The call queue is a call flow management feature that can be assigned to any number in your Freshcaller account. All calls made to that number will then follow the routing behavior specified in the call queue. By default, you will have a global call queue in your account. You can also configure multiple call queues according to your business requirements. With call queues, you can route the inbound calls to a particular agent, team, or external number. 


In addition, the call queue has the following additional capabilities:

  • Smart Escalation (Pro+): Allows you to route a caller from one call queue to another call queue. You can use this when your team or agent is unavailable or busy to take calls. For more information, see Setting Up Smart Escalations

  • Wait Queue (Growth+): Lets you place your callers in a queue when all agents are busy taking other calls. For more information, see Configuring Wait Queues.

  • Callback (Pro+): Allows your customers to opt for callback instead of waiting in queues. For more information, see Setting Up Queue Callback.


With call queues, you can:

  • Distribute and manage calls evenly so that no calls are missed or abandoned

  • Keep track of your team or agent’s productivity and overall performance of your call center

  • Set service level targets for each call queue and monitor the queue performance

  • Set easy fallback actions for each call center scenario (for example, what should happen if an agent is offline)


User Requirements: Users with admin or account admin access can configure IVR call flow.


This article contains the following sections:


TABLE OF CONTENTS

Configuring Call Queue

  1. Log in to your account as admin and go to Admin Settings > Configuration and Workflows > Call Workflows.

  2. From the right panel, under Create Call Workflows, click Call Queue.

  3. Call Queue Name: Enter a name for the call queue.

  4. Play Message: Select a message to initiate the call queue. Freschaller provides a set of default voice messages. You can either choose to select this message or create a custom message.

  5. Caller Will Be Attended By: Select who should attend the calls coming to this queue. You can choose to send the call to:

    • All agents in your account

    • A specific team in your account

    • A specific agent

    • External number

  6. Route Calls By: If you select all agents or a specific team in the previous step, you can choose how you want to route the calls within the team. The options are:

    1. Calling all agents simultaneously: The call rings to all the available/online agents in your account or the team (based on the selection in the previous step) simultaneously. 

    2. Calling the most idle agent first: The call first rings to the available agent in your account or team (based on the selection in the previous step) who has not taken any calls for the longest time as compared to other available agents. If this agent does not answer the call, the call is routed to the next agent who is the second most idle. This process repeats until the call rings to all available agents.

      You can also set how long you want the phone to ring for each agent before trying the next agent.

  7. Call Rules: The call rules let you decide how to handle the call if the following conditions occur:

    • If (agent) not answering

    • If agent is online but not answering

    • If agent is offline

  8. For each rule mentioned above, you can take appropriate fallback actions:

    • Send to another call queue: Select this option to send the customer to another call queue. You can select from the list of call queues that are available in your account or create a new call queue.
      Note: This option is available from Pro + plan.

    • Send to Voicemail: Select this option to play a prerecorded voice message to your customers. You can select from the list of messages that are already available in your account or create a new message.

    • Send to Agent Extension: Select this option to send the caller to an agent extension call workflow.

    • Send to Routing Automation: Select this option to send the caller to a routing automation call workflow.

    • Place Caller in Wait Queue: Select this to hold your caller in the wait queue. If you select this option, you can configure the wait queue settings. For more details, see Configuring Wait Queues.
      Note: This option is available from Growth + plans.

    • Hangup: Select this to hang up. Select the message to play before hanging up or create a new message.

  9. Click Save.
    Once you save the call queue, you can assign the queue to any number in your account.

Notes:
  • Customers in Free plan do not have the option to create a new call queue. However, they can view and edit the global call queue with limited options (one call rule and hangup action).  
  • The smart escalation option is available from Pro + plan.
  • Wait queues are available from Growth + plan.
  • Callback option is available from Pro+ plan.

Monitoring Call Queues

Freshcaller allows you to easily monitor and evaluate the performance of your team/call queues based on the time taken by each agent to answer calls. You can set service level targets for each call queue in your account and see the live update of the service level, the average time taken to answer, average wait time, average handle time, average talk time, and longest wait time from the live dashboard. For more details, see Service Level Monitoring.


The live dashboard also gives the option to view real-time updates on the conversations currently happening in the queues. The dashboard gives an overview of:

  • The total number of incoming/outgoing calls in the selected queue
  • The total number of missed, abandoned, and voicemail calls under incoming and outgoing call categories
  • The numbers of callers currently in queue
  • The availability of agents in your account
  • The number of ongoing live conversations

For more information, see Live Dashboard and Reporting.


Note: The service level monitoring is available only for Enterprise customers.


Call allocation strategy improvements 

Incoming Call Allocation

Under Call Workflows, you can choose the settings for an incoming call:

  • Call all agents simultaneously

  • Call the most idle agent first


With this update, when you choose ‘Call all agents simultaneously,’ you can configure the number of agents to which the incoming call should ring. This way, the call will ring to agents in batches instead of ringing to all agents simultaneously. This will help free up agents who would otherwise receive the same call. 


You can now define how long a call can ring in the call queue settings. 


Call Queue Settings

Under the Call queue settings page:

  1. Configure the ‘Total ringing seconds for a call’ - Define how long an incoming call should ring. The default is 150s, which will apply to all call queues unless specified. You can configure this under Admin > Call Workflows > Call Queue.


  1. Configure the ‘Maximum number of agents the call should ring to’ - Define the number of agents the call should ring to. This does not define the total number of agents who will receive the call but only how many agents will receive the incoming notification at a time. The default is set to 3 for all call queues and can vary between 2 and 10. You can configure this under Admin > Call Workflows > Call Queue.


Note: If ‘Limit Incoming Calls’ is applied on a team associated with a call queue, the limit will be pre-applied to a batch of agents before the call rings.


FAQs

  1. Agents were available, but the call did not ring. 

Due to the batching of agents, it is possible for calls to not ring to every available agent. In case the incoming call rings and there is a timeout, new agents are fetched, and the call rings to them. 


  1. How do we change the number of agents who would receive the call simultaneously?

This is configurable under call queue settings in the option ‘Maximum number of agents the call should ring to’ and can take a value between 2 and 10. 


  1. I do not want to limit how many agents the call should ring to; rather, it should ring to everyone. 

This setting does not define how many agents the call would ring to in total; it only defines how many agents would receive the call simultaneously. When any agent ignores the call or the ringing times out, it would fetch new agents subsequently and would ring to them. Furthermore, to simulate the "ring all agents" setting, it is recommended to set the above value to the highest possible(10). 


  1. How are agents selected when "Ring All Agents" is chosen and a batch value is set?

All available agents are fetched, and when Ring Busy Agents is enabled, busy agents are filtered and placed after available agents. From this list, the most idle agents are picked first, and finally, the agents are sorted based on the number of ringing legs (minimum comes first).