Chained call queues and the abandoned calls list

[ckrammer]

Hello everybody,

we have a business with seperate outlets and would like to have customer calls answered in the outlet called if possible but route calls to a central call center when there is no answer. We currently use multiple call queues for this.

There is a queue 7000 "outlet A" that has a target for not answered calls with a short timespan (e.g. 60 seconds) to queue 7001 "outlet A + call center" that holds the same agents as queue 7000 plus all of the call center extentions. The problem is, in this scenario all calls that extend the 60 seconds timespan and go to the second queue are logged as an abandonded call for the queue 7000. This makes it difficult for the agents to see which customers are really unanswered and need to be called back.

Is there any option to get this scenario working with no abandoned calls logged if the called is passed to another internal queue?

Regards,
Christoph

 

[VoIPTools]

By definition (according to 3CX) if a call is not answered by an agent in the current queue, the call is considered "abandoned". There is no way around it.

The only alternative that I can think of would be to write a custom service that monitors the SLA for the queue. When the queue hold time or number of callers exceeds the threshold you set, rather than overflowing the callers to a 2nd queue, instead automatically log-in designated "overflow agents" into the queue. Once the number of callers or hold times fall below the specified threshold, you could then automatically log out the additional overflow agents.

The advantage of this approach would be that you would only have "real" abandoned calls listed, and you would be able to identify the actual hold times rather than having to manually add the hold times for the first and second queues together. This approach would solve all the issues caused by using overflow queues.

We could build that service for you.

 

[ckrammer]

Just to clarify, this service would be an external piece of software hostet on a different server? It would connect via some API (I guess the old .NET stuff, since the new REST API is still work in progress).

The service would have some sort of configuration files where the settings for my queues (timeouts, additional agents, etc.) are set?

 

[VoIPTools]

Let me address each of your questions:

• We could host everything directly on the 3CX server, or we could host it on a separate server. As a rule, I typically host as much as possible on a separate server which could be Linux or Windows depending on your preference.
  
  
• It would connect to 3CX via our VoIPTools API which is (in some cases) a wrapper for the 3CX Call Control API.
  
  
• We would provide a web interface for (1) setting enter / exit thresholds for each queue, (2) to select the overflow agents, and (3) to view logs of events.
  
  
• I would think you would also want to notify the queue manager(s) when overflow agents are added / removed. In that case, we would need settings for your SMTP server, and perhaps a template for the email to be sent.

 

[ChrisC_3CX]

You might also actually want to consider using a Call Queue with Skill Groups for this. Instead of having two separate Call Queues you could have a Call Queue with two or more Skill Groups. Calls will always poll the first SG and will only poll agents of the second SG if all of the agents in the first SG are busy. Since all calls are still within the same Call Queue, they will not be flagged as abandoned simply by overflowing to the next SG. This would of course mean that the 60 second timeout will not need to expire for calls to overflow to the next group so I recommend you test it out a bit to see if it suits your needs before deciding if you're going to use it or not.

 

[ckrammer]

I did not quite got this from the manual. Will group 2 be polled, if there are agents available in group 1 that do not answer?

In my scenario, this is essential.

 

[ChrisC_3CX]

I did not quite got this from the manual. Will group 2 be polled, if there are agents available in group 1 that do not answer?

I'm afraid not, if an agent in group one is available and polled then the call can then either be answered by that agent or left to timeout in which case it will follow the "Destination if no answer" routing. It will not poll agents of the second skill group. Agents of the second SG will only be polled if all agents in the first SG are either Busy or Logged out.

That said, only thing I can recommend is that agents log out from the queues if they cannot answer calls. You can also enable the "Log out from Queues" option on a profile status, say DND, so that agents simply switch to DND when unable to answer calls to automatically log them out of the queues.

 

[SweetAction]

VOIPTools has a tool to auto-logout agents that do not answer Queue calls. We use this to kinda accomplish what's described here.

-agents in skill groups
-agents don't answer
-they get logged out
-skill group 2 gets rung