Balancing Agent Call Volume Across Queues

[twisted1]

All,

I have a client that wants to create multiple queues for different customers that call into their call center. The issue is that agents may be members of 1 to many of these queues and as far as we can see, 3CX does not consider agent usage at the system level when performing agent call routing within a queue but only the agent's activity specific to the queue being actively called into. Because of this, a single agent who is a member of many queues receives an larger volume of calls than those who are members of just one queue, often getting several back to back calls while other agents sit idle.

Does anyone have a creative solution for this?

Thanks!!

Scott

 

[VoIPTools]

You have correctly described how 3CX handles queue call distribution. Call distribution is based solely on the activity in each queue regardless of calls taken in other queues. The only option for cross queue prioritization is through the use of "Priority queues".

And in case you are wondering, there is no API for altering how queues distribute calls. However...

It might be possible to build your own custom queues. I've not tried this, but here is my idea. Rather than sending callers to a queue, send them to a parking location. Remember, park is based on first in / first out. Sounds like a queue, right?

With callers in parking locations, you now have the ability to programmatically control when callers are pulled out of park and distributed to agents. Who knows, maybe under the covers that's what 3CX does....

I should point out that building your own "queues" would not be a trivial exercise. There is a huge amount of code needed to handle call distribution so implementing something similar, but custom, would be a lot of work and few would likely be willing to fund the effort.

Still, with this approach, you could get pretty creative regarding taking multiple queues into consideration when distributing calls or, for example, implementing a more complex skills based routing solution... If only time was free...