Keep calls in queue when no agent is currently available

[kakashi]

I had posted this in a previous thread that's now locked and wanted to see if anyone had any other Ideas. We have a couple of queues that are lightly staffed but very important. The problem is, if just a couple need a quick break, or they are in wrap, suddenly there is no one in queue, and the calls go to destination if no answer.

A couple people had the idea of having a dummy account logged in and use ring all. This kind of works in that no calls go to the destination if no answer, but we had multiple calls constantly get passed over because they were stuck ringing all on the dummy account. When another agent would come available, it would be at a different time, and they would get the next call in line. This caused a lot of calls to stay on hold 20 minutes longer that they should have. Does anyone have any other ideas?

 

[Kevin@voxtelesys]

Instead of ring all use a round robin or hunt with 10-15 seconds of ring time, that way if they do hit the dummy extension then they are only on them for a short period of time? Just tested and it works.

 

[kakashi]

Thank you for the idea! It works if there is somebody available. Unfortunately it becomes a problem when there are multiple calls waiting in queue. The longest waiting call will ping the only available agent, the dummy account. If another agent becomes available while the dummy account is getting pinged during the 10 to 15 seconds, the real agent gets queued with the next call and answers that. Unfortunately, this can happen multiple times in a row depending on the luck of when agents become available, causing the longest waiting call to wait longer.

It'd be really nice if the system had an option to count people in wrap or break as still being in the queue. Another person in the previous thread brought up the option of just having them stay available when going on break or lunch, but we track those stats so it's not an option.

 

[Kevin@voxtelesys]

What about adding another dummy extension? Or would that increase the odds of that 1st caller being put farther back?

Do you give the option for request a call back?

I wonder if this is something the CFD could do a better job with, I haven't done much with it but I can ask some engineers in our office for some insight.

 

[kakashi]

That's a good Idea, thank you! I've only used the CFD app to make a survey, but I'm going to poke around and see if I can figure anything out. If you get any insight let me know, that would be awesome! Thanks again!

 

[VoIPTools]

I suppose you could do something really crazy with the CFD like put callers in park first, and then only pull them out of park and place them in the queue when agents are available. I'm thinking pulling them out of park would require some c# code and the use of the 3CX Call Control API...