and their only responsibility was answering the phone, using the softphone to monitor the ring groups and queues would probably work. Every day and hour bring different phone volumes. That is why answering the phone is a shared responsibility.

I might be wrong on this, but it seems like when I was testing that if I was on an internal call, I didn’t receive ring group or queue calls. We make a lot of internal phone calls and are expected to drop those calls to answer external calls if from a customer. Again, I may be wrong about that behavior.

Handsets are still the primary tool for our phone usage. Our 15yr old digital system has ring groups that will sound an audible beep and display the caller ID of a second call coming in. I believe this to be too important of a feature for us to take a step back in this area.

Even if we were successful using the unsupported ALLOWUSEBUSYOPTFORGROUP tweak, I had planned on switching some of our ring groups to queues and that tweak doesn’t work with queues.

I probably didn’t explain this very well, but hopefully I have conveyed a little about our environment and why it is so different from a call center.

Steve

 

[Paul Omans]

I have a client who needs a call queue implemented because of a specific requirement he has (needs to play a audio recording at the start of every call that says the calls are being recorded). The only way to accomplish this that I have found is to implement a call queue since it has the ability to play an intro prompt (the alert saying calls are being recorded) as well as a custom hold music file (which I have selected as the default USProgresstone.wav). This way the customer doesn't hear hold music when they call in (the client does not want incoming customers to hear their normal hold music, as would happen with an intro prompt IVR and a ring group). However, now with the call queue in place, the phones cannot receive multiple calls at the same time. Nick, I've read your previous replies, and I realize that it is possible for the client to monitor the 3CXPhone app and place clients on hold and pick up calls from the queue manually, but in this situation my client is an auto shop and they are not in a position where they can monitor the 3CXPhone app and click around. There also is a need, believe it or not, for a phone system where at least two calls can come into the same phone at the same time. Call Queues in 3CX are more complex than Ring Groups, so it escapes my comprehension as to why there are any feature options that Ring Groups have that Call Queues do not have. This is extremely disappointing and I am very surprised this thread has been "In Consideration" for the past three years. How long does an issue need to be considered before a conclusion is reached?

 

[VoIPTools]

I encourage you to take a look at our add-on "3CX Queue Notifier". It's not the perfect solution for every situation, but if you have people walking around and unaware that there are people waiting in a queue, our add-on can "chime" for every caller waiting in the queue, or use text to speech to play a message similar to "you have 3 people waiting in the queue. The longest hold time is 3 minutes and 25 seconds". This could be played through the speakers of your phones and overhead paging system. You set the thresholds and the frequency of notifications and let our tool keep you updated in real-time. If you have people who have logged out of the queue and forgot to log back in, this is also a good reminder for everyone to log back in!

 

[PhoneCH]

+1
would be great

 

[Matt Zaharias]

This is an absolute requirement. US companies obviously behave very differently than 3CX imagines or accepts, but they need to cater to their market. I'm going to be looking very seriously at RingCentral for our future clients as this is going to be unacceptable to at least a few of our clients.

I'm very concerned because this is a very basic feature that folks have been requesting for nearly three years. If the ALLOWUSEBUSYOPTFORGROUP parameter usage is not supported, 3CX needs to build in a feature that IS supported--this feature is NOT optional in the US for most small businesses.

I echo everyone's expression of their need for their clients. We know our clients, we know how they do business and we know that the way they do business works. We know what our clients' needs are. 3CX needs to work with the community to address those needs or else the community will find another PBX platform. Whether it is an automobile repair shop, a doctor's clinic, a real estate office, etc. we have many clients who we could sell 3CX to but who will not accept this limitation. Missed implementation and support project for us, missed revenue for 3CX.

This needs to be at the top of the development/implementation list for the next update. This thread/feature is the most viewed, most replied-to request on the forum. Just do it.

 

[Neturius]

+1

 

[aceltic]

Hi Stever - Thank you for your feedback. But wouldnt monitoring on the web client help see incoming calls in queue?

Hi Nick,
It's simple. We can give instructions to our agents for puting a call on-hold (park) and pick up a new call in the queue but... how are our agents being alerted?? I used to be nortel meridian administrator and all the acd's desk phones had an indicator and a tone (non intrusive) to alert for calls waiting in the queues.

 

[aceltic]

I mean ... Maybe a tone indicator (not intrusive and through headphones) when a call is waiting in a queue could satisfy most of us. Of course, activated on demand.

Thank you.

 

[DSXVOICE]

3CX continues to be the finest product available in its class. We are impressed by the feature set and aggressive development that continues to be done on this product. All that being said - we were disappointed to see this issue untouched in 15 and with each subsequent SP. It is an embarrassing sticking point everytime we onboard a medium to large sized client. We have a number of work arounds developed over the years - but it takes the confidence away from our clients when they see us jury-rig solutions to what they perceive as a very simple feature. I have high hopes that V16 will in some way allow queues to deliver some sort of call-in-queue management ability for the agents that will make this issue go away.

 

[man416]

+1

 

[SAUBADE]

+1