Progressive Call Queue

[Jim Taylor]

I have a client that wants to have 4 agents in a queue, and if for some reason they are all busy, or don't answer the inbound call in a predetermined time limit, they want to add 2 more agents to the queue. Then, if those 6 agents still haven't answered the call in a second time threshold, they want to add three more agents and have a total of 9 agents phones ringing. I can do this in Ring Groups but don't know how to do it in queues. I could set a shorter time limit for the first queue, set max queue wait time to something small, like 30 seconds, then forward to queue 2 that has more agents, but I can't do that because the client wants to maintain the ability to press * to leave a voicemail or 2 to request a callback. If I understand correctly, if I set the queue wait time to 30 seconds max and set it to go to queue 2 after that timeout, that's what gets executed when * is pressed. Is this something I need to upgrade to Enterprise to do skill based agents somehow?

 

[SweetAction]

This is a feature (add more agents to a Q after x time) that I haven't been able to replicate in 3CX quite like the systems of old (Avaya, etc).
Even Skill Based has an issue - as long as an Agent in a lower skill group is available, the call will be offered to them and not higher skills. Higher skills only get offered the call when lower skills are not available (logged out, dnd, etc)

I'll subscribe to see what others have to offer here.

 

[VoIPTools]

Out of the box, the only way to do this is to set up multiple queues and have each queue overflow to the next, with each subsequent queue having all the same people as the previous queue plus a few more.

There are some disadvantages to this approach:

1. Every call that overflows to the next queue will be flagged as an abandoned call for the previous queue
2. Customers will be given a new position in the queue as they progress from one queue to the next
3. Determining the actual hold time for the customer is a manual process of adding the wait time for each queue together

You may want to look closer at the skills based polling strategy.

The only other thing I can come up with is a custom solution where a service monitors the hold times in the queue and dynamically logges people in/out of the queue. It's an idea that I have put forward for several years, but thus far nobody has been in a position to fund the work

 

[Jim Taylor]

If Queues would allow me to add a Ring Group instead of just extensions, I could add Ring Groups to the Agents section of a call queue, then just do prioritized hunt, then just have three ring groups that progressively add extensions as needed and set the Ring Groups to ring for a period longer than the Queue Max Wait Time. This seems to be the simplest way to do it, but unfortunately I can only add individual extensions to the Agents tab. I understand this is not likely to happen since extensions won't be able to log in/out of the queue with this method, but my client won't ever let people log out of queues anyway, so I need an override!

 

[Jim Taylor]

Out of the box, the only way to do this is to set up multiple queues and have each queue overflow to the next, with each subsequent queue having all the same people as the previous queue plus a few more.

There are some disadvantages to this approach:

1. Every call that overflows to the next queue will be flagged as an abandoned call for the previous queue
2. Customers will be given a new position in the queue as they progress from one queue to the next
3. Determining the actual hold time for the customer is a manual process of adding the wait time for each queue together

You may want to look closer at the skills based polling strategy.

The only other thing I can come up with is a custom solution where a service monitors the hold times in the queue and dynamically logges people in/out of the queue. It's an idea that I have put forward for several years, but thus far nobody has been in a position to fund the work

This also will break the ability to leave a voicemail. Ideally the customer wants the person in the queue to hit * to leave a voicemail or 2 to request a callback. If I have three queues, which is what I first tried, the * being pressed just advances you to queue 2, and then to queue 3. So, the intro prompt would have to say 'press * three times to leave a voicemail'. And, as you mentioned, calls then get abandoned in queue 1 and lose their spot in line.

 

[VoIPTools]

There is not an ideal solution. But we could build EXACTLY what you want.